New EmpowerHER club encourages leadership for all

Despite the flier in the daily announcements and hung around the school, don’t be misled by the club EmpowerHER’s name. Even though the club is geared toward being a “girls girl,” the assumption that only girls can join is not the case.

One of the founders of EmpowerHER, senior Ace Schaffer, said anyone who shows up to the club will not be turned away no matter what their gender identity.

“Anyone can gain leadership,” Schaffer said. “It’s not gender leadership skills either. It’s not gendered volunteering; it’s just more supporting a specific group.” 

The original founder of this new club was senior Maddie Larsen, but she was joined by other members of Leadership Academy to create a leadership-focused experience that reached beyond the two-year limit of that program. 

“There’s a lot of people that will tear you down [in high school], and it takes a good support system to power through that,” Larsen said. “I want to create that for people who may not have it through other activities and have like-minded people there for you.”

The term being a “girls girl” has been popularized on social media, but it can have different meanings to different people. The founders of EmpowerHER said they wanted to focus on the support aspect of that idea.

“Gossip culture is such a big thing, especially for girls, and it’s easy to say something negative about someone just because it’s part of the conversation…,” Larsen said. “[EmpowerHER] is just trying to work on being positive and not tearing each other down.” 

Some members of EmpowerHER said that Leadership Academy often addressed an athlete-centered mindset, and that outside of sports, communicating as a woman  can be different from how a man communicates.

“Guys are naturally more confident than women, so women might not intrinsically just decide to go be a leader and gain those skills,” Larsen said. “[EmpowerHER] is working to develop those and empower [young women] to go chase after those leadership positions, because they are just as well qualified, if not more.”

EmpowerHER members discussed doing activities such as a diaper drive, possibly gathering menstrual products, and celebrating Women’s History Month. They also planned to go as a group to cheer on girls teams at school sporting events. EmpowerHER wanted to do this because some leaders saw a huge difference between the number of supporters in the crowd at girls games versus the numbers at guys games, and they felt that difference sometimes went unnoticed.

“Everyone deserves the same support,” Schaffer said.

Schaffer said having gender diversity in the club could actually help it achieve its goals. 

“Anyone can gain support from it – if not support, perspective,” Schaffer said. “Definitely for the guys, that’s also one of the things, that ‘hey, if you can … just come see the differences and see some of the problems’ – because that’s also part of it.”

Despite there being founders, EmpowerHER doesn’t promote specific leadership positions because the club wants anyone who joins to be a leader in their own way. The club held its first official meeting on Aug. 29. 

“The more voices we have [in EmpowerHER] now, the more voices that we can put into the foundation of it, since we’re so into the early stages of the club,” Schaffer said. “It’s our first year, and we’re figuring out what exactly we want to do … in order to serve the club, the community, and our school.”

Although the name of the club is EmpowerHER, ultimately the club just wants people to come learn about leadership, which they see as being for anyone and everyone.

“I want to see the people that come soar with their strengths,” Larsen said. “I think individually we have unique strengths, and I really just want to see them harness that and use that in leadership positions, their career and then … in life [to] have that confidence to be unapologetically themselves.”