Are we really helping our girls?

As a Form Five class teacher, most of my girls are already talking about getting married.

While I believe there is no harm in getting married at an early legal age, I wish my students would focus on completing their SPM examination successfully before thinking about the next stage of their life.

What is even more worrying is that they often talk about girls who drop out of school because they want to get married, as if it were the norm.

As I was talking to my fellow teachers about this, we realise that maybe, just maybe, we might be teaching our girls the wrong things.

We tell our girls to be quiet and make them work, like sweeping and making pretty notice boards, because "itu kerja perempuan".

We stop the boys from holding the broom and tell them to let the girls sweep the class instead.

We chide them for talking too loud, laughing too loud or "behaving like boys".

The famous line of "siapa nak kahwin kalau perangai macam lelaki" is heard almost every day as we try to tell our girls to be gentler in their demeanours. We have this unspoken rule that the class monitor needs to be a boy and the head prefect must be a boy.

In a typical classroom setting, we let the girls sit behind because they are better behaved and we need to focus on the boys. At times, they are so quiet we forget they even exist.

What are we really teaching our kids? Are we helping them to be empowered women or merely perpetuating gender stereotypes and preparing them for marriage?

In 2010, a United Nations report showed that over 82,000 married women in Malaysia were girls between the ages of 15 and 19. As I read this, I realised that maybe the fault lies in our schools and our society, because we have evidently and statistically failed our girls.

We keep focusing on marriage being an end goal for a woman, instead of living a life defined by their own standards and values.

We forget to tell them to be confident and brave to chart their own destiny. Even when we see them thriving, we remind them that one day, they need to give it all up and get married.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a comment on world champion Nicol David’s Facebook page, praising her for her achievements but reminded her that she was getting older and it was time for her to "settle down" and build a family.

My friends and I talked about how even the world champion herself wasn’t free from gender bias comments, what more the average girl.

While I’m certain Nicol would have brushed off (or didn’t even read) that comment and continue being the amazing world champion that she is, the comments made on her page was a reflection of the sorry state of affairs in our society today.

We need to start in schools. We need to remind our girls that the most important thing will be her feelings, her values and her standards. We need to tell them not to feel bullied into a marriage and remind them to speak up for themselves. Their strength lies in their ability to be gentle yet strong enough to stand up and fight for the things they believe in.

Our girls need to know that they live in an age and time where they can be anything they want to be and no one is going to judge them for it. They need to know that more important than getting a boy’s attention is getting a proper education that will help them in the future. If they have to play dumb to be liked, then it’s probably not worth their time.

I understand that is it simplistic to sum up everything about gender equality in a 700-word column, but I also understand that sometimes the solution is really that simple. Tell your girls the right things.

Regardless of what society is telling them, tell them otherwise. Tell them that it is way cooler to defy society’s expectations of what they should be and truly strive to be what the CAN be.

There is no shame in being highly educated or a world champion but the only shame is if they settle for anything less than they deserve. – February 5, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.