Words can hurt. Despite what we were told about “sticks and stones” being the real cause of pain growing up.
Anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of a sexist comment, or at the centre of some not-so-constructive criticism, will know the long-term damage words can cause all too well.
As will anyone who believes that the words we use to describe girls and young women (like, ‘beautiful’, ‘gorgeous’ and pretty’) compared to boys and young men (‘strong’, ‘adventurous’, and ‘rough’) can have a significant impact on the self-esteem and ambitions of each gender later on.
The words don’t have to be positive or negative to have lingering effects that last longer than the physical repercussions of a broken bone.
It was this message that’s underpinned the ‘Like A Girl’ campaign that recently went viral. The three minute film posted on YouTube asks young people to demonstrate what doing certain actions, like running and throwing, like a girl looks like. They makes some awkward, silly, feeble moves. They do this because, somewhere along the line, they’ve been taught that to do anything ‘like a girl’ is to demonstrate weakness. It’s a stereotype that’s been developed through language, one that’s so ingrained women don’t even notice they’re reinforcing the negativity behind such words.
Meanwhile, words like ‘bossy’ are too often applied to young girls who demonstrate their assertiveness, compared to boys who are instead labelled a ‘leader’ – something that became the subject of a much discussed and debated Ban Bossy campaign launched by Sheryl Sandberg with the help of Condoleezza Rice and Beyonce earlier this year.
Meanwhile, we apply words like ‘Mumpreneur’ to women who happen to be mums AND entrepreneurs, and now even the term ‘SheEO’ to describe a female CEO. Then there’s the ‘She Boss’ who is not only a boss, but also a woman.
All these terms perpetuate the myth that men make natural leaders, while women can only succeed in such roles if they can successfully manage the fact they also happen to be a woman – whether that means she’s a wife, partner, mother, sister, carer, friend.
Language can do a lot of damage to gender diversity efforts. It can hamper ambitions, indirectly send messages about which gender should fill what roles, and keep entire industries from accessing the full potential of the human population.
Even the language that’s become a part of our national psyche and identity could impact on inclusion, and the desire to be a part of certain institutions.
That’s the finding from a new independent report into culture at the Department of Defence, as seen by our colleague Harley Dennett from Women’s Agenda sister publication The Mandarin. The report finds that language and idealised Anzac imagery all bear some responsibility for maintaining and promoting the fact our Department of Defence is still predominantly made up of white men. It found that certain language practices are hurting efforts to promote greater diversity within Defence, perpetuating an ‘us against them’ mentality that can feel exclusive for those who exist outside of the status quo – particularly women who make up just 14% of uniformed ADF personnel.
Our habits around the language we use are difficult to break. We can ‘ban bossy’, or encourage women to feel empowered while running ‘like a girl’, but we may well be better off going back to the ‘sticks and stones may break my bones’ defence and conceding that words really can hurt me.