Waiting staff hurried around me as I sat in a restaurant with my husband, 5-year-old daughter, 3-year-old son, and our friends. They had two boys, also 5 and three3 and we were on a long weekend away together, at the coast. We were sitting down for a delicious breakfast, where my daughter had typically ordered a bacon sandwich, while the boys had all ordered pain au chocolat, when the topic of careers came up.
“I’m going to be a police officer when I grow up,” said my friend’s son before he turned to Minna. “I can’t be a doctor because I’m a girl,” Minna replied.
I was appalled and so taken aback that I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. My brave, strong, fiercely independent daughter thought she couldn’t be something simply because of who she was.
I’d naively hoped that sexism had been somewhat stamped out in this new generation, but now I was quickly realizing it hadn’t been, and I was learning just how early its impacts could start.
I’ve always encouraged my daughter
While I’ve fought hard since her birth to encourage my daughter to believe in herself, clearly, I haven’t done a good enough job.
My husband and friends were equally saddened by what they heard. We all rushed to reassure her, telling her she could be whatever she wanted to be and that women are just as capable as men.
“Where did you hear girls couldn’t be doctors?” I asked her gently. She couldn’t tell me, and it didn’t seem to bother her particularly, but the way she repeated it as a fact alarmed me.
How long would it take a belief like that to sink in and hold fast?
I felt angry that she’d been exposed to this thinking, that someone had already told my young, impressionable child that she was less than someone else.
For years, I’d bought my dinosaur-obsessed daughter clothes with dinos on, sometimes from the boys’ department because girly ones are hard to find, but it was what she wanted.
Likewise, I spent time stamping out casual sexism whenever I encountered it. I have always been overly careful to say police officer, air steward, and firefighter, to the point where it feels laughable. But I worked at it because I never wanted her to feel her gender was a barrier.
This will continue to be a work in progress
The Artemis II flight offered our family an opportunity to reflect on gender. I loved spending time telling her about the women and men who flew around the Moon and made the journey happen. Together, we looked at pictures of the rocket and talked about being an astronaut or scientist.
This was before she stated that she couldn’t be a doctor. So her little comment couldn’t have seemed more galling when she made it.
Still, I have hope. Minna’s personal hero is fossil collector and paleontologist Mary Anning, whom she has learned about at school. I’ve explained that Anning wasn’t taken seriously at first, either, because she was a woman, but she made incredible discoveries about dinosaurs, and people learned from her.
We’ve talked about how when Minna was born, we still had a Queen of England (where we live), and how being a girl shouldn’t make anything off-limits to her. It’s hard to think she’s come up against this feeling already. I never want her to believe she’s “only” a girl. I’ve been avoiding that for her since birth, but it seems I’m going to have to fight harder than I’d thought.
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