to think that conforming to a specific gender

[DoubtfireDear]

isn't a bad thing? Or that "non conforming" isn't something to feel superior about?

DS is a 4 (nearly 5) year old boy. He likes trucks, cars, pirates and spiderman. He runs wild, makes lots of noise, and wears blue/red/green and denim. He likes digging in sand, waving sticks about and being what would be described as a "typical" boy.

He wouldn't let you near him with a pink t-shirt, dolly and pram and is far too fidgety and impatient to do crafty things. He has never been interested in princesses or "typical" girl stuff.

I haven't ever pushed him in a particular direction, I'd never say "you can't have that, it's for girls" it just seems to be built into him.

Sometimes on MN when people talk about having girls who roll about in muck and play with trucks, or boys who like to dress as a disney princess or want to have a dolls house for their birthday, they gush as if it's something to be extra proud of, as if it trumps the "normal" kids.

If we look at this issue so deeply are we not making choices for our children by default eg the parent who encourages their dc to like any colours and toys is more likely to have a child with 'boys' and 'girls' toys etc
Surely as parents we are the most influential to our dc not general society? There's always flaws in the overall opinion. Food targeted for children does my head in-it's usually unhealthy. Take McDonald's-adverts everywhere but my loathing of the place has totally rubbed off on my dd and she doesn't ask to go there and will say it's unhealthy. They pick up on our bias whatever IMO

oh god evelyn no, don't start putting female participation rates in science and engineering down to gender stereotyping - as a female ex-scientist I find it almost as depressing as hearing that it's innate differences in the sexes that causes the disparity. It's not either of them IME. My undergrad chemistry class was about 50/50, and when I think about what everyone is doing now - well the first thing to note is that most of us, make and female, are not scientists. Unlike say medicine or law, there's very little limit put on science university places, so there's competition for science jobs to start off with (and you can see that in both academia and industry, where the recently arrived have to be far better qualified to get a permanent job than the old hands). Then, lots of high tech jobs have been moving to India and the Far East in the last 20 years, so there is a lot of structural unemployment i.e. trained scientists that can't get a job. Add to that, most of the jobs are very specialised and concentrated in certain places - as a chemist these days you can live in Cambridge, maybe Manchester, and your next closest place to find a job is probably Basel in Switzerland.

So why do I think that affects women more than men? Pretty simple, it's to do with having kids. You need some time out of your career to actually have your children and you're fairly vulnerable to redundancy and relocation (which happened to me or my immediate colleagues 6 times in a 10 year career) - it's difficult applying for new jobs while you're on mat leave looking after small children, and some women drop out or retrain then. Or if you do manage to find a job, chances are it's halfway across the world, and will your partner relocate? IME the women chuck their jobs and relocate more often than the men, a function of having somewhat lower wages (because of having had careers on hold for children) and being a bit more up for bring a SAHP (having done it already on mat leave). It's not true for everybody but the gender bias is enough to slowly weed out women over the years. Add to that there are some who are smart enough to realise this upfront - and some women, being more aware than men that they have a limited fertility window, pay this more attention - that it's a bugger to combine a science career and a family, so they retrain to something where you're more in demand and you can work in any town. The overall effect is that I have two female friends with kids who are still scientists, and a bloody ton of male friends. So there you go. I don't think avoiding pink and watching Nina and the Neurons is going to solve the structural inequalities in science and engineering and I will try my best to let my girls know this stuff before they choose careers, so as to save them some of the heartache it caused us, now both not scientists.

I was in swatch shop couple of weeks ago. Dd's walk in, over to a display, start picking out watches.

female Shop assistant comes over and tries to usher them over to "the girls section over here", they're all pink. No thank you, dd wants a pirate watch. Assistant shrugs, walks off.

A different (male)assistant comes over 5 minutes later, and points to the "girls" display, and tells my dd's they will like those watches better.

What is so wrong with a six year old not wanting a pink watch with kittens on it?

Actually, I should complain.

Toomuch, I used to work in graduate recruitment. We couldn't find female engineering graduates for love, nor money. That's because there weren't any. At some universities the participation rate in the relevant courses was as low as 3%. We had to hunt for them in other European countries, were participation rates were roughly 50:50.

I was stunned at the disparity compared to the UK stats.

I recommend watching a documentary "Hjernevask" has a lot to say about gender differences. I think that's the key to real equality respect and appreciate the differences.

OP, I totally agree with you about the badge of honour stuff when girls don't like pink etc. I didn't buy DD any pink until she started having opinions and choosing pink. It doesn't stop her from climbing or playing in the mud and waving sticks etc.

She loves pink and princesses....I just keep reminding her that girls and boys can like and be what ever they want to.

Micah, this happened to us in the Lego shop in Westfield a few months ago!

We walked in and the bloke on the door grins at DD and says 'Hello! We've got all the Disney Princesses and Lego Friends sets over there"

DD looks at him in disgust and says "I'm here to buy glass bricks to make a tank for my sharks".

Leaving aside her personal preferences, how stupid of him/the shop to limit their customer base - since when was Lego a boys' toy?

Don't get me started on the Lego Friends' figures with BOOBS! DD already has plenty of female Lego police/fire fighters/scientists/superheroes by dint of putting long hair on the existing figures...

That film i just mentioned, says about that thing. Women in poorer countries are more likely to choose traditionally masculine professions (e.g. Engineering) because its where they can earn money and have an independent living.In richer and more egalitarian countries women prefer traditionally feminine professions (e.g. Nursing) because they can still earn reasonable living.

My science graduate friends no longer work in the field because pay is crap, hours are crap, crap job security, crap prospects....

Most have either gone to the us, or abroad, or are working in sales, pr, management, or some other field where they get good pay and treated well.

I left academia for the nhs because the pay and job prospects were better, Ffs!

Gender does depend on the science- you get better gender balance in biology and medical science, compared to physics and engineering. I was the only girl in my physics a'levels class and got a lot of stick.

However, computer science and engineering still have vlow female participation rates (I pulled them off the JESSE website) with percent female around 15%. Physical sciences and maths are about 40%. Vet and medicine are majority female. Maybe there is a vase for encouraging more women I.to engineering and CS in that case but my civil and chemical engineer friends' experiences don't recommend those fields either. I don't think that encouraging a 50/50 split is a noble end in itself if it just puts.women on a difficult career path.

All pink for girls virus is indeed quite recent. I had very few pink clothes growing up. Girls toys were hardly ever pink.
Only in my teen years pink appeared as something trendy for girls.

I wonder how many female science undergraduates are coming from all-girl schools? I read in the papers about how few girls do A level physics and maths for example, because they are perceived as being 'male' subjects - reading that, I'm glad I went to a girls' school, there was absolutely no concept of any subject being off-limits and in the sixth form I would say it was about a 50/50 split between those doing humanities A levels and those doing sciences. Even with things like school plays and reading plays in English Lit, no concept of the 'best' parts being male parts or whatever. This was brought home to me watching DD's nativity play last year, a squillion angels because, of course, most parts in the play are male. But not at my school (I was girls' only from age 7). I have fond memories of me and a friend always been given the comedy parts in Shakespeare, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. In a mixed school, I suppose only boys could do those parts?

toomuchtooold and others:

A-level entry figures (from 'The Independent', 16 August 2014):

"... four out of five (79.3 per cent) physics entries were from boys - up 3.8 percentage points from last year -- while nearly three-quarters of those doing English (71.8 per cent) were from girls - 2.3 percentage points up on 2012. In maths, 60.1 per cent of the entries were from boys - up 3.9 percentage points on last year."

No gender-stereotyping influence here? It seems to me unlikely. Caused by time off for giving birth? Well ...

Your suggestion, toomuchtooold, that a cause of the scarceness of women scientists is to be found in child-bearing and -rearing: yes, that's surely another factor. ... But does that not indicate that we need to change the way we integrate child-bearing and -rearing into academia and wider society to avoid the absurdity of having so few female scientists/mathematicians/technologists/engineers? And would that end not be helped by challenging gender-stereotypical roles as currently constituted tout court?

We'd all be better off if we equalised chances for girls and women to become scientists etc. There are lots of things that need doing to promote this - obviously desirable - end. Amongst which - and not the least important - fighting tooth and nail against gender-stereotyping of our children. (And grandchildren!) No?

I was in Clark's a couple of weeks ago to buy dd her first shoes. After her feet were measured, the saleswoman asked what style I was looking for. I replied that I wasn't too bothered, but nothing too pink please. She looked at me like I had two heads.

I will be honest and say I don't understand, have never understood, the angst over colours on Mumsnet.

I know sexism exists. I don't understand why the place to fight it is well-meaning sales assistants.

I hope this explains it, autumnroundthecorner. The problem some of us have with pink is nothing to do with the colour itself, but the fact that it seems to be the only colour girls are offered these days, and that the pink things that girls are offered are marketed towards arts and crafts, looking beautiful and being a princess, not about being imaginative, scientific, creative or building anything. Those toys are marketed at boys.

This is limiting for both genders, but far more so for girls.

You may, as others do, just say "well buy your daughter things from the boys' section then". But it's not nearly as simple as that. Despite our best efforts to persuade them otherwise, children are very susceptible to this gender-specific marketing crap and will actively avoid choosing toys/clothes that are "not for them" - see my Gruffalo wellie example upthread.

I am of the belief that gender-neutral toys, clothes and expectations of behaviour are absolutely necessary to raising the next generation of children not to be sexist.

Why should I let "well meaning sales assistants" tell my children what they should like, based on a gender stereotype?

Is it really such an outrageous request that we don't get brought a selection of only pink shoes? Or are allowed to browse the blue watches without a comment that girls prefer pink?

If a child likes pink, fine. But don't expect every girl who comes into your store to like it.

I settled on a lovely pair if navy shoes with a pink flower. It was either that or the purple horrors. Everything else is in-your-face pink

This is always my example Annie. Shocked was not the word...

Girls get a bag with jewelry, a mirror and a phone. Boys get tools. I know someone will be on telling me that the fact that the children they use to advertise are blatantly gendered is meaningless but bear in mind, these toys are for babies. Would I prefer in this instance my child preferred the non-pink item? Yes, I bloody would.