Teenagers go to camp to learn about `girl power'

Teenaged participants of a Girls' Power Camp yesterday called for the empowerment of girls and gender equality.

The Garden of Hope Foundation began girl-power camps last year, but this year camps will be offered nationwide instead of only in Taipei.

The Taipei camp, held at the Y17 Youth Center, concluded yesterday having attracted more than 30 participants who reconsidered traditional values of how girls should behave.

Junior and high school students aged of 13 to 18 can participate in the four-day camps where they debate gender issues such as whether females should be in the military and whether women have the right to choose to have an abortion.

Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), chief executive officer of the foundation, said that gender awareness should be taught at an earlier age.

Traditionally, some girls believe they need to act stupid in the classroom or the science lab to have boys help them out, Chi said, but in fact, girls should learn that they do not have to live their lives to impress the opposite sex.

Women shouldn't feel like they need to throw up to be thin nor should they pretend to be weak to receive attention, Chi said.

The camp aims to let girls feel confident about themselves as well as discover how many gender inequalities exist in society, she added.

Foundation representatives said that even with gender equality laws and government slogans, inequalities still existed.

The participants said the youth center, for example, had no sanitary towel vending machines in restrooms, a huge problem for teenage girls.

Also, posters of center activities in the building mainly depicted boys, and when a girl did appear in the images, she was always in a pink or red skirt, while boys were clad in jeans, they said.

Chi said that gender deprecations could be seen in many places and even hidden in the values of teachers and parents.

Parents, for example, named their boys with characters such as "Chien-kuo" (建國), meaning to establish a country or state, while girls had names such as "Mei-li" (美麗), meaning beautiful, Chi said.

Teachers often called on boys more in class because they were more aggressive in answering questions while girls were neglected, she added.

He Ting-chen (何庭箴), a sixth-grade camper, said that when boys made "disgusting" gestures in class and were told on by girls, teachers rarely punished them.

He said that teachers mainly responded that boys will be boys and would overlook the situation.

However, after participating in the camp and learning about the empowerment of girls, He said that next time she saw boys playing uncouth games in the classroom, she would not go to the teacher first but instead tell the boys to stop or to carry on where people would not be offended.