Girls are under pressure. As evidenced in our new report, Girls Speak: Navigating the Conflicts of Girlhood in 2025, gendered expectations and stereotypes stop them from feeling free to be themselves. This holds them back and the cycle of gender inequality continues, limiting their confidence, experiences and opportunities.
At GFS, we listen to girls and understand how these issues affect them. We intervene early and give girls the tools they need to face these challenges and achieve their potential. Our work helps to build a fairer future for girls and for society.
Girlhood in Conflict
Girls’ voices are often lumped in under classifications of ‘children,’ where gender nuances are missed, or ‘women and girls’ where the important age and life stage of younger girls aren’t addressed.
“Girls have to keep doing stuff that boys want to do and listening to them, because in the world boys are in charge.” (Lexi, 9)
But girls aren’t suddenly waking up as teenagers with low self-esteem. Girls as young as six are facing gendered challenges and negative experiences from the conflict between what they are told, taught and believe and what they experience in their daily lives.
“I know this isn’t true – but every boy in my class says girls can’t do football, basketball…but I do sports every day and I’m good at them. They say we just have to do singing, dancing…but that isn’t true because girls can do anything.” (Niamh, 8)
This tension and conflict is caused by deeply ingrained gender stereotypes and gender bias which are often unconscious or normalised in society. When these stereotypes and bias are left unchallenged, they harm children of all genders, but girls are especially negatively impacted.
Girls need support
These early-age limitations hold girls back throughout their lifetimes, as the pressures and expectations affect their relationships, wellbeing, confidence, and access to opportunities.
- By the age of six, girls avoid subjects they view as requiring them to be “really, really smart” because they believe men are smarter than women.
- Until around age 12, girls and boys have virtually the same levels of confidence, but between ages eight and 14, girls’ confidence levels drop by 30%.
- Adult women do not catch up in confidence to men, until well into their 40s.
- 75% of girls with low self-esteem reported engaging in negative activities like cutting, bullying, smoking, drinking, or disordered eating.
Despite the negative impact, girls have little access to support before they reach their tween and teen years, when girls are already in a crisis of confidence. But research shows it is easier to sustain foundations of self-esteem, resilience, and ambition built in childhood than it is to start the conversation later in life.
To build these foundations, girls need early access to non-competitive environments where they are supported and valued equally, reducing comparison against other girls and feelings of unworthiness.
In order to build a world where girls are free to be themselves and feel proud of who they are, we must start by listening to girls as experts in their own lives. From there, we can use what girls have told us to develop interventions, systems and structures that give them the support they need most, enabling them to flourish.
And that’s exactly what we do at GFS!
Through our early intervention approach, GFS groups prevent the degradation of self-esteem and confidence that girls commonly start to experience around the age of 11. They are a place where girls build the foundations they need to prepare them for the unique challenges they will face as women.
The GFS Programme and Impact Team hold regular focus groups and surveys with GFS girls to find out which areas girls need help with most. The team then uses what girls have told them to shape activities and sessions designed to help them develop skills in those tough areas – all while having fun!
- Read all about our Navigating Friendship Programme here.
Difficulties finding accessible provision for girls
One mum from GFS Mile End told us that until she found GFS, she “had been looking for something for my daughter to do after school, especially in wet winter but couldn’t find anything within my budget”.
Without vital access to non-competitive, recreational opportunities, girls are left bored, frustrated, isolated and without a safe space to explore their potential.
This leaves girls without access to groups like GFS, more likely to be drawn into antisocial behaviour, away from education, and develop poor mental health, continuing the same cycles of inequality.
Want to support GFS and our vital life-changing community groups for girls? Check out the links below:
