On All-Girls Schools and Decentering Men: no, it doesn’t make you a better feminist
All of my favorite people do not have a male-centeredness issue, but not all of them went to all-girls schools. Most of them did, though. Most of them had a rival who was a girl, a best friend who was a girl, a favorite teacher who was a woman, and a complex frenemy, also a girl. Most of them have been feminists since before they learned the meaning of the word. As someone who went to all-girls schools for the majority of her formative years, I hadn’t noticed until recently the one thing all my friends had in common: they all de-centered men.
Don’t cancel me. I’m by no means saying women who went to all-girls schools are great, well-rounded, confident feminists, and women who didn’t are not. I distinctly remember debates with girls at my all-girls schools about whether women were fit to lead, to become courtroom judges, or even to make decisions for their own selves.
During my school years, if you’d asked me if I liked that I was at an all-girls school, I would’ve said no. I would’ve told you that separating students by gender felt sexist. I would’ve told you about the boy-obsessed girls I noticed at school, and how they probably would be a lot more chill about them if they could normalize boys and interact with them.
When I got to university, most of the girls I met were a lot more feminist than those notable few at my school. I never encountered any girls saying anything quite so outrageously misogynistic as “women shouldn’t be judges, nor allowed to drive”, but a girl I’d only spoken to about once before, did call me a bitch one time, because her roommate (who she was vocally interested in) was vocally interested in me. I had also only spoken to him once or twice, and never showed any interest.
Speaking of which, the percentage of boy-obsessed girls went down a little bit at university, too. But, this is all anecdotal.
I became really good friends in my first year at university with a girl, let’s call her Frankie, who went to co-ed schools and had guy friends. It made her no less of a feminist in my eyes. We quickly became inseparable, finding a strong compatibility in de-centering men, telling them when they were being assholes, and not catering to any of them. Even when a popular guy told us to call ourselves “equalists” (what? like in Avatar?) instead of feminists because we were “not like those girls”. We told him, unfazed, that we absolutely were like “those girls”.
Even before meeting Frankie, it didn’t ever seem fair to me to make a judgement on women who went to co-ed schools. You can still learn to de-center men and be strong and capable as a woman, regardless of schooling. In fact, Frankie went to school with my roommate that first year, a girl the internet these days would label a “pick me”. Their schooling turned out polar opposites somehow.
What I do think is fair, if I may generalize a little, is to consider whether or not all-girls schools help produce women who respect other women, who de-center men, and who view their gender as a neutral fact about them, rather than an influence on all of their capabilities and interests.
In preparation for this essay, I watched Wild Child (2008), Directed by Nick Moore for some very serious research (sarcasm). Don’t take this as an endorsement, I hadn’t seen this movie since I was a pre-teen circa 2008, and it was a very rough yet somehow charming watch. P.S. in what context was the principal’s son having lunch with them every day? But I did find it endearing how “girl’s girl” almost all of the characters were.
“You know, this school has produced absolutely nobody of notice. Our leading light was the girl who was Princess Diana’s foot doctor. So if your aim is to make the pages of US Weekly, then this isn’t the place for you. We produce smart, independent, free-thinking, goodhearted girls who remain friends for life.”
Mrs. Kingsley (Natasha Richardson) in Wild Child (2008)
Y2k era teen rom-coms aside, girls growing up where misogyny is almost nonexistent (as much as realistically possible, at least) can have a very positive impact on development. Seeing the best student at math, science, arts, music and everything in between be a girl, and the worst performing students also be girls takes gender out of the equation. The swim team is just the swim team, not the girls swim team.
In my year, there was a three-way tie for the highest scoring student in the twelfth grade across the whole country. The tie was between a girl I was friends with in my last all-girls school, a girl I became friends with at the new one, and another girl in our class. All girls, all at all-girl schools. Again, anecdotal. I know. But there is some evidence to support this.
Usually all-girls schools have an all-female faculty too, and that gives girls many different role models and women to look up to. Your favorite teacher and your least favorite teacher were both women, and it made no difference to whether you liked them or not. And on the other side of it, no gender-based favoritism, no asking for “strong boys” to move tables and chairs, no double standards.
In an all-girls school, boys, men, and gender politics were never front-of-mind. Nobody called anyone a bitch over some guy, the male-gaze wasn’t a thing, and no one around you could use your gender against you if they tried.
When I graduated high school, the world of co-ed was a bit of a shock to me. Especially because I chose to study engineering at a university that does not have the best reputation for diversity within its engineering program. Truth be told, I did not have the resilience to put up with repeated sexism from my classmates and, occasionally, my professors. At 18 years old, my solution was to avoid attending classes until the warnings piled up. At that point, with no female role-models in the faculty, no other girls to rely on or confide in, I decided to consider what else I was interested in. That led me to political science and international relations, a much more even cohort and faculty.
After university, I got a job in marketing. You wouldn’t think it based on Emily in Paris (2020-2026), but somehow it had all the same issues as engineering. Boys-club culture, exclusive lunch dates, and an unfair delegation of admin duties. I hated it so much that when I was laid off (along with most of the other women they hired that year), I felt relief. When I spoke to the other women who were impacted, they all said the same thing.
Girls don’t stay girls forever, and the world is “co-ed”. There is a point to be made about learning to become resilient to the problems that come with that early on in life. But I would argue that the burden shouldn’t be on women. It should be on us all to make things better. How we raise children regardless of gender, how we speak, what we tolerate, and how we behave all become the norm for how the world works.
All this to say no, you don’t have to have gone to an all-girls school to be a good feminist, but it really helps to put yourself in those kinds of environments to see yourself represented at your best and at your worst, and to see other women as peers and equals, not competition. Although, perhaps it’s too utopian and it doesn’t prepare you for the world after education. I’d have to look into that some more, maybe for another essay.
I love my friends. Regardless of where they went to school, I think they’re all kind, thoughtful, smart, and independent women. I’m in awe of every single one of them. And sure, we irritate each other every now and again, but our gender never feels like a major factor in the friendship nor the conflict. Most of our conversations pass the Bechdel test and are so rewarding. So, it definitely isn’t a prerequisite to go to an all-girls school to find women who de-center men. It sure helps, though!
Talk soon,
Dahlia
You can find all my personal essays and more on my Substack.
