GLC returns
On Saturday, February 28, about 150 girls from both LM and Harriton attended the Girls Leadership Conference at Harriton High School. This is LMSD’s second annual Girls Leadership Conference.
This year’s conference was sponsored by Bryn Mawr College and led by college mentors, recent LM and Harriton graduates, and female professionals from the LM community. The conference’s main objectives were to help girls identify their own leadership style so that they can plan their post-high school goals; to teach skills to help girls gain confidence, advocate for themselves, and understand basic financial matters; to educate girls about gender issues that are relevant to their success in school and the workplace; to discuss ways to handle gender discrimination and inequities in schools, the workplace, and society; and to connect girls to female college mentors who share their experiences and views about gender jobs.
The Girls Leadership Conference was divided into events in which girls participated in small group workshops. There were also three hour-long conferences throughout the day for girls to attend. Many girls praised the activities as informative and interesting.
Jonnalagadda says her favorite part was the documentary Miss Representation, because “it does a great job addressing the main issues of gender inequality in a motivational way that inspires you to get up and start changing the world.”
Alfred-Levow’s favorite part was learning how to SING, which “ is an acronym for how to get away from someone who is grabbing you from behind. You jam your elbow into their Solar plexus, then stomp on their Instep, then jab at their Nose, and then go for the Groin. It felt [good] to know that we had SING and a few other moves to defend ourselves if we needed to!”
Skillings enjoyed “the self-defense workshop taught by a professional taekwondo instructor.” She explained, “since I’ve never taken a class of that kind before, I learned a lot, and it was my favorite workshop.” The girls also took many important and serious ideas away with those workships as well.
Through planning and attending the conference, Urheim realized that “each person has a unique style of leadership that is good for different situations, which highlighted even more for me the reason why it’s so important to show girls that their leadership skills are just as needed as guys’ leadership skills.”
Along that same vein, Foote added that “women are expected to conform to media standards, and, for this reason, it is our job as young ladies to start informing other young ladies about their self-worth in order to build self-esteem and confidence.”
Poe said, the idea that the most important take-aways were that “part of the reason that women receive less money than men for the same job is because they do not advocate for themselves, because they are glad they got the job, and they don’t want to push their luck. But women have every right to negotiate for a higher salary just like men.”
More generally, many girls such as Osazuwa learned “how to be a leader and how to have a voice.”All the girls were very satisfied with the conference and have set even higher goals for the next year’s conference.
As Sayoc said, “Who knows how many girls we will have at the conference next year? I can’t wait until next year’s conference and I hope…that this conference really empowers these girls to aim high and achieve their own goals with no fear of failing.”