“Derailing
our Daughters to an Amazing Future of Endless Possibilities”
The most amazing and
wonderful thing that ever happened to me was being a father for the first time
to my amazing, and awesome daughter. From the moment I cut her umbilical cord
and bought her to life to hear her first cry and shared her first dream, it
changed my life forever. I have done
some pretty amazing and challenging things in my life but never before as
challenging and rewarding as being a father, and a single father at that. From the moment my daughter “Nikki”, short
for Nicole was born, I already knew she will be facing some of the most
challenging and difficult social and cultural obstacles throughout her entire
life because she was born a “girl” in a multi-racial multi-cultural family in
the good old U.S. of A., a nation founded and built upon patriarchal principles
and rule by grand old men oozing with white privilege. So if you are a girl
with ethnic features and an ethnic family name, you will have to work a lot
harder to get to where you are destiny to be.
The first time I ever
heard the term “tracking” used was three semesters ago by my Sociology
professor referring to how from the earliest stages of childhood development
leading all the way to their children’s college years are significantly
influenced by their parents’ upbringing, cultural, and socioeconomic
status. In a patriarchal society, boys
and girls gender roles are already predetermined even before they enter
pre-school, boys are conditioned to do and play with boys’ things and girls,
girly and princess things. By the time
girls entered into the second grade, they are already conditioned that math is
for boys and girls, well, they do girly and princess thing and they play with
toys from the "pink aisles." Enough is enough.
This tracking process
also predetermines the life and career paths of our daughters with limited
possibilities than that of our sons.
Because of our traditional mind set on how we tracked our children in a
patriarchal society, especially how the ways our daughters are being railroaded,
it is time to derailed this tracking process, this mind set and give our
daughters the abilities to soar and show them that they are by far more capable
them their brothers of achieving great and amazing things.
It has been proven
in a recent study conducted across 65 countries where boys and girls were given
the same science test where most of the girls around the world outperformed the
boys, but not in the US and that the result on how the girls in the US scored
was not the result of biology, but a cultural thing. At this time in America, only 17 percent of our
girls in college are majored in engineers and scientists, and almost 20 percent are in those sectors upon graduation, while the rest of the world in
certain countries where women have a higher percentage.
My proposed project
is a work in progress which contains three components: First, I want to change the
mind sets of other parents in my communities where I live and where I work, who
are still under the influenced by the traditional patriarchal culture and
system that continues to discourage our young daughters with implicit bias perpetuating
antiquated stereotypes like girls can’t do math or girls don’t become engineers,
or girls can’t fly fighter jets, etc. I want to see more parents, especially
fathers, to be more involved in supporting their young girls to take interest in
the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Second, I would like to see more young girls
getting involve in the world of business, entrepreneurship, and get more involved
in the world of politics where they can learn and understand that in order to
change the good old ways of politicking and policy changing, one has to under
the science of politics. Finally, I want
parents and schools to nip this problem of bullying and especially cyber bullying in the bud to prevent any more physical and emotional abuses in schools, in cyber
space and in social media. The numbers
of teen suicides as the results of cyber bullying is on the rise and we need to have this issue addressed at the earliest stage of education
because girls as young as 8-year-old and signing on to social media with false
date of birth and their parents are clueless until for some, it’s too late.
Currently I work for a
non-profit organization for a fatherhood initiative program funded by the New
York City’s Department of Youths and Community Development (DYCD) to work with non-custodial
young and older fathers to provide them with guidance, assistance, and
information to help them to become better fathers. DYCD also has other youth programs, Young
Adult Internship Program (YAIP), After School – In-School Youth (ISY) Program
and the Out-of-School Youth (OSY) Program that I believe are excellent platforms
to bring awareness and possible changes to allow our daughters to soar to places
where they were told that it would not possible before. The benefits of working with local government
agency is that it also allows you to have access to other government resources
and agencies like the Department of Education, the Department of Consumer
Affair, Small Business Administration (SBA), Science, Industry and Business
Library (SIBL), NYC Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT),
and the Office of the Mayor for the political supports. I have bought these
items up during my monthly meetings with some of the agencies and reach out to
others program directors via email and they all thought the topics are good
ideas, and that it is possible to incorporate into the programs with all the
resources readily available. Coming from
any government agency that operates with bureaucratic red tape, good ideas is
better than a “no” for an answer. Let’s
see how far some of these agencies in the City of New York will let me run with
this.
I thought about these issues
with my own daughter in mind, because I have watched her grow and experienced what
she had gone through from Pre-K through college. Some of the events on her early timeline during
grade school, especially middle school and later in high school were not pleasant. She kept it from me until her second year in
college because she said she wanted to protect me knowing what I am capable of. I want to make sure other girls would not
have to go through those challenging moments so they can focus on their
academics and also to have fun while they are growing up. If we are to advocate for women, we better
start by building our daughters’ foundation at the earliest stage of
development and deconstruct our mind set on how we parents should raise our
daughters and avoid implicit bias and antiquated stereotyping.
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
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