By The Green Parent
16th November 2022
Her new book The Rise of the Girl identifies the seven most common issues holding girls back from reaching their full potential and gives parents advice to help their daughters become confident and resilient.
Could you fill us in on your background? You call yourself an ‘accidental entrepreneur’…
“My brother and I started a business – Active Digital – 25 years ago, when I was 16 years old, and he was 20. My brother thought it would be a good idea to get into mobile phones, and it turned out to be a great idea. I skipped university and went straight into work. We now turn over around £7 million a year and employ around 30 people. We love being a family business.” •
What prompted you to start Guilty Mother, your blog?
“When I became a mum, I had moments where I was feeling these waves of guilt. Was I doing a good enough job at work? At home? Was I getting home too late? I Googled ‘mother guilt’ to see what came up. There was nothing! So I started writing about emotions, parenting, finding balance and trying to help women with flexible working, as well as periods and the menopause. All the stuff we should be chatting about! It grew into something that I wasn’t really expecting.”
You didn’t stand still, though…
“I now work with Girlguiding, and have another project called We are Girls In Sport, that I co-founded with Caroline Kings. My daughter has played in a rugby team since she was five. She’s now 12 and there are only three girls left, so they don’t have enough for a squad. Where are the rest of the girls? Whether it’s football, cricket, kite-surfing, archery, skateboarding or fencing, how do you find your next rising stars if they don’t get a chance to try. WAGIS is about giving girls the chance to try over 100 different sports, and showing them role models.
It’s about sharing stories with our girls, with parents, with care-givers; they’re the ones who might take them down to the rugby pitch or the football ground. They might encourage girls out of their comfort zone; that’s how we grow.”
Talking is at the core of your book, isn’t it?
“Yes. I wanted to write a book for teenage girls, but they don’t tend to read a lot of books! But we can have chats through the parents and caregivers of girls. I considered what conversations were going on in my house, and what conversations might be going on in other people’s houses. We’ll all have moments where our kids’ – boys or girls – confidence is really low. They might have failed an exam or just not be able to think of anything they’re good at. How might we turn that into a positive? I chose seven topics. So when your daughter throws her pencil across the kitchen and says ‘I can’t do it’, you know, the book will have those words of wisdom to help you turn that conversation around in that moment.”
You invited some other contributors to take part too…
“Yes! Anna Whitehouse (Mother Pukka), Molly Gunn (Selfish Mother), Steve Backley and Michelle Griffith-Robinson, both Olympic athletes, and Rochelle ‘Rocky’ Clark who is an England rugby player. They either share a story from when they were younger, tell us what it was like being a teenage girl, or talk about what it’s like raising teenage girls now, and what advice they might give to someone in the same position. I wanted to know what turned Anna from a shy teenager into someone who stands in Trafalgar Square with a megaphone, talking about flexible working. I wanted to hear about finding that voice that took her all the way to the Houses of Parliament. And how her story might help a child to find the confidence to say, ‘Yeah! This is what I believe in!’”
Why are books like Rise of the Girl still needed?
“According to Girlguiding, there is a crisis in confidence among our young girls at the moment. It’s often reported that they outperform boys at school, but they’re struggling in so many other ways. I think a lot of it stems from having resilience from a young age and not being afraid to try new things. It continues to be an issue as they grow up; women don’t put themselves forward for promotion, there’s that fear of failure. What I really wanted to do with the book is to encourage girls to put their hand up, to volunteer, whether it’s turning up at the rugby club or getting on a skateboard. That’s how we’ll find our next leaders, dreamers, doers and entrepreneurs. Women have come so far in the last 100 years; a century ago we couldn’t vote, weren’t allowed to run a marathon. The book is called Rise of the Girl because it feels like it’s girls’ time, a time to see opportunities and to grow up in a world where they feel as if anything is possible.”
RESOURCES
READ Rise of the Girl tinyurl.com/risegirl
FOLLOW Jo on Instagram @guiltymother
WATCH Anna Whitehouse (one of the book’s contributors) over at motherpukka.co.uk/videos
