Opus Dei has various summer camps, some are advertised as developing "leadership" in girls and young women. Such camps are aimed at building up confidence and self-esteem, but what actual leadership skills? Redefining the "spirit of service" as leadership doesn't count, as they really aren't the same thing, even though people brainwashed into niceness might agree. Do these camps temper clique formation and the attempt by alpha hens to maintain social control?
As noted in the book Warriors and Worriers, women naturally tend to be strive to be non-offensive to other women and are [direct] conflict-avoidant. It is also known that women don't like being under the authority of other women. Leadership is not just telling other people what to do -- that is just assertiveness with respect to others, and the same sort of bossiness that is disliked in girls (and in boys). The sort of trust that is required for leadership must first be earned, as well as the other qualifications for leadership, such as being just towards others (including one's future subordinates]. This sort of understanding of social relations, one based on justice and desert, is abstract and different from one that is based on emotion and pleasing others. If we try to turn girls into men, will we be successful? And even if we are, will they have lost something that they need to be good wives and mothers? Yes. But in the age of "female empowerment" we can advertise such camps as being ways to cultivate true femininity only so far, and maybe some lip service must be paid to conflict ideals about what it means to be a good woman in order to get customers who may not be so "traditional."
Do such camps exist elsewhere in what remains of Western Christendom?
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