The Stories My Daughter Needs to Hear

I was drawn to a story recently about Yankees hitting coach, Rachel Balkovec.  If you didn't catch it on ESPN, she is another coach breaking the gender barrier in men's professional sports.  The New York Times did a piece on her that not only shows that she is dedicated to her work, but resilient enough to beat the system to get a job in the big leagues.  An example would be changing the name on her resume to Rae instead of Rachel.  Pre name change, no phone calls .  Post name change, calls came rolling in.  This kind of ambition is what we should be teaching kids to have.  It would be great to meet Rachel's parents so I could tell them how lucky they are.

With the emergence of the term "Girl Dad" after the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, I hope people really understand the gravity of being a Girl Dad.  Gender barriers and stereotyping is frustrating when you are raising a young woman.  I hope this is not out of line to say, but I feel as a man I am thinking about how the world will view my daughter more than I think about how it will view my son.  I feel like man lessons for my son will come easy for me, but teaching her how to excel in a man's world is worrisome.

Yep, I just said that.  It is a man's world and we are still a ways away from gender equality.  Why is there still a wage gap if we have gender equality?  If we have gender equality, why is the US National Women's Soccer team having to defend their ability and skill set against that of the men's team?  This narrative plays out over and over again.  I would be concerned if we didn't have those moments where the narrative is broken.  Like when we elected a record number of women to Congress.  It is reassuring to know that we have the stories to tell our girls to encourage them to be ambitious women.  If we want to see gender equality in our lifetimes, it starts at home.

It is obvious that Rachel Balkovec is following her dream.  It is obvious that she is good at what she does.  I'm sure the attention she gets for being a female hitting coach in the big leagues can be a little much.  More than anything, I'm sure she would like to be known as a hitting coach that happens to be female.  In her own words, she says she wants run a world class organization based on multiple measures of success.  Nowhere in that response did she say that she wants to be the first woman to do that or to do that in spite of how women are treated.  She wants to make an impact and perfect her craft.  Not for the sake of being famous, but to be the best.  These are the stories my daughter needs to hear.