The Difference: Discovering the Hidden Ways We Silence Girls - Finding Alternatives That Can Give Them a Voice - Softcover

Mann, Judy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446671185 ISBN 13: 9780446671187

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 1996

Synopsis

In this provacative book that will appeal to readers of the bestselling Reviving Ophelia, an award-winning Washington Post columnist draws on groundbreaking research to expose how and why American girls are raised to feel inferior to boys.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Washington Post columnist Mann draws on the revolution that Carol Gilligan began over a decade ago--presenting an accessible case for the differences between boys and girls and proposing strategies for raising less limited, more self-aware women and men. If girls start out developmentally ahead of boys but graduate high school behind them, Mann concludes, they've somehow been shunted aside. But instead of condoning gender-neutral child rearing, she insists we must acknowledge what it means to be female and male in this culture, embrace those differences, and develop new approaches to raising our children that stop crippling girls. Mann's goal is to create more complete human beings: women who are more powerful and independent, men who are more sensitive and less aggressive. From the way we handle babies (girls: close, facing in; boys: at a distance, facing out) to what toys we give them (girls: dolls and other inert objects; boys: trucks and blocks that teach motion and spatial development) to the male-only heroes on Saturday television cartoons and the female-bashing lyrics in popular music, boys learn to be active, strong, and sometimes violent, while girls learn to be silent, protected, and passive. What can be done? Mann gives a lot of attention to classroom sexism (boys, she asserts, demand eight times more attention than girls) and presents compelling arguments for single-sex education. She also stresses the importance of giving extra encouragement to girls in areas in which they lag behind, such as math and science. And she offers a strong feminist critique of Christianity. Mann makes such a clean, convincing case for breaking destructive gender roles that, even though it covers much old ground, this should be read by every parent for its practical advice. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal

What is the difference between girls and boys? Washington Post columnist Mann pinpoints adolescence as the time during which girls absorb implicit and explicit messages of dependency designed to disempower them. Parents, schools, and organized religion are the agents of these messages, Mann finds, and "redesigning children" through better training is the key to change. Asserting that "genderized expectations" create an adversarial relationship between the sexes at an early age, Mann concludes that "we cannot make the world a better one for girls until we produce boys who are not hostile to women." Mann's personal investigation of private and public classrooms, her explorations of traditional patriarchal religious history, and her interviews with her own teenage daughter and her friends make this urgent message immediate, accessible, and recommended for most general interest collections and larger women's studies libraries.
Susan E. Parker, Harvard Law Sch. Lib.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0446671185
• ISBN 13: 9780446671187
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336