Every child has the dream of their future life. These dreams of the future are like the colorful kites that are flying in the sky. Imagine when these beautiful and colorful kites are flying in the sky freely, a pair of scissors cut off the strings of some of the kites, and the kites fall off. 

These kites fell off just because they belong to young girls.

I can’t remember how many times I hear the sentences start “ The girls should……” “You are a girl! You should not……”. And every single time I hear these prejudices of females, I start thinking about a question that is simple but also complex: Why? Why are there so many prejudices of females that come out of nowhere? Why do only females have to stay at home and do all the housework? Why are females’ lives limited? 

 These prejudices of females are like a pair of sharp scissors that cut the strings of the kites, stab into girls’ mind and hurt them deeply. In India, the “scissors” of prejudices also cut off the dream kites of the Indian girls. According to data in 2011, the literacy rate of Indian females is only 64.46 percent. Compare to the world average (80.757%), India is below average percentage by 16.297 percent. Education is an important part to accomplish your dream or life goal. However, in a male-dominated society, many “dream kites” of Indian girls fall from the sky and lay on the ground because of a lack of female education.

  Gender discrimination does not only happen in India. It can happen everywhere. My teacher is also one of the survivors of gender discrimination. 

  On a sunny day in March, a young high school girl opened the mailbox in front of the house. She took out all the letters in the mailbox as she did normally. But one of the letters seems not normal---- an acceptance letter from her dream college. She smiled, her face was full of joy. All of her hard work in three years of high school paid off with an acceptance letter from her dream school; Its weight was very light as to how a normal letter paper weighs; It also weighed heavy as a gigantic stone---- it was a “reward” of three years of hard works.

  She read the letter over and over again. She could not believe her eyes.

  She ran into the house like a joyful five-year-old girl. 

  “ I got the acceptance letter!” she exclaimed. She wanted to share this anticipated message with her family. She expected the excited faces and hugs from her family, but it didn’t happen. She only got a couple of  “robotic” smiles and “Oh! That’s good!”

  She walked into her bedroom with the letter in her hand. The non-interested reactions from the family still didn’t affect her joyfulness. She played on her bed and reread the acceptance letter once again, once again……At the moment, she couldn’t believe seeing words on the paper that brought her so much joy right now will bring her into the darkness later.

  At the time that she was only one week away from starting her college life, a simple sentence from her parents changed everything.

  “Armenian girls should not leave their parents at this age.”

   A simple sentence made up of ten words easily changed this girl’s future. One week, seven days away from starting college life in her dream school, her dream easily changed by ten words.

 “Armenian girl should not leave the parents at this age.” She repeated those words in her mind ten times, hundred times, thousand times, million times. “Just because I am a girl? An Armenian girl? Just because I am an Armenian girl, I have to give up my life dream?” she asked herself over and over again. The answer was no.

  The following week, the young girl went to another college that was very close to her family’ house. Did she give up on her dream? No, not. Her dream was to be a teacher. Instead of being regretful or sad for the rest of the life and waste the lifetime to do a job that she was not interested in at all, she found another way to become a successful teacher that my classmates and I look at as a great role model every day. She survived in the gender discrimination from her family. That was hard, it was even harder to accept it came because from the closest people that you see every day, but she did!

We should give all of the survivors of gender discrimination more respect and admiration instead of the disapproval. Females need protection, but females are not weak. Females also can do what males do. Females are not born for housework like cooking and cleaning, they born for their own lives. Everyone can express their definition of lives. None of the dream kites should be cut and fall off from the sky to the ground, no matter males or females.

  Dream kites. 

To Mrs. Mekenian and all of the survivors in gender discrimination