Why We Need Female-Focused Initiatives

This article is written by Elena Negoiu who lives in the UAE. Elena is an instrumental part of our Curriculum Development and Operations Teams at Launch gURLs.

At the end of June, I was starting my first remote summer internship at Launch gURLs. Given the remote nature of the work, I was concerned about whether I would get along with the team and enjoy working with a group of people I had never met in person. But, after the onboarding team meetings, I really felt that I had known these people for longer than just a couple of hours. I felt so comfortable sharing my thoughts freely, despite learning about my co-workers through tiny pixelated screens and some fun ice-breakers. Why would that be? Then, it struck me: this team is made up of only women. Could this be the reason why I felt so comfortable with some people I never met in my life? 

At the end of June, I was starting my first remote summer internship at Launch gURLs. Given the remote nature of the work, I was concerned about whether I would get along with the team and enjoy working with a group of people I had never met in person. But, after the onboarding team meetings, I really felt that I had known these people for longer than just a couple of hours. I felt so comfortable sharing my thoughts freely, despite learning about my co-workers through tiny pixelated screens and some fun ice-breakers. Why would that be? Then, it struck me: this team is made up of only women. Could this be the reason why I felt so comfortable with some people I never met in my life? 

Female-focused initiatives have always been subject to controversy and criticism. I have been involved in several initiatives that solely targeted girls, and have become familiar with the comments and questions these organizations so often receive: 

Why only women? You say women are excluded, but how about the fact that you are also excluding men from your initiatives? Why do we need quotas – to have less qualified people take the positions others deserve more?

Historically, and up to the present, there has always been a difference in opportunity based on gender, whether it was political participation, access to senior leadership positions in companies, or jobs in the STEM industry. But my goal here is not to write an entire argumentative essay on the existence of gender inequality and how it manifests itself. Instead, I hope that my personal experience will provide some food for thought for everyone who ever wondered why women-focused initiatives exist. 

Regardless of our gender or location, we are all raised in a world where sexism and gender discrimination exist. Unwillingly and unconsciously, we start picking up prejudices and stereotypes. Many times, I’ve  even caught myself thinking “Wow, he’s a man and he cooks so well!”, “She needs a guy to help her repair her car”, all comments rooted in gender stereotypes. These concepts are so ingrained in my mind, although these have been proven wrong so many times. 

As a girl who experiences gender discrimination and is directly impacted by it, it is a priority for me to become more informed about these issues, acknowledge my own bias, and start addressing gender inequality. Men and women experience these issues very differently, which is why their motivations and perspectives will also differ. A women-only environment brings together people with opinions and experiences that are unique, yet they all have one thing in common. They share the lived experience of gender inequality and a big incentive for fighting against it to improve their own lives. 

Empathizing with someone who has a very different lived experience from yours is not an easy task. Many times, groups that have a history of being discriminated against feel misunderstood and invalidated simply for being different than that of the majority. Groups that bring together members with  shared experiences create environments where people do not feel the need to justify their experiences. People just share them, and others can more easily empathize. 

This was my experience working with Launch gURLs, a women-only environment. I felt like I could speak freely about my experiences and did not have to justify them or provide too much context. With everyone being quite knowledgeable about gender-related challenges, we were more aware of the sensitivity of some topics and how to speak about them without offending anyone or invalidating any opinions. Designing an entrepreneurship program for adolescent girls required us to think deeply about what we can provide to make the girls in the program feel confident, motivated, and feel that “they are also capable”, regardless of what they are generally told by society. In a women-only team, most of us probably had a lived experience of feeling insecure due to being a woman, feeling incapable”, feeling like we do not “belong” because we are a minority in a male-dominated environment. All of these are realities that one becomes aware of either through direct experiencing or by getting informed. A women-only team, like that of Launch gURLs, ensures that everyone at the table is aware of these realities through lived experiences, and is actively trying to improve them. 

Even as a women-only team, we tried to get away from making assumptions about what adolescent girls want and need. For this reason, we co-designed the curriculum with a group of young girls from different parts of the world that we called the “Girl Squad”, who constantly advised us throughout the process. The two chapters of Curriculum that I mainly wrote were reviewed by different members of the team and, most importantly, the Girl Squad. It was such a valuable learning process, realizing that there were so many things I never thought of when designing the curriculum. Even as a 22-year old woman who was once a young girl, I didn’t always know what younger girls wanted. This just proved to me how many assumptions we make about other people, and how important it is to listen. The Girl Squad was made of five girls who were so thoughtful and mature. At every focus group, they would surprise me with more insight into how we can make the self-learning journey of the program easier, how we can build confidence in girls, or how we can adopt a more friendly and motivating tone in our writing. 

The aim of female-focused initiatives is not to exclude men to create even a greater gender divide, nor to undermine the importance of other social issues. Their role is to address gender inequality by filling in the gaps that inequality creates and providing opportunities for girls and women in areas where they normally do not receive fair treatment in society. I acknowledge that to address this challenge, we need an intersectional approach that brings everyone together at the table.  For that, we need to become more respectful to each other, more tolerant to difference, and more aware of what each social challenge entails. There is a long way to go until then. For now, what we can do is start with small steps and create safe women-only spaces where girls can grow and thrive, places where they can escape from a patriarchal society and learn how to overcome the challenges they have to face. My journey at Launch gURLs was much more than work experience. It was an opportunity to evaluate my own position when it comes to solutions that address gender inequality, understand the importance of female-focused initiatives, and develop solutions by listening to what girls want and need.