An absence of role models in girlhood is a popularly cited cause of the shortage of women in decision-making positions in adulthood. The power of leadership exists in a close relationship with public visibility, and this relationship is regularly foregrounded in adult interventions that seek to stimulate girls’ leadership aspirations through the public pedagogy of role models. We explore the problematic nature of such popular solutions through a framework suggested by feminist critique of the ‘fetishisation’ of representation, by their media effects foundations and by their alignment with neoliberal logics. Drawing on group interview workshops conducted in five English state schools, we find that role-model solutions offer an overly simplistic view of girls’ engagements with public figures, and that they recognise neither the contemporary conditions of women’s visibility nor how such conditions regulate girls’ imaginings of power along axes of ‘race’ and class as well as gender.

少女时代缺乏榜样是人们普遍认为的成年女性决策职位短缺的原因。领导的力量与公众的知名度密切相关，这种关系经常出现在成人干预中，该干预旨在通过榜样的公共教育来激发女孩的领导才能。我们通过女权主义对代表的“恋物化”的批评，他们的媒体效应基础以及他们与新自由主义逻辑的对接，提出了一个框架，探索了这种受欢迎的解决方案的问题性质。通过在五所英国公立学校进行的小组访谈研讨会上，我们发现榜样解决方案提供了一个过于简单的女孩参与公众人物交往的观点，