I am racking my brains here, and coming up with NOTHNG...

When boys fall out, it's just that, boys falling out. When girls fall out, it's because 'girls are so bitchy' You read it most days on here - very depressing

Oakmaiden, I know it's late but you may find this site useful.

Miasmummy - but that is what I am talking about - the ingrained idea that a good job for a mother and a good job for a father are different things.

Oakmaiden - have you looked at the literature on 'nature via nurture' (evolutionary development) - I don't think it's an either/or argument.
When we things we learn things easily (conditioning) it is because they are easy to learn for humans (genes) e.g. It is hard to learn statistics, but it's easy to learn your mother tongue. Gender roles are not fixed, but they are impossible not to learn, because we are programmer to learn them.

An interesting point on himalaya's post just now - I think the stereotyping she mentions about jobs might be a very British (older person?) thing. Do people really think like that now? I grew up elsewhere, and twenty-five years ago, I (nor my female friends) didn't encounter that attitude at all around career choices when we left our co-ed school. In fact, medical or legal careers were seen as favourable career choices for future motherhood options. And engineering or business careers were seen as great opportunities to live all over the world and be paid for the privilege. Teaching and nursing were considered very 'safe' options - female dominated though.

Oakmaiden - I know you've written it now...but I do hope you didn't make the mistake of writing that evolutionary and social explanations of gender differences are competing theories and that evidence of one disproves the other (and vice versa)?

On stereotyping I would add the tendency for people to assess boy's career choices and their expectations within them against the benchmark of earning a 'family wage' whereas the long term earning capacity of girls career choices are not seen as so important. This goes for expectations of parents and teachers, the 'dating market',
parents in law etc...

E.g. A girl with a degree in art or nursing is not seen as a "worse catch" than an accountant or a doctor.

Whereas a boy working in these fields will raise concerns about whether he will earn enough to support a family, unless he sets his sights really high for success within it.

I know that sounds old fashioned, buy I do think people judge the phrases "she has a little business making jam", and "he has a little business making jam" quite differently!

The number of women doing the shopping and school run with 2+ children. At that time of day you see the occasional man with 1 child but never with several.

I have two daughters and many have assumed we need a third child, a boy. Somehow DH is being deprived

I'm not sure if the sports I mentioned way upthread will be any use, but you might like to know that BBC Breakfast has just featured a new report about sport in schools, how girls are being put off by existing PE curriculum, and how more "girl-friendly" options (such as dance and trampolining) should be offered.

Once again, the boys are the norm, and girls are "other".

Birthday cards, lots of 'hidden' messages.

Men in suits on tv, women in little dresses.

Jewellery.
The meaning of swear words.
The readership of female vs male authors.
'hobbies' as a male pursuit.
The invisibility of women in history.

2000 words - that's going to be so hard! Much more difficult to write short than long, I think. If you do ever take it further, do feel feel free to get in touch and I can point you in the direction of what I did as it sounds similar re impact of stereotyping on aspirations etc. Good luck!

Oakmaiden: I think your first assumption about baby changing units needs to be revisited as from my fairly large experience they are mostly in the disabled toilet which is unisex.

Ahh, sport, a little obsession of mine. I tweet daily on the percentage of male to female stories in the freebie paper. #halfthepopulation

It's also more subtle than mere visibility. Note how in the press you have the GB Team and the GB Women's Team. The male is the norm and the female is the addendum. The only time this changes is in predominantly female sport e.g. netball where there appears to be no need to flag up the inferior team because men wouldn't bother playing it (though perversely in NZ the most popular participation sport for men is actually netball. Go figure)

Primary school teachers, who have a very nurturing role as the pupils are so young, are nearly all women.
Just a quibble: I don't like "we" sentences. They always raise my hackles in journalism. Every time someone writes that "we" do this or that I always think "Who do?" and half the time, "I don't".

I will wait until she pops up again then. Cheers FoodUnit.

Did my thesis on this too. If you start with the theories and how it all works (the nuts and bolts of 'why' and 'how'), the examples are too many to list I found. Which are you using?

I'm interested too Sanjeev and happy chatting - though I suppose it is taking the thread in a new direction - OP hasn't visited in a little while - perhaps enough inspiration has been gleaned?

Sport is a huge passion of mine, and I find some of the statements here a bit chicken and egg. Is discussion of this derailing the thread? If so, I will start another thread. However, it does seem relevant to genders being shoehorned into different roles at a very early age, as kids witness participation from a very early age.

DontmindifIdo Woman sports get treated with respect every 4 years, but still it's only individual sports, you still don't hear much about female teams.

I too have pondered this - and I think that there is something genuinely sinister in it. I think the sight of a group of women united and cooperating to achieve a common competitive goal is absolutely terrifying - it would be such a misogynist myth busting spectacle. Imagine:

A group of athletic and strong (not waif like and submissive) women, focused (not distracted by inconvenient/ restrictive clothes/ anxieties about their appearance) on working as a team (not being 'bitchy'/'catty'/or other divisive stereotypes), to achieve a goal (not just support others in doing so) - for the sake of their own glory (not to impress or seduce or flatter men)....

I think it is dangerous to those who hold misogynist stereotypes dearly.

I think also of the frisson that went round when a little boy (aged 2) turned up to a party in a cinderella dress like his sister. But no one objected to the little girls dressed up as pirates. It's still horribly transgressive for a child (even a baby) boy to be dressed as a girl. Girls are just "less" than boys - it is hard for society to tolerate a boy dressed as a girl (because it's demeaning somehow). Fathers particularly struggle with this I think as it seems to reflect negatively on their own status.

Of course I think this is hugely damaging for boys.

And with regard to girls being and boys doing....boys skate-boarding around car parks and skate parks etc accompanied by a group of girls without skate boards who were just there to hang around with the cool boys I assume

foodunit - agree re running. The arrival of lighter evenings always turns running into a spectator sport....

"Women's clothing at all stages of life being more revealing/tighter than men's?" Not to mention restricting too - heels that make it hard to really do anything active.