WHAT WE TEACH GIRLS

I was sixteen years old, taking a Coaster bus home from my sales job in Abuja, when everything I had been taught about being careful suddenly became real. It was an ordinary evening, but when I boarded, the man seated near the aisle refused to adjust his legs to let me pass into the narrow row. 

As I wriggled past, I realized with a sudden, sickening fear that he was aroused – and moving closer than necessary. I didn’t scream. I froze, my heart pounding in my chest, silently calculating the distance between where I was and where I lived. I had been told to be careful for as long as I could remember.  

As a girl, you learnt early that there were places you shouldn’t go alone, roads you shouldn’t take, and people you shouldn’t trust. So that evening, I deliberately passed my usual bus stop and alighted one stop further, planning to take an alternative road home. 

He got off right behind me. That was when I knew my fear had not been unfounded. I slipped into a familiar neighbourhood store, pretending it was my destination, and watched through the window as he lingered outside for several minutes before finally leaving. I made it home safely that night because I knew how to play defence. But I was sixteen. No sixteen-year-old should have to act like a seasoned strategist just to complete a routine journey home.

 

The Armor We Give Girls

This instinct for self-protection is something many girls learn long before they understand why they need it. Sometimes it starts with simple instructions: Don’t walk alone. Don’t stay out late. I don’t want to see you around boys.

For many girls growing up in my time, especially during the teenage years, the fear of teenage pregnancy was very real. Being seen with a boy could be enough to earn you a serious scolding from your parents. Sometimes you could even be embarrassed in front of the boy you were
talking to. Most of these things come from love. Parents are trying to protect their children from a world they know can be dangerous.

I understand that now. But I have also started to wonder what happens when protection becomes the main thing we teach girls about the world.

We teach girls how to read a room. How to conduct themselves public. How to notice who is watching them. How to share their location. How to avoid certain roads. How to leave when something feels wrong. And when they do all of these things successfully, we call them streetsmart or wise. But sometimes what we call street-smart is simply a girl learning how to survive what she should never have had to survive in the first place. 

I think about that sixteen-year-old version of myself sometimes. She did everything right. She noticed the danger. She changed her route. She found somewhere safe. She waited until the man left. But why was all of that her responsibility? This is not an argument against teaching girls to be cautious. I will always want young girls to know how to protect themselves. The problem is what happens when caution becomes the price of moving through the world. 

A girl should be able to walk down the street without calculating who might follow her home. She should be able to say no without worrying about what might happen if the person on the receiving end does not accept it. Her safety should belong to her.

 

Where Prevention Begins

This is why I think our conversations about protecting girls have to change. We cannot keep putting all our energy into teaching girls how to avoid dangerous men while doing so little to teach boys how not to become dangerous men. 

If we teach a boy that being a man means being in charge, being tough, never showing vulnerability and always having the final say, what happens when that boy grows into a man who is told no? If we teach him that protecting women gives him a certain authority over them, what happens when protection becomes control? These are questions we need to ask much earlier. 

We need to teach boys about consent before they are old enough to date. We need to teach them that everyone has ownership over their own body. We need to teach them that rejection is not an insult. That anger does not give them permission to hurt someone. That emotional intelligence is not weakness. And perhaps most importantly, we need to teach boys to see girls as people before teaching them to see girls as people they must protect.

A girl does not need to be someone’s sister, daughter, girlfriend or future wife before her dignity matters. She should matter because she is human. That distinction is important. Because when we raise boys to respect girls only when they can imagine a relationship with them, we leave too much room for entitlement. But when respect becomes a basic part of who they are, it doesn’t need to depend on who the girl is to them.

 

I want a different kind of strength for girls. Not just the strength to survive. The strength to live. To walk into a room and think about what she can contribute instead of where the nearest exit is. To take a bus home without calculating whether the person sitting beside her is a threat. To grow into her body without being made responsible for how other people choose to look at it. To have ambition without safety always being the first question. 

I want girls to have the freedom to simply be. Because, when a young woman does not have to spend her youth building armor, her strength is liberated for its true purpose: discovery, leadership, joy, and contribution. She moves through the world not as a potential victim seeking shelter, nor as a prize to be guarded, but as the primary author of her own destiny. That is the kind of strength I want for girls. Not the kind that teaches them to become better at surviving men, but the kind that allows them to live without constantly having to play defence.

 

The Courage to Change What We Teach

We cannot fix a broken environment by giving girls better instructions for surviving it. We can tell our daughters to come home early, share their location, avoid certain places and never trust strangers. We can teach them every rule we know. But if we never teach our sons about consent, accountability, empathy and self-control, we are only teaching one half of the equation. It takes immense courage to look at practices rooted in love and care and ask if the foundation beneath them is quietly shaking the structure. It demands that parents, educators, and communities hold young men to the exact same rigorous standards of emotional depth and empathy that we have always demanded from young women.

The phrase “where girls define their future” must become more than an encouraging slogan; it must become a structural reality. Because girls cannot fully shape their futures if fear is constantly defining the boundaries of their lives. That reality will finally take root when we raise a generation of young men who do not require a woman to shrink so that they may stand. 

I think about that sixteen-year-old girl sometimes. She was careful. She noticed the danger. She changed her route. She found somewhere safe. She did everything she had been taught to do. But I don’t want that to be the measure of what we teach girls. I want a world where no girl has to mistake her armor for who she really is.