*What Your Daughter Needs Most | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | October 3, 2025*
Not long before my mother died, she told me she once had a boyfriend who hit her. It was before she met my father. That boyfriend was ten years older than she was. He lived by the beach. I have no idea what excited her about him. We didn’t have much time left to talk, and it seemed more important to her to tell me about the breakup. The one-sided breakup, when she realized what was happening wasn’t right. Only he refused to let her go. So he came at night, pounding with his fists on her parents’ front door. She was seventeen. When it became too frightening, they sent her to hide for a few months at her aunt’s in Holon. It took him a long time to give up and let her go. And all that time, her family had to protect and shelter her.
.
Why didn’t my mother tell me about him all those years? Probably because it was, in her eyes, a shameful story. Not representative of anything. A teenage mistake, a seventeen-year-old’s lack of understanding of life. She also wanted to shield us from the darker sides of the world. And besides - what did she have to do with stories like that?
.
Why did she tell me before she died? I was thirty-seven by then. Married. Far from such stories. But you’re never too old to learn what really matters in life: that if you ever experience violence of any kind in a relationship, you must leave. That you should never leave an abusive relationship alone. That you must speak up.
.
I remember my mother’s story every time another headline appears about a woman murdered in Israel. Too many headlines. Every eight days, on average, another woman doesn’t manage to escape in time, to hide, to survive. In the most recent case this week, the murdered woman had already gone to the police, written down that she was afraid. No one did anything. In the end she fell silent, afraid that another complaint might make him hurt her even more. Do the math. Not everyone has uncles in Holon to hide them. Not everyone can go underground. All of them feel ashamed. This week’s killer chased her by car, ran her down, and then shot her through the window. It was a carefully planned hunt. She didn’t stand a chance.
.
This week I was left with that murdered woman’s fear of speaking. Of speaking to the police. Of speaking to her family. Of speaking to her friends. Of speaking at all.
.
I remembered a study done in Israeli schools: Teachers were asked to place a blue sticker on a page each time a boy made a sound in class - not just answered questions, but also when he shouted, whispered, commented, laughed. Each time a girl made a sound, they were asked to place a red sticker. By the end of the day, teachers were stunned to see how many blue stickers filled the page.
.
It wasn’t a one-off. Studies worldwide have consistently shown the same: from elementary school through university, boys talk more, interrupt more, cut in more, while girls participate less - even when their knowledge is just as strong.
At Cornell, men spoke more than expected compared to their proportion in class, while women reported they faced backlash when they spoke, which discouraged them from participating. At Dartmouth, men spoke 1.6 times more than women in academic discussions, while women said “sorry” far more often when they did speak. In Britain, boys dominated classroom talk, drew more attention from teachers, and left fewer opportunities for girls. Across several Asian countries, men were consistently found to participate more verbally, while women spoke less. In Sweden, boys raised their hands and spoke more. In New Zealand, boys interrupted more. In Australia, they spoke up and participated more.
.
Everywhere, when researchers asked why, the answer was the same: gender norms.
.
Because the gender norm is that women are expected to take up less space in the world: to be slim, not large. To straighten their hair, not let it stay curly and wild. To speak softly, not loudly. To sit with legs crossed, not open. To choose quiet colors over bold ones. To be quiet and pretty - even if the words aren’t said out loud, the message is still there. In silence.
.
We hear everywhere - from ads, from social media, from TV, and in our homes - what girls “need.” They need nail polish and lipstick. They need laser hair removal. They need a coat for every season in every color. They need heels at every height. They need to know how to cook and take care of people and at the same time build careers, then learn how to juggle it all. All of this is part of what’s called “gender norms.” Because this is what girls are supposed to need, but not boys. Boys are told they need entirely different things.
.
But the truth is, what girls need most of all isn’t promoted by any campaign: Girls need a voice. They need a voice to use in front of their teachers, starting in first grade. Then in front of their friends, and in front of their partners. A voice they can use without being called “loud,” “nagging,” “chatty,” or “shrill.” Labels whose sole purpose is to silence women. They need to know the sound of their own voice and to love it - so that after school, they will raise it in literature, in film, in TV studios, in politics, in government offices where women’s voices are still scarcely heard.
.
And also so they can become Ministers of Defense or Public Security. Or so they can call the police if they need to, and keep speaking, again and again. Women need a voice in order to survive.
.
So this week, I’ll end with this poem I wrote for my mother- about the voice she didn’t use as a girl, and the voice she did find the courage to use, years later, as a mother. I dedicate its final lines to all of us.
.
She Didn’t Tell / by Maya Tevet Dayan
She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend
who hit her, she said I had to run away
to my aunt in Holon for a few months
it was fun, she didn’t tell me why
it sounded like a teenage holiday
she didn’t tell me he was older
she wanted me to grow up innocent
to believe in the good in people
she always said: keep your heart open
she kept hers.
She didn’t tell me he was a redhead
when I brought a redheaded boyfriend home
she said nothing what went through her mind?
she didn’t tell me he lived in a cave by the sea
that after she fled he pounded on the door
of her parents’ house, loud knocks in the dark, with fists.
They knew she shouldn’t leave him
alone, so the whole family did it with her
the uncles in Holon locked the house around her,
her parents stood against him in the nights
said they had no idea
where she had disappeared. They were not yet my grandparents,
short in stature in the dark against hair of fire.
No one told me a thing. How despite all this
she found the voice no one had ever given her
she repeated it in my ears again and again -
you are beautiful. you are smart. you are wonderful.
I am proud of you. you can do anything.
.
May we speak up, may we teach our daughters that raising their voices matters more than being “nice,” and may we all have a Shabbat Shalom.
.
*Maya Tevet Dayan*