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Change Your Life! |
Steinem urges girls to keep the `healthy rebellion' |
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News
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April 29, 2000
UNITED NATIONS, APR 28 (UNB/AP) - Feminist author Gloria Steinem urged girls on Thursday to keep that "healthy rebellion" that inspires youngsters to say what they want and do what they want.
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Steinem made the comments after presiding over a U.N. program for the annual "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" - a nationwide campaign in the United States to boost girls' self-confidence that was launched seven years ago by Steinem's Ms. Foundation.
The founder of Ms. magazine was joined by the first female space shuttle commander, Col. Eileen Collins, and Australian Ambassador Penny Wensley, who heads up the powerful U.N. budget committee, at a morning ceremony attended by U.N. staff and their daughters.
"What this has helped to understand is that when a girl is say, 8, 9 or 10, she often has a lot more strength and sense of herself than she may have when she's 12, 13 or 14," Steinem said.
At that older age, the "feminine role" often sneaks up on girls, making them less willing to speak out about what they want, she said.
"We've learned how to strengthen healthy rebellion in girls to keep that sense of self we have as little girls," she said.
Wensley, the Australian ambassador, spoke of her determination to become a diplomat - a dream she had since she was 12 - and the discrimination she faced as one of the few female foreign service officers in the Australian Foreign Ministry in the 1970s.
At postings in Hong Kong, Mexico and New Zealand, Wensley said she was denied membership to the main diplomatic clubs where dignitaries would entertain because she was a woman. To protest, she forbade her staff from using the clubs.
"I believed it was inconsistent with the norms and the values that I represented as an Australian," she said. "That's discrimination, and that's annoying."
Wensley, who has two daughters in college in Australia, said she still sees discrimination as one of 11 women ambassadors at the United Nations - and as the head of the U.N. budget committee, the most important committee at the United Nations.
"People are surprised I'm chairing the Fifth Committee. It's a masculine committee. They wonder why I'm not chairing the Third Committee," which handles social and humanitarian affairs, Wensley said.
"I wanted to chair the 5th Committee," she said. "People think I'm crazy. It's a very difficult yet challenging, demanding job. But it is important to demonstrate that there aren't male territories and female territories."
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