Carin Murphy ’27 is a student in AP English Language and Composition who participated in and won the 2026 Blueprint Op-Ed Contest.
The first time a grown man yelled a comment at me from a passing car, I was told to take it as a compliment. When I got angry, I was told to calm down.
Somewhere between those two reactions lies a lesson many girls learn early: stay quiet, stay agreeable, and definitely don’t make anyone uncomfortable, especially not the person making YOU uncomfortable. We are conditioned to comply long before we are old enough to question why. This matters now because silence at this stage becomes acceptance later. What goes unchallenged in adolescence becomes normalized in adulthood. If we want a more equal society, we must reject the norms that excuse harmful behavior and instead demand accountability.
Women are blamed early for how men treat them. I interviewed 20 teenage girls and 20 teenage boys about catcalling. Every girl reported being catcalled at least twice a month. Not a single boy said the same. But the most revealing part wasn’t the numbers; it was the response. When girls told an adult, they weren’t met with concern. They were interrogated.
What were YOU wearing?
What were YOU doing?
The implication was clear, if something happened to them, they must have caused it. This reflex to scrutinize girls rather than the behavior directed at them teaches them to accept discomfort as part of growing up. This dynamic doesn’t disappear with age; it evolves into workplace harassment that goes unreported or unequal relationships that go unchallenged. This conditioning starts far earlier than most of us realize. Research from The National Library of Medicine shows that gender expectations are actively taught through socialization.
Children are encouraged to “adopt gender-role consistent behaviors”. Boys are encouraged to play “rough” whereas girls are told to be “quiet” and “cooperative”. This distinction may seem harmless, but it establishes a critical imbalance and over time, this teaches girls that their value lies in how well they accommodate others.
Even emotional expression is gendered. In an academic journal, Chaplin, Cole, and Zahn-Waxler (2005) found that fathers responded more to sadness and anxiety in girls, but more to anger in boys. From an early age, children learn that some emotions are rewarded and some are ignored based on their gender.
A wellness and psychology article written by Sarah Fielding puts the stereotype plainly: if you’re a woman, you’ve probably been called “irrational,” “overdramatic,” or “sensitive.” Yet, a man who responds similarly is often said to have presented a “good take”.
But the stereotype doesn’t even hold up. A 2021 study in Scientific Reports followed 142 men and women to observe their regular emotions. At the study’s end, researchers found that male participants’ emotions fluctuated as much as women’s did. The difference isn’t biological.
Dr. Catherine McKinley, a professor at Tulane University, explains that portraying gender roles as “natural” or “innate” reinforces sexism by making inequality feel inevitable. If women are believed to be inherently less assertive, their absence from leadership can be dismissed as preference rather than exclusion. If men are assumed to be naturally aggressive or sexually forward, harassment is excused as instinct rather than choice. Labeling these roles as innate allows society to avoid accountability.
Social worker Liz Coleclough describes gender expectations as rigid boxes people are pressured to fit into to be accepted. When women try to squeeze themselves into these boxes, it limits their growth and access to power. Coleclough later says, “Women are “allowed” to be emotional—but also must exhibit the right kind and level of emotion. Crying is acceptable. Anger is not.”
Crying is tolerated because it aligns with stereotypes of women as nonthreatening. Anger, however, is rejected because it signals resistance. By labeling women’s anger as inappropriate, society discourages them from expressing justified frustration or demanding change. Women are encouraged to feel, but only in ways that do not challenge power. Over time, this self-restriction becomes internalized, shaping how women see their own potential.
This conditioning doesn’t stay theoretical; it has real, devastating consequences. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one in three women will experience intimate partner violence in her lifetime. But guess what? Even suffering is policed.
To be believed when they speak about abuse, women must still conform to traditional expectations of femininity. If a woman is assertive, her credibility is often questioned. This creates a narrow and unrealistic image of what a “real victim” looks like, silencing those who do not fit the stereotype. A woman is trapped in an impossible box.
Until these boxes are broken, inequality will not only persist; it will continue to masquerade as normal. And the expectations that shape adolescence don’t disappear in adulthood. They follow women into the workplace.
Research by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Larissa Tiedens shows that women face a constant double bind in leadership. Men are expected to be dominant. Women are expected to be warm. When women violate these stereotypes or if they occupy leadership roles in business or politics, they’re seen as threatening to men’s status as earners. This is a catch-22 for women.
In one experiment, women were asked to write graduate-school admissions essays both for themselves and on behalf of someone else. Strikingly, the essays women wrote about themselves were significantly weaker. This decline in quality stems from women’s fear of being judged harshly for advocating too confidently for their own abilities.
A fear rooted in the very stereotypes that demand they remain modest and nonassertive.
A similar pattern emerged in a 2010 study. Researchers found that when women requested resources for themselves, such as a raise, they were evaluated less favorably than men making identical requests. Yet when women advocated on behalf of someone else, such as negotiating a higher salary for a subordinate, the social penalty disappeared entirely. This reinforces a system in which women learn to diminish themselves to remain socially acceptable.
These patterns don’t reflect a lack of ambition. A graph that displays a study conducted by LeanIn.org and McKinsey (2025) shows that men and women report nearly identical levels of career motivation at every stage, yet a noticeable gap appears: significantly fewer women express a desire for promotion. This disparity does not indicate a lack of ambition, but rather the early internalization of social penalties for assertiveness. After years of being taught to stay quiet and soften their confidence, many women hesitate to openly pursue advancements in their careers. As women gain experience, the gap narrows, suggesting that aspiration increases not because barriers disappear, but because women push against expectations that once kept them silent.
So what can you do now? Call out comments that make you uncomfortable instead of laughing them off. Report harassment at school even when it feels awkward or pointless. Say no without apologizing. Say yes to ambition without shrinking it. Challenge adults when they excuse behavior. Every time you refuse to comply, you interrupt a pattern that depends on your silence. Change does not wait until adulthood. It begins the moment a girl decides she will not be quiet anymore.
