07/13/2025
"While anger in girls and women is overwhelmingly portrayed as irrational, it is, in fact, completely rational," observes author Soraya Chemaly. Girls’ anger often grows as they reach their teens, because studies show that girls and women are more likely to feel anger about injustice, powerlessness, and other people’s irresponsibility – all things they confront head on as they approach adulthood. “They begin to see the effects of gender–based double standards that fly in the face of everything they’ve learned so far about their abilities, equality, and potential,” she reflects.
Rather than fighting her own anger, as Chemaly says she did for many years, she now realizes that "it can be controlled, transformed, used. It can be a tool. Anger can inspire art, and anger fuels activism. What if we knew girls could be angry? What if we showed them how to use it? What if we let them know that they weren’t alone?... [I]n dark times, our inner fire glows brightest."
To read more about why it's important to let girls be angry – and how to teach girls to channel their anger productively at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=23651
Soraya Chemaly is the author of the powerful book for adults "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger" at https://www.amightygirl.com/rage-becomes-her
For several excellent books for children and teens on understanding and expressing anger in healthy ways, we recommend "Anger Management Skills Workbook for Kids" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/anger-management-workbook-kids) and "How to Take the GRRR Out of Anger" for ages 8 to 12 (https://www.amightygirl.com/grrr-out-of-anger)
For teens, ages 13 and up, we recommend the guides "The Anger Workbook for Teens" (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-anger-workbook-for-teens) and "When Anxiety Makes You Angry" (https://www.amightygirl.com/anxiety-makes-you-angry)
There's also a fantastic card game on anger management for ages 6 to 12 at https://www.amightygirl.com/mad-dragon
For books for kids of all ages on better understanding and managing emotions of all varieties, visit our blog post, "Understanding The Way I Feel: 50 Mighty Girl Books About Managing Emotions,” at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11449