Abi Wright, left, with co-founders Jen Toll and Laura Mulvaney at last year’s Festival of the Girl

ORGANISERS of a festival aimed at empowering girls say they are still weighed down by gender stereotypes that expect them to be cute and polite.

Abi Wright, co-founder of Festival of The Girl, which will be held at Angel’s Business Design Centre later this month, said: “Most of the people they see that people think of as being clever – scientists, mathematicians, engineers – a lot of the time they’re seeing that those are men.”

Suggesting that girls are “bombarded” with messages that insidiously damage their self-esteem in books, television and even at school, she said the festival aimed to counterbalance this through fun activities such as rugby, football and F1 motor sports, alongside aviation, gaming and body confidence.

It is the festival’s fifth year and comes on the heels of a report by Girlguiding that suggested happiness among girls is at an all-time low.

In figures described by the movement’s chief executive Angela Salt as evidence girls had been “let down,” 89 per cent of girls and women aged seven to 21 said they feel generally worried or anxious.

Ms Wright said: “It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? That’s the thing – it starts really, really young. And what people think is harmless, isn’t. It’s all part of it. And it’s really hard to go against it because it’s everywhere. All of this has to do with gender stereotyping and the messages that girls are getting from the moment they come into the world. This idea that girls are sweet and cute and polite and they’re praised for being good.”

Ms Wright launched the festival in 2019 as a not- for-profit organisation to challenge harmful gender stereotypes, two years after a report found both girls and boys, by the age of six, think boys are smarter.

Around 150 girls came to the first festival. Now in its fifth year, they’re hoping 1,600 women and girls come this month, and are offering pay-what-you-can prices to those unable to pay full-price, “no questions asked”.

But it’s also not just for girls, Ms Wright said.

Describing boys as an essential part of the movement in empowering girls, she urged them to join too.

“Just take last week, for example. Elianne Andam, sadly the young woman in Croydon [who was killed], and then within a day or so Laurence Fox is on GB News ranting,” she said.

“This toxic world that the boys are growing up in and this very scary grooming that they’re having from a really young age. Just so much of that is impacting women and girls because that is the violence against women. That is the misogyny and sexism against women.”

Before she had her two daughters, Ms Wright was already thinking about her own place in the world and started another not-for-profit organisation called She Stands, based on her own experiences as an Alexander Technique teacher.

After years of putting up with casual misogyny, sexism and catcalls, she says she realised the key to shifting the balance was “the way we women hold ourselves in society and how we physically make ourselves smaller”.

She added: “That starts really young in girls, and it’s a lot to do with being sweet and cute. You physically go, ‘Oh, I’m so sweet’ and sort of head tilt to the side and your arms come in a bit. You know, it starts really young that girls make themselves smaller to fit in.”

The Festival of The Girl takes place on Saturday October 21. www.festivalofthegirl.com