Who Will You Become on Purpose?

Last week, the world lost two extraordinary women: Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem. 

At first glance, they may seem an unlikely pair. They came from different backgrounds, occupied different public spaces, and used their voices in very different ways. One became an unmistakable force in music, entertainment, business, and philanthropy. The other became one of the most influential voices in the movement for women’s equality. Yet both helped widen our understanding of what a woman could do, whom she could become, and how she could use her influence in service of others. 

Gloria Steinem spent her life insisting that women’s voices, experiences, and ambitions mattered. Through her writing, organizing, and advocacy, she challenged assumptions that had long limited women’s choices and participation in public life. She asked difficult questions about power, opportunity, and whose experiences were represented in the stories our culture told. 

Her legacy, like the movement she helped lead, is not without complexity or blind spots. Steinem worked alongside Black, Indigenous, Latina, and labor leaders who understood that gender could never be separated from race, class, and other dimensions of identity. At the same time, her prominence as the public face of the women’s movement sometimes overshadowed the foundational contributions of those women. Meaningful education does not ask us to encounter influential people uncritically, nor does it require complete agreement. It asks us to understand their impact, engage seriously with their ideas, and recognize the courage required to challenge the world as it is. Steinem’s willingness to question entrenched systems of power helped expand the possibilities available to generations of women and girls. 

Dolly Parton widened possibility in a different way. She rose from poverty in rural Tennessee to become an artist, songwriter, businesswoman, and philanthropist of extraordinary influence. In industries that frequently underestimated women, she maintained ownership of her work, made decisions on her own terms, and remained unmistakably herself. 

Her brilliance was sometimes hidden in plain sight beneath the rhinestones, humor, and carefully cultivated public image. Dolly understood how others perceived her, but she never allowed their perceptions to define her. She was both the creator and the creation, building not only a remarkable career but also an enduring enterprise. 

She then used her success to create opportunities for others. Through the Imagination Library, she placed books into the hands of millions of children, demonstrating that influence is most powerful when it is used to open doors for someone else. 

Neither woman allowed others to determine the boundaries of her life. Each understood that having a voice also brings the responsibility to use it. Each made more room at the table for the women and girls who would follow. 

As the leader of a school for girls, I believe it is important to pause and notice moments like this one. Educating girls requires us to help them understand the women whose courage expanded their choices. It means inviting them to study women’s lives in all their richness and complexity, learning from their accomplishments, wrestling with their ideas, and recognizing the many different forms leadership can take. 

There is no single way to be a strong, consequential, or influential woman. 

Some women change the world through advocacy. Others do it through art, entrepreneurship, education, generosity, faith, or service. Some command a public stage. Others transform the lives immediately around them. The work of educating girls is not to hand them a prescribed version of who they should become. It is to help them discover their gifts, develop their voices, and build the confidence and wisdom to choose their own paths. 

Dolly Parton once said, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” 

That is what both of these women did. They understood who they were, claimed their voices, and lived with an intention that changed the possibilities available to those who followed them. 

Their lives leave us with an important question: How will we use the possibilities they helped create? 

For those of us entrusted with the education of girls, the answer begins with helping each girl discover who she is and empowering her to become that person on purpose. The world still needs women willing to question its limitations, imagine something better, and make the table longer for those who come next.