By Janae Phillips, Advocacy Manager
Girls in Texas are feeling hurt and struggling to hold on to their optimism – but they’re ready to fight. This is what I learned after spending a week with our Texas She’s the First chapters in Austin, Houston, and Dallas.
Our regional meetups are a way for us to connect in-person with girls in our STF Chapters program, a network of girl-led, grassroots groups working for girls’ rights in their communities. Despite what you may have heard, girls in our programs tell us consistently that they’re tired of digital connection; they want to connect face-to-face, and that’s evident by the depth of conversation and connection they bring to these in-person meetups. By being with them in person, as their mentor, I’m able to get to conversations we wouldn’t have had online.
Texas has been at the forefront of attacks on abortion rights, and this is being felt deeply by girls in the state. Being from Arizona, another state mired in a power struggle between progressive and conservative values, I understand the importance of getting resources and mentorship to girls living in places in the United States where they feel like their needs are being ignored or forgotten. These are girls who feel like the adults charged with protecting their best interests are actively working against them – and most of the time, they’re not wrong.
In Texas, as in most other communities across the country, girls are also reporting a sharp increase in casual misogyny and racism from the boys in their classrooms, emboldened by the examples set by our nation’s political leaders. One chapter described planning a popular advocacy event with strong attendance, only to watch their peers' faces fall as they realized that the senator they were calling to share their thoughts was unlikely to even consider what they had to say. Instead of feeling empowered, girls left an event contacting their government representatives feeling even more hopeless.
How do we fight back, then? How do we hold on to our hope? By connecting deeply with our local communities. We talked at length about all of the ways girls could plug into their immediate community, focusing on building a strong movement on the homefront. We talked about how to connect with people through shared values, working to get past the headlines and one-liners we’ve all been trained to say to one another. And we talked about how much they matter, as human beings.
While it’s hard to hear what girls are struggling with right now, our in-person trainings continue to be incredibly effective: in pre- to post-surveys, girls were nearly a full point (+0.9) more likely to call themselves an advocate for girls, and felt more confident in their ability to make change in their communities. At the end of the last training in Dallas, one girl said, “I feel like I know exactly what to do next.”
Above: a peek into the minds of our STF Houston Chapter leaders