Did you know that your own traditional gender roles might be limiting your daughter's feeling of competence?
Think about the roles that women and men fall into in your home and in your family. Although gender roles have expanded to include broader definitions of what men and women should be able to do, subtle messages may betray continued biases. For example, does her father helplessly ask her mother, "Where do we keep the salt?" Does Mom announce that she does not know a thing about using the grill and defer to Dad to take charge of it? The ways we take on traditionally defined roles not only limit us but also portray to our daughters a false division of talents, skill and responsibilities. When her mother picks up a power drill and her father picks up a mop, a girl can set her sights outside of the limits of stereotyped, narrowly defined roles of what it means to be either gender.
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