Reviews

Brave Girls: Raising Young Women with Passion and Purpose to Become Powerful Leaders by Leslie Goldman, Stacey Radin

drlisak's review against another edition

4.0

While I would have liked a few more specifics about how she does the program, including activities, the basic premise of this work is inspiring. It touched a nerve with me, and I found myself crying at one point as it resonated with my own doubts and fears as both a woman and a mother of a 7th grade girl.

carolynf's review against another edition

2.0

The Unleashed program described in this book sounds like an excellent way for middle school girls to learn self-advocacy and leadership skills, but it's philosophies are grounded in a gender binary version of feminism. Stacey Radin does a good job on pointing out that there are some behaviors that are a result of our DNA and some behaviors that are a result of social conditioning. But some of the science seemed a little off. Due to how their brains are wired, females of ALL ages supposedly experience synergy around other females, are nurturing toward other members of their team and those whom they supervise, and MUST display emotion in order to be successful. Women who fail to tap into their Female Traits and "impersonate" Male Traits are doomed to being less successful than the women who are true to their DNA. "Women who neglect to leverage their DNA place themselves at a tremendous disadvantage...Attempting to hide one's gender by purposefully acting like the opposite sex often backfires." Radin also tells a personal anecdote about a female supervisor who asked her to adopt a less feminine manner of dress at work, which was inappropriate of the supervisor but does not justify Radin's description of her as being "indoctrinated into the Fraud Factor."

I am a woman who presents female, but I don't go in for manicures, high heels, or girly clothes, so I am apparently also a fraud of a woman, untrue to my DNA. I also am a supervisor but do not write handwritten birthday cards to my employees or keep track of their children, so I am apparently not ever going to succeed as a boss either - even though apparently male bosses can get away without doing any of this and be just fine. I couldn't find anything on their website about transgender children, but I don't think that they would be made to feel very comfortable by the Unleashed program. These gender identity issues in my opinion limit this program to benefit only a specific subset of girls, and continue to neglect those most marginalized by society.