Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders in Girls

Throughout the course of the 20th century the role of women in society has evidenced dramatic changes that continue through the present day. During this time period, American women were finally granted valuable civil rights and the power to make decisions for themselves. Many women rose into positions of authority and control in nearly every field, from business and industry, to education, government and law, medicine, science, and beyond. The range of lifestyle choices also became more open for women, a clear and distinct change from eras past. Indeed, girls need look no further than the popular media to find female role models representing the range of lifestyle and career choices before them, from Maya Angelou to Sally Ride, Madonna to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton to Mia Hamm. It is unclear, however, whether these welcome and hard-fought choices have also ushered in a range of stressors and risks to girls' physical and emotional health that were unknown to our foremothers during their early years of development. In this chapter we explore a well-documented but poorly understood phenomenon, that girls and women evidence higher rates of many fears and anxiety disorders than their male peers.