WHO hasn’t heard that girls can have whatever job they want — entrepreneur, chief executive, president of the United States?
But girls themselves are often not so confident, according to a recent survey, which found that some 60 percent of teenage girls believe that women rarely can reach a company’s top position and a similar percentage think that it is easier to be a follower than a leader.
Those are perceptions the Girl Scouts of the USA, which is celebrating its centennial this year, hope to change with a broad new initiative, ToGetHerThere. Aimed at girls up to age 17, it is intended to encourage more projects, programs and services to create conditions that help girls learn what leadership is.
“It’s more than just blowing out the candle on our birthday cake,” said Anna Maria Chávez, chief executive of the Girl Scouts, which has 2.2 million members.Continue reading the main story
“This is a cause. We want to give girls what they need to become leaders. Right now, the country is wasting so much of the talent that it needs.”
The Girl Scouts intend to remake leadership prospects for girls within one generation, said Ms. Chavez, by enlisting companies, organizations and as many of its 59 million alumnae as possible.
The Girl Scouts are restyling themselves as the country’s premier girl-service organization, as the group emerges from an effort to overhaul and rekindle its venerable brand, best known for selling cookies. It began the task by reorienting its annual cookie sales away from a retail exercise to a course in money management, planning and other skills that girls as young as Brownie scouts could learn from selling Thin Mints and other cookies.
The new leadership effort aims at girls at an early age — girls can register at age 5 to begin as Daisy scouts — because studies repeatedly show that once women are in the work force, in college or even in high school, it is less effective to teach leadership.
Most leadership development efforts are now directed at students of middle-school age and younger, because “girls tend to conceptualize leadership differently. Most don’t like the top-down model, but something that is collaborative,” said Rachel Simmons, founder of the independent Girl Leadership Institute, which conducts camps and workshops for girls.
“Leadership doesn’t magically appear on the first day on the job,” she said.
Girl Scouts were among some 1,200 middle-school boys and girls in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and other Northeast states who participated in a spring 2011 study of gender and career choices. Girls from 10 to 15 years old said they perceived less support from their families to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math, collectively known as the STEM fields.
Only 11 percent thought their parents supported such a career choice, compared to 23 percent of boys the same age, said one of the authors, Mary Shapiro, a management professor at the Simmons College School of Management in Boston.
The preteen and early-teenage girls wanted to attend college and to support themselves, but according to the study, “Girls were far more open than boys in considering lesser-status jobs, and saw themselves as having fewer career options than boys.”
The study found “organizations can make a big difference in showing girls that barriers can be overcome,” said Ms. Shapiro.
“They need to hear women role models talking about how their success was not ‘luck,’ but instead due to perseverance and hard, but doable work,” said Ms. Shapiro. The study was paid for, in part, by the management school’s Center for Gender in Organizations.
That is where the Girl Scouts steps in, said Ms. Chávez, noting that the study builds on findings of its own Girl Scout Research Institute. Those findings show that girls can be hesitant and uncertain about stepping forward and taking charge. The institute’s research, which underpins the ToGetHerThere initiative, also shows that girls can be intimidated by a fear of public speaking or of incurring peer criticism by appearing overly confident.
One strategy pursued by the Girl Scouts is trying to lift females out of what some call the pink ghetto, referring to the middle-management or staff jobs inside companies, where women workers tend to be clustered. The term was adapted from pink collar, which has been used for decades in the United States to refer to jobs like nursing, teaching and waitressing, which often pay less but offer more flexibility for women with children.
Last spring, a report called “Women Matter 2012,” by McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm, found that relatively few women were in jobs that typically were pathways to top leadership positions at 130 European companies, a condition that is mirrored in the United States.
Women need more exposure to science, technology, engineering and math through, for example, science and math camps or robot-making workshops, where girls can become acquainted with less familiar subjects, and learn teamwork and decision-making.
Jobs in STEM fields pay well and are more plentiful, but attract relatively few women. AT&T gave $1 million to the Girl Scouts as part of scouting’s companion Campaign for Girls, to encourage interest in STEM careers among low-income high school girls.
The Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas, one of 112 scout councils across the country, is devoting its portion of the money to acquaint girls with aspects of STEM fields and to learn critical thinking, teamwork and responsibility, said Colleen Walker, the council’s director.
Scouts are using the 86-year-old Whispering Cedars camp, on the outskirts of Dallas, “as a living laboratory, with hands-on activities like testing water samples, learning about the chemistry of composting or exploring ways to increase crop yield or harvest wind energy,” she said.
To foster confidence and leadership through sports, Nestlé USA has committed $560,000 to expand a nationwide program called GirlSports. Girls who participate in sports or are earning sports badges can connect with others by posting their stories on a Web microsite that can be reached through the main togetherthere.org site, said Doreen Ida, a Nestlé spokeswoman, who said the company wanted to support programs that encouraged health, wellness and nutrition among girls.
To finance leadership initiatives, Ms. Chávez, the Girl Scout chief, said that the organization was embarking on its first conventional fund-raising effort. That departs from the traditional model, where council activities were largely supported by the proceeds from cookie sales and the headquarters was financed by sales of merchandise like uniforms.
“We may be a little late to the table,” said Ms. Chávez, acknowledging that economic times had squeezed philanthropic giving. But she said the Girl Scouts were hoping to raise awareness of girl leadership across the national landscape and enlist a broad range of companies and foundations, and especially individuals, who had previously given little funding to the Girl Scouts.
Some companies are signing up for the ToGetHerThere initiative, and others are supporting the Campaign for Girls, which aims to raise $1 billion by 2017 for leadership programs for girls in scouting.
“This is final piece of the puzzle,” said Ms. Chávez, of the broad leadership initiative, which, she says, will help create the supportive environment that is important for girls to flourish.Continue reading the main story