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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yesterday at the parents morning for my daughter's summer camp, she pulled me in to see a film that her small group of 3 boys and 1 girl (her) had worked on during camp.  Ages 6th to 7th grade.  The "film" was a news desk-style review of music.  Two boys on camera, one interviewing the other.  The boy offering his opinion compared two songs and concluded that one was just a bunch of "little girls" and therefore vastly inferior, and the other was "grown men" and therefore vastly superior.  Cut to commercial-- funny vignette by the same boy.  Back to more commentary by the original two boys.  Back to a second commercial-- super funny and obviously well-crafted vignette by a third boy.  Back to the two boys again.  Time ran out before we got to the end, but it was obvious that my daughter, the only girl, had almost no input into this project.

I'm not saying her ideas would have been better.  We're talking about middle school-humor here, not exactly a high bar.  But I was so sad to see that nothing about this dynamic of adults allowing boys to control limited resources (the filmmaking equipment) has changed since I was a kid.  [b]My sense is that with an adult paying better attention to how the projects are progressing, all of the kids in the group would have had an opportunity to use the available time and equipment to make something. [/b] But I am new at confronting this (I certainly didn't when I was the girl in those groups) and I don't really know where or how to begin.  Help?[/quote]

OP, the crux of your feedback is good but I think you are missing the mark on the sexism angle. It very well may not be sexism at play (aside from the boy's comment about "little girls" and "men") but rather just personalities. The kids with the biggest personalities ran the show. They happened to be boys.

I think the camp will be more receptive to your feedback if you don't take this one incident and turn it into a big sexist thing. Tell them you didn't see or hear much of your daughter's "voice" in the piece she worked on, and ask them to be mindful of making sure all kids get the support they need to express their ideas and all the kids get the support they need to be able to hear ideas besides their own.

It also would have been appropriate for the adults to give feedback about the little girls comments ("Larlo, disliking a song because of the gender of the performers is not really a powerful critique. What other details can you provide to support your case?)[/quote]

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