Experts say equal society and ladette culture may be to blame for confusing role models

Sugar and spice and all things nice? That's not what Irish girls are made of.

The move towards a unisex society and the rise of the so-called "ladette" culture have been cited as possible explanations for an increase in bullying among teenage girls in Ireland.

A study tracking bullying trends in 27 countries over a 12-year period has found "consistent decreases in most countries", but identified Ireland as one of just six places where female bullying has increased.

Michal Molcho, the author of the study, which was carried out by the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), said the finding that bullying is decreasing in most countries was not expected.

"One of the possible explanations for the Irish results is that Ireland was starting from a low base," she said.

"However, there were other countries in the study, such as Sweden, which also started off at a low base and reported decreases."

Ireland, England and Canada reported increases in female bullying of 28%, 28% and 30% respectively. However, Greece has by far the worst problem, with a 129% increase in the number of girls saying they were bullied.

The Czech Republic and Denmark were the countries that reported the largest decreases, with the prevalence of "occasional victimisation" dropping by more than 50%.

The NUIG and WHO report is to be published shortly in the International Journal of Public Health.

In Sweden, the percentage of female victims decreased from 15.3% to 13.6%. In contrast, the new figures show that one in four Irish schoolgirls is reporting being bullied, up from one in five a decade ago.

Although Ireland is in the minority of countries in which female bullying is increasing, Molcho said the phenomenon of more aggressive female behaviour is not just an Irish problem.

"I think this is just one part of a bigger question about teenage girls," she said. "For example, we did research in the Health Promotion Research Centre [at NUIG] in 2007 that showed other risk behaviours, such as smoking and drinking, are also increasing among teenage girls.

"No one has yet done any research as to why this is happening. One hypothesis is that there has been such a rapid move towards an equal, unisex society that girls are now struggling to cope with the stresses that come with more masculine behaviour."

Colman Noctor, a child psychotherapist at St Patrick's hospital in Dublin, said the advent of "girl power" had resulted in some confusing messages for teenagers.

"We have this new Œladette' culture, where role models for young girls are now people like Amy Winehouse [the singer] or Jordan [the glamour model]," he said.

"It's all very far from Enid Blyton, flowery skirts and knitting needles. There is a definite move from the period of Œall things nice'. Female role models tend to be aggressive and ambitious and have a lot of traditionally masculine traits."

Noctor said there were numerous reasons for this "cultural shift", but one of the consequences had been an increase in female bullying.

Societal changes may account for the rise in female bullying, but they do not explain why Ireland is one of the few countries in which it is increasing.

Mona O'Moore, founder of the Anti-Bullying Centre at Trinity College Dublin, said the rise must be attributed to the lack of any concerted anti-bullying campaigns in Irish schools.

"I'm not surprised by this study because we have such lax anti-bullying initiatives in Ireland compared with other [European Union] countries," she said.

"The Department of Education asks all schools to have a bullying policy, but that is of no use if nobody is checking it. We need to implement a national, whole-school approach to combat bullying, but the government has resisted doing this."

O'Moore said it was important that Ireland starts putting in place such measures so as not to be left behind in Europe.

"Bullying is a serious issue," she said.

"There is a raft of international evidence linking bullying with depression, severe anxiety and suicide. Silent victimisation can, literally, be a killer."

A spokesman for the education minister said that supports were in place to "enable schools to prevent bullying".

"The department has issued guidelines as an aid to schools in devising measures to prevent and deal with bullying behaviour," he added.