4 minute read
Our Target Population
High school girls are at a crucial point in their social, emotional, and academic development. Here’s how we’re meeting their needs.
High School Students
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HomeWorks Trenton seeks to provide high school students with a stable environment that promotes healthy growth in critical thinking, decisionmaking, and social-emotional and moral development. According to Dr. Robert E. Slavin, teenagers are in their critical years of growth as they begin to form their own identity by paying attention to how others view them, by experimenting with roles, by acting on their feelings and beliefs, and by seeking autonomy and intimacy with their peers. Teenagers also begin to gain independence in their critical thinking as they rely less on their parents and more on peers to form their own opinions and beliefs.8
Given that high school students are in their critical formative years, their environment is crucial in fostering interactions that will influence their development. According to American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s research on adolescent stages of development, most young teenagers make decisions based on their peers’ approval.9 As high school students typically surround themselves with their peer group, they become highly susceptible to peer pressure. Negative influences can lead them to develop serious problems including, amongst others, dropping out of school, becoming pregnant, bullying, engaging in substance abuse, and becoming prey to emotional disorders.
HomeWorks Trenton will provide a stable after-school and school night environment that will reinforce positive social behaviors, ultimately influencing the overall psychosocial development of its scholars. We aim to develop our scholars’ critical thinking and social-emotional skills, enabling them to understand the complexity of decision-making and its consequences.
Girls
Gender Differences on Perceived Sense of Safety and Independence
In a 2018 ethnographic study that HomeWorks Trenton conducted as part of Princeton University’s Poverty in America course, researchers found that boys experience more freedom than girls in Trenton.10 While the study’s surveys indicate that the majority of boys drive to their jobs or play sports after school, the majority of girls are encouraged by their parents to stay at home. The girls reported feeling less independent and less safe than boys of similar age.11 In addition, the girls surveyed consistently felt that Trenton was too dangerous while the boys surveyed felt that there were only certain areas in Trenton that they should avoid.12 While the majority of boys did not indicate intentions to leave Trenton, the majority of girls expressed their desire to leave Trenton once they were graduated from high school.13
Differences between boys’ and girls’ experiences of safety and independence have been further validated by sociologists. In “Gender, Home Range and Environmental Cognition” Dr. M.H. Matthew’s concludes “gender-based differences in activity patterns seem to develop in a staged progression … By the time they are eleven[,] boys have had much more opportunity to contact and learn about nearby places, whereas girls’ territorial activities seldom exceed their immediate locality.”14 Similarly, in “Gender Differences in Children’s Pathways to Independent Mobility” sociologists found that boys in comparison to girls tend to experience greater mobility and independence. Team photo at our second annual Field D2ay at Princeton University.
More specifically, the article claims that “girls’ relationships with the environment are more mediated by their social networks than are boys’, who seem to have a more direct relationship with it.”15 In “The Shrinking World of Girls at Puberty: Violence and GenderDivergent Access to the Public Sphere Among Adolescents in South Africa” sociologists found that “girl areas shrink and even these extremely small geographies are reported as quite unsafe, whereas boy areas expand and contain a balance between safe and unsafe places. None of the girl groups rated any space in their communities as more than ‘somewhat safe.’” 16 Research indicates that it is not only girls in Trenton but also girls in other cities and countries that seem to have less educational, emotional, and social capital than boys.
By living away from home in a different Trenton neighborhood and attending events in various locations as part of HomeWorks Trenton’s educational and civic engagement curriculum, our program will expand the girls’ territory and thus provide them with an increased sense of safety and independence. Our goal is for our girls to develop a love for Trenton, inspiring them to stay and become leaders in their community.
Empowered by their HomeWorks network of empathetic and engaged women, our scholars will tackle wider issues of gender equality. Bolstered with confidence they will better be able to combat gender discrimination. For, as we know from research, about 42% of women report having experienced gender discrimination at work, specifically sexual harassment and unequal pay.17 HomeWorks Trenton is determined to contribute towards resolving gender inequality.
-Malala Yousafzai
