Abstract

Research has found that as girls enter adolescence their capacity to "find their own voice" and express their authentic selves conflicts with new social pressure to maintain tension-free relationships and prioritize physical appearance. Additionally, because young women prefer interdependent styles of leadership in a society that promotes authoritarian, independent role models, it is easy to see why adolescent girls may choose to follow rather than lead, and may feel that they are not in a position to affect change. The Young Women's Leadership Alliance is an after-school program that provides opportunities for girls to become leaders, to increase the skills and confidence of girls to make positive change, and to have an impact on the policies and norms about educational equity at their schools. Jill Denner presented this effective practice to the Santa Cruz (CA) Chapter of Soroptomist International in November 2003.

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Issue

How can adults help high school girls become leaders when they are so used to having adults lead them? Additionally, how can adults help girls use their leadership skills outside the safety of an all-female program?

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Action

The Young Women's Leadership Alliance (YWLA) in Santa Cruz is an after-school program that serves approximately 45 women ages 14-17 each semester at three high schools in the Santa Cruz City School District in California — Soquel High, Santa Cruz High, and Harbor High School. The program helps participants become aware of, research, and speak out about issues of inequity at their school. YWLA uses a partnership between adult program leaders and participants to develop leadership, critical thinking, and academic skills related to science, technology, and social studies that are applicable to girls' future educational and career goals. The program is broken down into three components:

1. Equity Awareness, where the young women are encouraged to think about and discuss barriers to all students' success at school;
2. Equity Research, where participants are instructed to choose an educational issue at their school that concerns them, design a survey, interview other students, and analyze the results using Microsoft Excel;
3. Equity Action, where participants use their survey data to design and implement a public forum or small media campaign to raise community awareness about their issue.

Effective practices in program implementation include:

• Regularity of meetings: Meetings occur once a week for fifteen weeks after school.
• Equity awareness component: The first five meetings focus on equity awareness. (Equity is defined as "an opportunity to pursue goals without unfair barriers.") During one of these meetings a guest speaker who has made change at her school comes to speak with the girls.
• Participatory action research component: The next five weeks are spent on the research project. Girls define their research topics, write research questions and surveys, and collect, enter, and analyze data. Topics have included teasing, negative judgments based on how people look or their social group, teen mothers, homophobic slurs, and how women treat other women. Research questions have included: How often do people feel judged for how they look or dress? How does this affect their ability to do well in school? Why is there separation of quads? And what happens as a result of that separation?
• Social action component: The last five weeks are spent on social action projects that involve public forums and small media campaigns. Girls design, plan, and carry out their action projects. Projects have included games using the statistics they have gathered; slogans on pencils, buttons, lollipops; a "Think Outside the Quad" campaign; and 'zines.
• Participants receive school credit for completing these fifteen-week sessions.
• Adults are guides rather than teachers, working in a youth-adult partnership. Over time, the girls take on increasing levels of responsibility for running the program. In Santa Cruz County, these guides are employees of ETR Associates who have the interest and credentials to work with the girls.
• YWLA program develops, and evaluators focus on, creating tools for teachers and other educators to use.
• Federal funding is ending in winter semester 2004. However, ETR's research department is conducting the last semester of the program, and they are working with the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz to sustain and expand the Young Women's Leadership Alliance to other schools.
• ETR Associates and the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz are looking for funding from foundations and private donors.
• Specific funding ideas are to sponsor girls and/or provide incentives to recruit and retain underserved young women who may have barriers to staying after school.

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Context

ETR has been funded by the Department of Education to develop, implement, and evaluate a four-year program in collaboration with the Santa Cruz City School District. Through this project, a Young Women's Leadership Alliance was created at each of the three comprehensive high schools in the district in partnership with the existing Cycles of Respect and She Rocks! Programs. Participants develop and exercise their leadership skills by identifying concerns and advocating for educational equity (with consideration to gender, socio-economic status, cultural background and physical ability) in their own schools.

The program was designed and evaluated for its impact on the girls directly involved in the groups (450 participants were involved in the program over four years), the benefits of the equity activities to all students at the schools where the program is held, and changes in overall school and district policies and practices in educational equity resulting from the project.

ETR has extensive expertise in the creation of theory-based programs to promote positive health behaviors. The agency specializes in the development of large demonstration/evaluation projects and their dissemination. These interventions are highly interactive and typically feature ample opportunities for skill rehearsal, feedback, and personal application. Using logic models, ETR also provides program development planning services to communities and other organizations planning new or examining existing interventions with the goal of enhancing the program design to maximize the likelihood of behavior change.

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Outcome

• About 300 girls have participated in the Young Women's Leadership Alliance over six semesters. Seventy percent were white and 21 percent were Latinas. Of the 163 of which there is data in 2003, 96 percent said they want to graduate from a university or pursue higher education, in spite of the fact that one-third of their mothers did not finish high school.
• According to journal entries from session 15:
  • The girls' favorite aspects of YWLA are working in a group, meeting new people, and making new friends. They also liked planning and carrying out the social action project.
  • The girls see their greatest changes resulting from the program as being more outspoken, outgoing, assertive, and able to stand up for what they believe in. They also are more aware of the issues that affect other people, and have more leadership skills (e.g., ability to facilitate groups).
  • The girls intend to use their skills to advocate for awareness about inequity at their schools.
• In answering the question, "What did you learn today that will have the most impact on your life?" girls responded: (Quotes from Closing Circle comments, Soquel High School, fall 2003.)
  • "I learned that two people can interpret one thing completely different."
  • "To speak for yourself when something is bothering you, trust people with something."
  • "That it is possible to make big changes in your school."
  • "That the speaker did so much and made her voice heard even when she was only a freshman in high school."
  • "I learned that girls, who don't know each other can come together and trust one another."
• YWLA has tackled such issues as judging others by their looks, discrimination against teen mothers, and homophobic slurs— raising awareness of these issues at three schools.

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Evidence

Based on the first five semesters of data, there were some significant changes between pre-test and post-test surveys for the 163 participants. Girls reported an increase in marketable skills, future confidence, assertiveness, femininity ideology, leadership confidence, and peer support for leadership.

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Posted On

January 25, 2004

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For More Information

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Resources

The United States Department of Education lists regional equity assistance centers. http://www.ed.gov/programs/equitycenters/contacts.html

A Handbook for Supporting Community Youth Researchers (800 KB)
from Project YELL at the John W. Gardner Center at Stanford University

Source Documents

Related Practices

• Supporting adolescent females with a leadership group

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Related sites

Soroptimist

John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities

SoundOut: Promoting Student Voice in School

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