Parenting and children

It’s good to be a girl

Posted by Becky Watson Lee on 21 October 2025

I know that I cannot protect my daughter from everything that this world will bring her way. But I want to do what I can to equip her to face difficulties with courage, resilience and truth. Unsurprisingly, given my own experience of domestic abuse, I am particularly passionate about helping my daughter to delight in her womanhood and embrace what it truly means to be female, according to the God who made her. 

This is why I was so thrilled to buy a copy of ‘It’s good to be a girl’ by Jen and Zoe Oshman. This mother and daughter writing team have produced a beautiful, warm, and inspiring book all about how God has made girls and women in His image, capable of doing anything that He leads them to do. It is steeped in God’s truth, not cultural nor Christianised versions of femininity, and through varied examples from Scripture and Christian history, displays the diversity of womanhood in all its colour and energy! 

We begin, naturally, with Eve, and the Oshmans quickly rebut any false ideas about woman being a diminutive helper. Instead, they get back to the Hebrew root of the word helper – ‘ezer’ – denoting strength and power. They point out that God is an ezer-helper and then show how women can be helpers in the same way – defending, rescuing, protecting – just like Deborah and Esther. 

The Oshmans explain that the power to be an ezer-helper comes through faith in Jesus. They show through New Testament examples like Lydia, Priscilla and Eunice how Jesus helped them to serve Him and the church. They encourage girls to trust that God has made them exactly as He wanted – in the right place at the right time – as their own unique part of God’s plan. Both in big famous ways – like Harriet Tubman or Fanny Crosby – and in small unseen ways, God empowers women and girls to do whatever He has called them to do. 

Gender stereotyping is rejected in favour of a wholly inclusive approach to womanhood and women’s roles. The Oshmans’ write ‘Today God still helps us to love him and love others. He helps girls who are students and scientists, teachers and track stars, mommies and missionaries, doctors and dancers, woodworkers and wives, computer coders and cab drivers. With Jesus’ help, every girl can do anything God asks her to do.’ They lift the eyes of young readers beyond what is stereotypically ‘feminine’ towards the endless possibilities that God may have planned for them. Girls are not limited in God’s idea of womanhood!

This book has already become a firm favourite with my daughter. She is inspired and excited by the amazing things women have achieved through God’s empowerment. I hope and pray that a true picture of womanhood will stay with her and ground her as she grows, protecting her mind and thinking from whatever culture or, sadly, the church may say about women and girls. It really is good to be a girl! 

You can buy a copy of ‘It’s good to be a girl’ here. Perhaps it might be a book you’d like to share with your daughter, granddaughter or niece. Perhaps it could be a book you share with your church family. Let’s raise a generation of women who know God’s truth about womanhood.