Author Louise aims to boost confidence in our young girls

CLONAKILTY author Louise O'Neill has been chosen by a UK personal hygiene company to help promote confident in young girls.

Always, the global leader in feminine care products, wants to stem the drop in confidence of young girls by changing how they perceive setbacks and encouraging them to embrace failure as part of learning and growth. 

Louise has been asked to come on board and promote the #LikeAGirl campaign. She joins other high profile celebrities like singer Alesha

Dixon in the campaign.

‘Our culture is afraid of failure,' said Louise. ‘It teaches young girls to be afraid too, not to feel ashamed if they don't enjoy instant success. I know when I was younger; I allowed certain dreams to waste away because I was too scared of failing to even try to achieve them.'

Louise added that it was only when she decided that she would rather fail than have regrets about unfulfilled ambitions that her life completely changed. 

‘We need to re-frame how we view failure. Young girls should look at failure as a valuable learning experience, something that they can use to build confidence in their own abilities and what they can accomplish in the future. If you're not making mistakes, then you're not living a bold enough life,' she said.

An Always suvery showed that at puberty, girls' confidence plummets. It revealed that 64% of young women aged 16-24 lost confidence during puberty with 94% succumbing to the fear of failing during this time. 

A total of 67% admitted to avoiding new things all together, and nearly half (49%) said that the fear of failure was paralysing. Top contributors to this fear were identified as societal pressure to succeed and pressure to be perfect. ‘The Always Confidence & Puberty Survey shows that nearly half of girls feel society rejects girls who fail,' said Alesha Dixon. ‘It is important for young girls to understand that failure is OK, and that perseverance through it is how you grow.'