What’s the worst thing you can call a girl as she’s growing up?

Bossy.

When a girl is plastered with the label “bossy,” it’s more than a blow to her confidence. It’s a blow to her future.

If I were to reflect on the bossy peers of my childhood, only girls come to mind. Society has brainwashed children to label girls and boys differently for expressing the same characteristic.

Young girls who are assertive are often called mean names. They can be called “bossy” and “annoying,” and they will be discouraged from further displaying these confident personalities. When a boy of the same age exerts authority, however, he is not condemned to the branding of “bossy.”

Instead, he’s praised for his confidence and his great leadership abilities. Historically, boys are expected to take on these commanding, leadership positions, while girls are left to be submissive and soft–and surely not bossy.

When a girl is called bossy, she shies away from the behaviors that led her to the name-calling. She is slower to being confident and slower to telling people what she wants–and deserves.

Why is a girl’s authority deemed so threatening to the structure of society?

Why can’t a girl assert herself without being called bossy?

At the root of it all, why does a girl have to avoid the label of “bossy” rather than embrace that she is a boss?

We need a movement to empower these young girls; we need to teach them that it’s okay to be confident. Thankfully, there already is a movement.

An empowerment organization, LeanIn.org, recently started this movement to combat the great issue of wrongfully criticizing girls. Their campaign is called #BanBossy.

They were one of the first organizations to recognize that when a female asserts her authority, she’s seen as bossy–yet when a male does the same thing, people usually applaud him for being a “good leader” and “taking initiative.”

The #BanBossy organization works to get rid of the stigma behind the word “bossy” so that little girls around the world can feel safe and empowered to assert themselves from a young age.

By using “bossy” as something that is not a derogatory term, but as a way to describe a confident woman, we can change the way the world sees people–we can change the way the world accepts a Headstrong Mama.

Many celebrities, both men and women alike, have endorsed this movement. They’ve shown support for the abolition of such a future-destroying stigma, and they’ve encouraged girls to be as strong as they want to be.

#BanBossy has provided many facts about the way girls view themselves in today’s world.

The confidence gap between genders starts young, since even children can understand the words being used to describe their actions. It’s shown that between the ages of elementary school children and high school children, girls’ self confidence levels drop 3.5 times more than boysai??i??.

No child’s self confidence should drop as they get older; rather, they should be getting more and more confident in themselves and their ability to do good for the world.

#BanBossy has laid out suggestions for everyone in a young girl’s life: her parents, her teachers, her peers. Together, we need to start promoting female power from a young age.

This isn’t feminazi propaganda. This isn’t demoting men and young boys.

This is a long-overdue change to set young boys and girls equal to each other. This is destroying the stigma around a word that destroys self esteem. This is giving them a level platform from which to grow–from which to thrive.

This is banning “bossy.”