Unfair Responsibility Placed on Young School-girls

• Khadija Aftab
• Oct 25, 2024
• 2 min read

Today I want to talk about a conflict each of us has seen in the classroom. The constant conflict between girls and boys in academic performance. It’s interesting to see that with so much research being done, it remains true that girls significantly outperform boys in school. This is because they are more disciplined, they study harder and in a more methodical manner. The idea of perfectionism is expected out of them, and they try their best to conform. 

However, research shows that 95% of top positions in workplaces are occupied by men. If it’s young women who are excelling in their academics, and academics is seen as a passageway to professional success, why is it that men overwhelmingly dominate these top positions? At first glance, it makes no sense. But if you look closer, you realise this issue is much more insidious and structural than you’d think. We all know that young girls are socialised in a way where they do their best to please the people around them, often as a determinant to their own self. This need for social acceptance, and having such stringent expectations placed on them is a huge reason why girls feel compelled to do so well at academics, and to try to perform their best to please their parents and teachers. The one thing these young girls aren’t taught is confidence. There is a severe lack of confidence in young girls in school, especially in Pakistan. And unfortunately, teachers are not trained to deal with this disparity. In fact, teachers often make the whole situation much worse. 

Now let’s take a trip down memory lane. Do you remember the second or third grade, where teachers would assign each child a seat where they would sit all year. They would make sure friends aren’t seated together since they’d cause a disruption in class. And what would happen if a young boy would act out, and would be a huge distraction to the class. Yes, they would seat him right next to a young girl who is extremely well-behaved and academically driven. How is this fair? What responsibility does this girl have to the boy, who will eventually even disrupt her day to day classroom experience. What is this need, from a young age, to make girls feel responsible for the wrong doings of boys?

This needs to be thought about much more deeply, and the implications of these sorts of actions are sure to be huge. Young girls then learn to think less about themselves, and are trained to care more about the people around them. This is a severe issue that all teachers and parents should be acutely aware of!