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Sheryl Sandberg Launches 'Ban Bossy' Campaign to Empower Girls to Lead
Personally I think this is the wrong means to an end. Maybe my memories are outdated, but I never recalled "Bossy" being a gender-specific word, and it was used to put down bossy people for both males and females. If their belief that the word discourages strong females later in life, I would expect the same thing to have affected males who were equally labeled as such if they were pushy or too assertive.
The word at least back when I was in school, was used negatively against people who refused to act as a team member where the activity was not supposed to give one person defacto leadership. We should still discourage that kind of behavior.
I agree that there should be more gender equality in regards to leadership roles. I also agree that there is a problem, across all age groups, of people discouraging roles for women by labeling a powerful woman as a "bitch" or a "feminazi," but banning the word "bossy" entirely as if it's a sexist term now is, IMO, the incorrect way to attack the problem.
Detect cases where students are actively discouraging a leader for sexist reasons, and put an end to it, for sure. However making a blanket proclamation that the word "bossy" is not PC and should be banned from schools is not going to fix the problem. Unless there's studies out there that illustrate a change in the meaning of the word in the last 20-25 years from an "overly aggressive leader" to an "overly agressive female leader."
Personally I think this is the wrong means to an end. Maybe my memories are outdated, but I never recalled "Bossy" being a gender-specific word, and it was used to put down bossy people for both males and females. If their belief that the word discourages strong females later in life, I would expect the same thing to have affected males who were equally labeled as such if they were pushy or too assertive.
The word at least back when I was in school, was used negatively against people who refused to act as a team member where the activity was not supposed to give one person defacto leadership. We should still discourage that kind of behavior.
I agree that there should be more gender equality in regards to leadership roles. I also agree that there is a problem, across all age groups, of people discouraging roles for women by labeling a powerful woman as a "bitch" or a "feminazi," but banning the word "bossy" entirely as if it's a sexist term now is, IMO, the incorrect way to attack the problem.
Detect cases where students are actively discouraging a leader for sexist reasons, and put an end to it, for sure. However making a blanket proclamation that the word "bossy" is not PC and should be banned from schools is not going to fix the problem. Unless there's studies out there that illustrate a change in the meaning of the word in the last 20-25 years from an "overly aggressive leader" to an "overly agressive female leader."
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