‘I’m not bossy. I’m the boss.’ An analysis of Ban Bossy’s brochure Leadership Tips for Girls in relation to leadership experiences of young Dutch girls.

Abstract

The American Ban Bossy campaign that has been introduced in 2014, wants to draw attention to the word ‘bossy’ and its impact on young girls. According to the campaign, “When a little boy asserts himself, he’s called a ´leader´. Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded ´bossy´.” To encourage girls´ leadership, Ban Bossy has made five brochures available for girls, parents, teachers, managers and troop leaders. In this thesis, the brochure ´Leadership Tips for Girls´ is analyzed on its discourse on leadership and gender, in relation to the experiences of leadership of young Dutch girls. This has been done in comparison to the theoretical framework of feminist sameness, difference and deconstruction thinking and intersectionality, to analyze whether the discourse of the Ban Bossy brochure is directed at a typical male or female kind of leadership, if it is directed at sameness between boys and girls, or if it deconstructs traditional notions of leadership and gender. Furthermore, through intersectionality, mechanisms of in- and exclusion have been analyzed. In this thesis, discourse analysis, as well as interviews have been used to answer the main question: How does the discourse of leadership and gender of the Ban Bossy brochure ‘Leadership Tips for Girls’ relate to the experiences with leadership of young Dutch girls? The experiences with leadership of four young Dutch girls functioned as concrete and new data on the topic of leadership and gender, and were together with the discourse analysis aimed at critically analyzing one of the brochures of the Ban Bossy campaign, to eventually improve campaigns similar to Ban Bossy in the future. The most important results were that the discourse on leadership and gender in the Ban Bossy brochure ´Leadership Tips for Girls´ relates ambivalently to feminist sameness, difference and deconstruction thinking. On the one hand, Ban Bossy argues that both boys and girls essentially lead in the same way, namely through ´asserting themselves´. On the other hand, a typical female kind of leadership is promoted by stressing the importance of social activism and personal relationships. Furthermore, Ban Bossy uses deconstruction thinking by asking what power relations and realities the term ´bossy´ implies. Moreover, Ban Bossy is seemingly directed at girls in all varieties, but in its tips, it addresses girls as one homogeneous group. It is argued in this thesis that future campaigns similar to Ban Bossy could profit from addressing possible differences in girls´ leadership regarding different axes of identity such as ethnicity or class. Moreover, it could profit from a discourse on leadership and gender that is more directed at sameness thinking, as is suggested by the four young Dutch interviewees. According to them, both boys and girls can be bossy and are called that way sometimes. Instead of banning the word bossy, we should teach both boys and girls what a good leader is.