Dr. Karen Abrams is challenging Guyanese parents, educators and society to stop teaching girls to be quiet and restrained and instead give them the confidence, courage and freedom to speak up, challenge expectations and make their voices impossible to ignore.
Abrams, Executive Director of STEMGuyana and Pathway Online Academy, made the call in a column published by Kaieteur News on September 6, after an interaction between a foreign technology executive and members of Team Guyana Robotics 2026, who are preparing to represent Guyana at the FIRST Global Challenge in South Korea in October.
During the session, the executive challenged the young participants on their robot design and construction, tested their mathematical reasoning and asked them to explain the thinking behind their decisions.
Abrams said the executive was impressed by the team’s work, talent and reasoning, but repeatedly stopped young participants with one instruction: “Speak louder.”
The instruction struck a chord with Abrams, who said it is among the phrases she has most frequently used during her years working with young people at STEMGuyana.
“Speak louder. Lift your head. Project your voice. Let people hear what you are saying.”
The experience led Abrams to examine what she described as a longstanding cultural belief in Guyana and across the Caribbean that quietness, particularly among girls, is a sign of refinement.
She traced the attitude to the old English proverb, “Children should be seen and not heard,” noting that one of its earliest recorded forms specifically referred to girls and young women.
Abrams argued that such attitudes were reinforced through colonial systems that emphasised hierarchy, obedience, respectability and knowing one’s place, with those values subsequently becoming embedded in schools, churches, homes and families.
“Colonialism did not invent quiet speech,” she wrote, “but colonial systems placed enormous value on hierarchy, obedience, respectability and knowing one’s place.”
She said those attitudes can become particularly problematic when girls are repeatedly told not to speak loudly, answer back, be too forward or behave in ways deemed “not ladylike.”
Abrams said individual comments may appear harmless, but repeated throughout childhood they can communicate that restraint is feminine, assertiveness is unattractive and taking up too much space invites social disapproval.
Her argument comes against the backdrop of Guyana’s longstanding efforts to advance gender equity and expand opportunities for women and girls.
The 2022 Population and Housing Census recorded an almost evenly divided population, with males accounting for 50.18 per cent and females 49.82 per cent.
Guyana has also made significant progress in challenging gender-based barriers, including through co-education, which brought boys and girls into the same formal education system and represented an important step away from gender-segregated approaches to schooling.
Those developments form part of a broader recognition that equality between men and women is a human-rights issue. Guyana is a party to international human-rights instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which requires States to pursue measures to eliminate discrimination against women.
Against that progress, Abrams cautioned against allowing outdated ideas about how girls should behave to undermine their confidence and participation.
She stressed that teaching children manners and respect remains important but said there must be a distinction between teaching respect and teaching girls to suppress themselves.
“There is a difference between listening and silence. There is a difference between good manners and fear. There is a difference between not shouting and being unable to project your voice when your ideas deserve to be heard.”
Abrams said the contradiction becomes apparent when girls enter adulthood and are expected to demonstrate the very qualities they may have been discouraged from developing as children.
At university, in job interviews and in the workplace, women are expected to ask questions, defend their ideas, challenge poor decisions, lead organisations and persuade others.
In science, technology, engineering and mathematics, she said, the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly is particularly important.
“Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we are trying to teach women in adulthood what we spent childhood training out of them,” she wrote.
Abrams said the lesson was particularly relevant to the robotics team because its members are preparing to represent Guyana on an international stage.
“Ideas must be communicated. Questions must be asked. Positions must sometimes be defended. Leadership requires the confidence to enter a room and allow your voice to carry.”
She stressed that the objective is not to make every child loud.
Some children are naturally quiet or introverted, she noted, and society should not replace one rigid expectation with another.
“The goal is not volume for its own sake,” Abrams wrote. “The goal is agency.”
She suggested that public speaking be deliberately taught from the earliest years of school, while parents should encourage children to explain their opinions rather than simply rewarding obedience.
Teachers, she added, should pay attention to the child who knows the answer but whispers it.
Abrams ultimately challenged the tendency to equate silence with good behaviour.
“Because silence is not always refinement. Sometimes silence is learned.”
She said Guyana, having made significant strides toward gender equity, cannot afford to regress by allowing cultural expectations to discourage girls from speaking, questioning, leading and participating fully in national life.
“For years, one of the most common instructions young people at STEMGuyana have heard from me has been simple: ‘Speak louder,’” Abrams wrote.
“I am beginning to think Guyana should say it to an entire generation, especially our girls.”
