to be sad that my DD has now passed gender discrimination 101?

[ICBINEG]

My DD can now accurately pick out the boys and girls in her peer group (age 1-2). Presumably she has successfully identified that boys and girls are dressed differently/have their hair cut differently.

This is entirely due to adult imposed gender discrimination, as she a) isn't looking at them naked, b) can't possibly be detecting the very subtle actual differences in behaviour/appearance.

So lets hurry onto the next lesson:

Society expects girls and boys to behave differently and have different interests, strengths and weaknesses.

Before I could at least wonder if, when she saw in books that all the girls are doing different things to the boys, she might not realise which was which and specifically which group she was 'supposed' to be in. Now I know she will be learning exactly what is expected of her every time a tired old stereotype is rolled out.

What are you going to do if she's rejected for a job for some reason other than gender?

ICB. That same CV exercise was done with an "Asian" name and an "English" name (both males).

Guess which one was chosen as the most suitable for the Job?

I suspect freddie gender will always get the blame.

I think I'd be wary of how much you over think this on a daily basis. You could give your daughter issues about not wanting to be too girly just to keep mummy happy.

Hobnobs - I fear you may be correct.

If you dislike being called rude then I would suggest perhaps not being rude.

You started this thread purportedly because you wanted a debate, to see if people thought your opinion reasonable. Your replies however have been nothing but dismissive, condescending and rude.

If you'd read my posts you'd see I actually don't completely disagree with you. That's no fun though is it. Far better to be the lone voice of reason fighting against the masses.

You absolutely cannot say you don't care if your daughter chooses to play with pink glittery shit whilst earnestly telling everyone else that no girl likes pink out of personal choice. Surely you must see that.

And no, I won't be going back through your thread and repeated other people's posts. I'm sure you are perfectly capable of reading the thread yourself. Whether or not you choose to ignore vast swathes of it is entirely up to you.

It does however make me disinclined to continue posting on a thread. That's not flouncing as you so patronisingly put it. It's ending my part in a discussion.

20% less competent
20% less employable
10% more likeable
and should be earning 10% less

I'm certainly not discounting your views and experiences within your own sector, but how have you come to these figures? You keep quoting them, so I'm assuming you're referring to a study or something rather than using your own arbitrary figure. Which would be daft and unrepresentative.

On a "Feminism" thread on AIBU a while back I was shouted down because I stated that I didn't feel that I'd been discriminated in my life (ever) simply because of my gender. And that's from a young woman working in an industry which is overly represented by middle aged men. But of course I'm simply naive and blind to the male conspiracy theory that is keeping the wimmins in their place.

I am also interested into how this study was conducted and how those figures where arrived at. Do you have some source information please.

randall I haven't said that NO girls would choose pink outside of societal influence just that most wouldn't. And that a presumably approximately equal number of boys would pick pink....

just finding the paper....

okay paper is here

Other highlights include, mentoring being more readily offered to the male candidate and the fact that women are equally bad at biasing against women as men.

All this stuff about pink and playing with trucks is something that huge numbers of people take issue with. That is a very different thing from your original post which seems to be suggesting that it is a bad thing for young children to know who is a girl and who is a boy, and you haven't explained why that is a bad thing.

Thanks will read.. Just wanted to say though that I am not in the least bit surprised that women where as bad at bias. You only have to red some of the threads on here to realise a lot of women, seem to hate women!

That's an American study at a first glance?

So unless you're in the States it doesn't relate to your workplace, as you implied?

Oh. And what Freya said.

coralanne yes indeed....gender is only one discrimination tool out of many.

although oddly if you say it is harder for Asian people to get jobs in academia due to discrimination hardly any one says 'wait that's silly because I know an Asian person and they are really clever and have a job.'

But on this thread there are any number of people stating that the existence of women who don't like pink, or who do have jobs in male dominated professions must mean that there is no real problem....

Oh my god Freddie! You are right! There is only gender discrimination in the states!

NB. the states have better female retention figures than we do for academic positions.

freya I thought that was obvious from my OP. I don't like my DD knowing which she is and which other kids are because now she can start absorbing what she 'should' be playing with from others.

IF she didn't know which group she belonged to then she could carry on oblivious.

Obviously there is no intrinsic problem with identifying gender. ALthough it is sad that we make it so artificially easy. It should be tricky to identify, because in reality the differences are subtle.

Ic- do you realise how rude that sounds?

Equality and discrimination legislation is different here than in the states.

You implied this was something you had direct experience of, and a relevant research paper to back it up.

In my opinion, you are just being rude, and goady. And have an agenda you are setting out to push.

I'm out.

So people should hide differences from each other to avoid discrimination? Like if gay people didn't let anyone know they were gay, they wouldn't have a problem?

Or is the way that girls are girls that bothers you? Should they replace all this shameful pink, long hair business by boys and girls wearing a symbol sewn on to all their clothing?

And for the record. It's not a flounce. It's a "there no point it's not a debate"

Please tread carefully OP. Your kids will have their own views and opinions very soon, and will learn to say the right stuff at home 'pink is silly, girls can be astronauts' etc, while enjoying being 'normal' when with friends or at school.

I grew up like this. in some ways, I liken it to having a strict religious childhood, although my parents were atheists. I had to be one person at home, and another when with my peers.

Of course your kids are going to hear your opinions etc, and that's fine, but if they feel that they can't disagree or go their own way then they will just nod and smile to your face and inwardly think 'god, mum's such a killjoy'.

My folks have mellowed greatly with age, also I'm not backwards in coming forwards with my own views, so I have a great relationship with them as an adult. But looking back, there were times I was almost pushed to the limit by my mum's obsession with gender issues, and her refusal to see or hear any opinion that contradicted 'the research'.

You know before the paper I linked was published people would look at the evidence from other fields of academia or even other areas of employment, all of which show the same thing and say...oh but surely we don't do that in science! We are scientists...we judge objectively on evidence.

And then whomph. No we don't we are just as shit as the rest...perhaps more so as we have less excuse.

But there will always be someone who thinks 'oh but this is about american academics...UK academics are different (ignoring the massively multinational nature of academia, the fact that a lot of academics in the US are British and vice versa). If someone did a UK study then people would say 'Oh but that doesn't happen in our university...'

I did this with variation of learning style across students. I quoted the literature that says that different students learn in different ways. 'oh but science is different' so I found the literature that says that physics student are the same. 'Oh but it is different in our University'. So I collected data from our actual students that showed the same thing. 'Oh but maybe there was selection bias' Yeah but if any group of students shows a distribution of learning styles then a distribution exists surely? 'Maybe they didn't understand the question'

Yeah or maybe, when all the evidence collected from EVERYWHERE shows the same trend it might be time to accept that it is because that trend really exists.....

I think it's the value judgements made on those differences that OP's trying to get at. I think.

Like - "Oh no, she's in the big gender meat-grinder now.....can't stop it....hope she doesn't get told she's rubbish at maths....." kinda thing.

Hopefully we'll all mellow.
Morris - do you feel your mum was reacting to a set of v restrictive conditions that she'd had to negotiate as a girl? That she was over-compensating so you wouldn't have to suffer them?

See, it's the restriction of choice that does my head in, and the narrowness of it, like if you like sparkly hairclips you can't have a good business brain, or like chemistry. You have to "do" either or. That needs to stop, because it's still astonishingly rife.