Boys are more bolshy and up-front about things but they go in with all guns blazing and

Boys are more bolshy and up-front about things, but they go in with all guns blazing, and they can put people’s backs up Girls will always find some `other way’. I get what I want by hard work, setting my mind to a task, and trying every way around a problem. We can flutter our eyelashes and put on a little voice if we’re really stuck. It’s probably not a fair tactic because the boys can’t do that, but it usually works Girls can also play on people’s emotions We may not fight physically but we can be very nasty. If a boy hits you, then it’s over in an instant, but girls can say things that hurt a lot more. But the right to speak out and be heard is coming through as one of the strongest common cultures.

Provided that the sensitivity to others which women have always had is not lost, then I can do no other than feel rather envious.The writer is headteacher of North London Collegiate girls’ school, a leading academic independent school.. Katie Mellor, 16

Taking 11 GCSEs She plans to be a barrister. Her mother is a teacher, and her father a dentist.
“Girls are more likely to get what they want than boys, but we have different ways of going about it A lot of it probably depends on your mum. My mum is never aggressive, she’s always polite but she’s very good at getting people to co-operate. Why else would so many clever, ambitious girls suffer from eating disorders? Why else would so many of them be sure they are the wrong shape? These troubles are more discussed, up-front, recognised than they were, but they do not go away.A parent at our season of interviewing asked me if our school had a “homogeneous culture”. I sifted though a whole selection of answers as I tried to work out the purpose of the question I was fairly sure that the answer was “No”, and I still am. Among our selection of able, ambitious girls there are still all kinds of different assumptions and norms.

I am sad when the feistiness is superficial and is rooted in the old insecurities differently dressed.The old insecurities seem to me still to lurk. The models for assertiveness are all round them.I am glad for them but sad for them. I am sad that equal opportunity with men should mean imitation of men. When Sylvia Pankhurst was first trying to get arrested she was recommended to spit at a policeman She could not do it: her saliva dried up.