Dreaming Bigger

This is the fourth in a seven-part series reflecting on Mona Eltahawy's The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. The book is available through the UUA Bookstore as well as the Calgary Public Library for those who wish to read along

A girl sits across from a school counsellor, excited about her future. She wants to take science - the kind that opens doors and creates opportunities. The counsellor looks at her and says, gently, that she might not need that. After all, she's a girl.

This story transcends time.  It happened long ago. It happens today, in schools across the world. The counsellor is not a relic; they are a contemporary, shaped by the same systems that shape all of us. The girl who is redirected grows up internalizing the message: some doors are not for her.

We like to tell ourselves we've moved past this sort of thinking, that girls today can be anything. 

The Forest We Can't See

When we are raised inside a system, it is hard to see its shape. We notice individual trees - the discouraging school counsellor, the boss who overlooks women, the committee that listens more to men. But we miss the forest: the vast structure of cis-heteropatriarchy holding those moments in place.

Eltahawy argues that ambition in women is constricted by how capitalism, racism, and patriarchy limit what we can even imagine for ourselves. Patriarchy treats ambition as a sin because it wants women to be less than. The epithets used against those who refuse - bossy, bitch, selfish - are all meant to enforce likability. Eltahawy's response cuts through: she does not want to be liked. She wants to be free (p 82).

This is patriarchy's deeper work: it shapes desire before desire can form. A girl who never sees women in certain roles doesn't miss those roles; she never even thinks to want them. The school counsellor isn't blocking a dream. They are preventing one from ever taking root.

The Limits of Imagination

In 1970s Britain, Eltahawy’s well-meaning white teachers only asked what her father did. They could not imagine an Egyptian Muslim woman existing in the UK for any reason other than to follow a husband. The idea that her mother might be pursuing her own PhD while raising a family was beyond their imagination (p 84).

This is an example of "the racism of lower expectations" - not always hostile, often just unimaginative. But imagination has consequences. Teachers carry their biases into classrooms, and those biases shape what students become. Research shows white teachers are consistently less likely to expect Black students to earn degrees, and students rise or fall to meet those expectations (p 85).

The question Eltahawy keeps returning to: "Can you be what you cannot see?" (p 86).

The Myth of the Dinosaurs

In institutions across Canada, we might comfort ourselves with a story: wait for the "dinosaurs" to die off, and the young will make everything new. Progress is just patience.

Eltahawy will have none of this. Patriarchy protects itself. It evolves right under our noses. When one generation passes, another rises - often younger and shinier, often seemingly different, but still committed to preserving the hierarchy. There will always be another "dinosaur" who has internalized the old ways.

The goalposts shift constantly. Women work twice as hard to earn a place at the table, and when too many arrive, patriarchy simply moves the table.

Gatekeeping Ambition

Eltahawy offers two infuriating examples from Japanese medical schools. At Tokyo Medical University, administrators lowered female applicants' scores to keep women at 30 percent of students. Their reasoning? Women might take time off to have children, causing doctor shortages. Never mind that the women earned their places. Never mind that no one asked why men weren't stepping up to raise children (p 90).

At Juntendo University, administrators acknowledged women scored higher on interviews due, of all things, to better communication skills. Their solution? They made the pass mark for women higher than for men (p 91).

Eltahawy's response: "We should pay attention when patriarchy so starkly defines 'fairness'" (p 91).

The System, Not the Individual

Individual striving cannot redeem a broken system. Telling women to lean in while leaving patriarchy intact asks individuals to take on the system alone and blames them when they fail (p 93). Patriarchy, racism, and capitalism cannot be dismantled by celebrating the exceptional few who survive despite them (p 94).

Eltahawy introduces Melissa Sanchez, who grew up watching the women around her live lives she refused to accept. She chased her ambition, landed a good job, and found herself in a culture that made her sick. She quit. Her story is not about failure - it is about the punishing scarcity of paths women are allowed, and the price of trying to fit ourselves into the ones that exist (p 94).

Ambition as Defiance

Ambition is not about earning corner offices. It is about refusing to be less than. "Ambition is defiance. It is a middle finger to patriarchy's insistence that we shrink ourselves" (p 95). Attention and ambition are cousins: one declares "I deserve attention," the other "I am more than." Both require what Eltahawy calls "female arrogance"—the nerve to look at a system designed to contain you and say: who do you think I am? Someone who believes she is more than what she was told she could be (p 95).

Until We Divorce Ambition from Patriarchy

Eltahawy's goal is not to fit women into existing structures. It is to liberate ambition itself - from patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. "Until we divorce patriarchy from ambition and ambition from patriarchy, we will forever force women and girls to shrink their ambition to fit that asinine phrase 'women can do whatever men can'" (p 98).

She ends with a simple instruction: "Let us always tell girls they can be more than" (p 99). Not more than boys. Just more than - more than the boxes built to hold them, more than the limited imaginations of those who would guide them elsewhere.

A Challenge for Our Congregation

The attitudes and assumptions of the school counsellor are not “out there.” They are inside all of us.

This chapter demands we confront the part of ourselves that has internalized who belongs where - the part that subtly discourages someone from reaching too high. In this community, do we celebrate ambitious women or wish they'd quiet down? Do we champion the girl who dreams big or silently wonder if she's realistic?

If we believe all people need a voice, we must also believe all people need a vision. That requires intentionally stepping outside of our own narrow experiences to see the forest - the system that shapes us all.

So here is the work: recognize shifting goalposts. Stop waiting for progress to arrive on its own. Stop hoping the dinosaurs will die and start building something new now. Support ambitious women. Follow where they lead.

Because a woman who wants cannot be controlled. Women who cannot be controlled change the world. The question is whether we will change with them - or be part of what holds them back.