Are teenage girls treated differently than boys?

Teenage girls and boys have long been known for their different interests, tastes, attitudes and past times, but is society now also treating teenage girls in a different manner than the boys. I believe that to be the case, because now through all aspects of their lives teenage girls are being managed different to way the boys are.

The story starts at the home; parents seem to be far more protective of their teenage daughters than their sons. I believe this initially stems from the fact that girls do seem to naturally not a powerful physically as boys and that teenage girls are therefore much more at risk from predators than teenage boys and are less able to fend off an overpowering man. Teenage girls also have the ability to get pregnant where as boys do not, for this reason the girls need to be watched and cared for more by their parents by implementing more rules on them in terms of the times they are allowed out until and the people they can associate themselves with.

In terms of household chores and responsibility you tend to see that the teenage girl would be helping her mother out in the kitchen, preparing food and washing dishes whereas teenage boys would be seen helping in more physically demanding jobs such as mowing the lawn and taking the bin out. This I believe is because parents, unfortunately, do to seem to give way to societies prejudices not because they want to but because they know it would be best for their daughters to learn how to work and cook in the kitchen for when they would most likely be cooking for their husband in the future.

The media has a great influence on teenagers and it is the media that has the greatest ability to create stereotypes and depicts the way of life which everyone should be living but more often or not the media is wrong yet it still manages to pressures on teenagers especially as to how they should act. It is teenage boys though that have seemed to have pulled the short end of the stick in the medias plans and it is them are constantly being portrayed as being violent, dangerous and anti-social. This is unfair treatment to the vast majority of teenage boys who are none of these things.

Teenage girls though are depicted in a more positive light; teenage girls in advertisements are more often than not seen to be playing, chatting and laughing with each other normally inside the house while boys are mostly show to been playing aggressive games, building toys or fighting. Teenage girls also get viewed in a much more positive light by the general public as it is them who are always being hailed for their academic achievements, and although tragically, it is teenage girls who are most commonly reported as victims in the news, which leads the public to view them in a much more sympathetic light.

Finally teenage girls are given less opportunities in the workplace. Although jobs are obviously quite rare and far between for teenagers now days, we still do see an uneven spread across the genders. This is because those companies ready to employ teenagers will most probably be looking at them as a source of cheap and exploitable labour. The sorts of jobs that are normally available are those which involve manual labour and physical work such as cleaning the floor, taking rubbish out and transferring equipment. These sorts of jobs are most suited towards boys because of their superior physical abilities. Unfortunately this means the teenage girls are often left neglected in the early stages of their working life.