to be MAD about bloody Lego Friends airport, where the pilot is a MAN.

[changeshow]

Got Lego Catalogue today. Looking through at all the exciting and colourful stuff for boys. Got to the Lego Friends page. Looking at the nice plane, check the figures.........

FLIGHT ATTENDANT SANDRA and PILOT DAVID. WTAF! Why is the pilot a bloke?!

Did no one at Lego has the wit to say 'errr women can be pilots'?

AIBU to be seriously unimpressed by this? Makes me bloody cross.

Lego are a business There to make money for their shareholders - the focus additionally needs to be on the buyers who buy it ! Whilst I understand the ire it's somewhat displaced .

I do that love scientist kit though !

there are hardly any male Lego Friends figures, but bring out a boat or plane that needs a pilot and lo and behold there's suddenly a male!

Exactly this!

Woke up and still cross. And yes Lego is a business etc, so why retire the very popular female scientist set? Bloody ghostbusters is still about.

The executive plane and a female executive and pilot. Why are you ignoring any data that doesn't agree with you?

And the latest Ghostbusters film is going to have an all female crew btw.

Indeed Tiggy.

There is "Executive Ellen". Is that not suggesting that females can be an executive?

In the same set there is "Kebab Bob". Would the "non minimisers" suggest that men should be outraged that it is suggesting that all men must surely be kebab eating?

Maybe Lego could bring out a range specifically aimed at black people where white people fly the plane and black people serve the drinks?

Perhaps it might be regarded as racist and not an appropriate way to make profit for your shareholders?

It's basically socially acceptable to be sexist but not racist (see countless threads on here abut the shit women put up with at work, school on the street etc).

Of course companies will try to make a profit out of anything. But it pisses me off that, while I don't buy my daughters pink Lego, they're surrounded by these messages every day. And are increasingly influenced them.

It's obviously not just Lego. It's sainsburys selling a doctors dressing up outfit labelled 'boys' and a nurses outfit labelled 'girls'. Who could possibly think this doesn't have an impact? 'Boys' toys' and 'girls' toys'. boys' subjects and girls' subjects at school. Boys' jobs and girls' jobs. It starts when girls get asked at school in the 21st century why they are playing football because it's a boys' game? Why they care about space and dinosaurs instead of glitter and necklace-making? Why are they wearing a shirt? Why are they riding a blue boys' scooter? Perhaps because from birth they receive messages about what it's appropriate or possible for them to do. So we shouldn't be surprised when, on the whole, they don't do as well professionally or financially as their male peers.

We tell them from being tiny that they won't.

But is it really true today? Years ago with zilch access to social media, sans internet, with few female role models then yes, I'd agree.

Can the same really be said now? There are thousands of positive female role models who have succeeded. Who clearly weren't influenced by the "message". Exposure has heightened to such a degree that it can't surely be a huge difficulty to teach our children that they can achieve anything regardless of gender. And there's us, as parents, who can dispel the myth relatively easily?

I have a son who's 7. If I thought for one minute he'd been brainwashed by the colour of a toy that, for example, a man can't be a nurse, I can easily knock that on the head via a few clicks of a button.

Yes, I agree that colour coding toys and thereby suggesting it's a girl/boy toy may suggest xyz, but it's not an insurmountable hurdle to overcome.

Of course you can seek out better messages. But the ones they receive in mainstream media everyday tell a different story. If only they mainly listened to their parents and no one else! From 11 the peer group influence is more dominant (and obviously consumer influences.) my daughter asked the other day if women could play a certain sport and it totally depressed me. We went to look at the bbc sport website and every photo on the entire page (maybe 30 or so in total) was a man. There was a tiny box at the bottom called 'inspire' or something about getting girls into football. Apparently it's ok for our public service broadcaster to only cater for 50% of the population. Admittedly large events like Wimbledon are more balanced but every day stuff is male focused. Of course I did what you're taking about and found some women's stuff online. Which basically reinforced the idea that women's sport isn't mainstream and you have to seek it out like a rare animal.

I'm sure you're doing a fantastic job with your son at 7. But you might find your influence reduces slightly as he's older.

And what are we suggesting? Oh just ignore everything around you kids, that's for the other people who look like us but don't realise men and women are equal?

What?? Well, the set I give DTDs WILL have a female pilot ????

I just googled "Successful Women Footballers" and got this as the first link-

www.sportyghost.com/top-10-famous-female-soccer-players-time/

Easy enough And interestingly having at first felt a bit reading the first paragraph, now think it makes for a very apt opportunity to open up a discussion surrounding "People used to think like this but now we realise" blah blah.

So I'm still of the mind that it's how the knowledge is imparted that's more useful in the cause

Is Lego really to blame? As has been previously mentioned, they are a business out to make a profit.

What if... their market research found out that girs were happier to play with toys with such gender divides.

What if... they realised that the girl scientist/cosmologist etc were just not that popular.

How is it that most parenting is done by females (no proof of that, just my observation) Most teachers are females www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182407/DFE-RR151.pdf and yet these stereotypes still exist.

Does the blame lie with mothers, carers and teachers?

And why does this patriachial socety appear all over the world?

(Not necessarily my own opinions)

Um. Not sure how to react to this thread.

Being a pilot is a fab job for women (even mothers. I'm part time and only spend about 8 days a month at work, and get 4-6 days a month down route somewhere relaxing by a pool or generally doing whatever I would like to do in my free time, only without the kids!) In 18 years I've experienced sexism only twice from work colleagues (and it was dealt with, believe me!) There is a lot of research going on by BALPA atm to try and find out why there are not as many women as men applying for new pilot jobs in spite of a big drive to attract capable women. And there are plenty of capable women out there - the women I trained with came from backgrounds in law, teaching, science, nursing, sales, and - weirdly - a former snooker hall manager.

For reasons unknown, women just don't apply as much, and this means that there are still fewer than 5% of all pilots who are women. Yet among the women who do fly, we have many notable acheivements - there are female pilots who have flown Red Arrows, space shuttles, Concord. A female Arab fighter pilot made the news this year for leading an aerial attack on ISIS. Women have achieved many notable firsts - first person to fly to Australia, first person to reach land flying east to west across the Atlantic, and hold many more records. Women took on the most skilled and difficult flying jobs in the Second World War - the Air Transport Auxillary, positioning aircraft around Europe that they may never have even seen before turning up to work that day. The Russians also had an all female bomber squadron in the War, known as the Night Witches. Female pilots are captains, instructors and trainers, even test pilots.

But going back to Lego Friends. It's a fairly crap toy from the pov of parents who have been brought up to view Lego as a genderless toy where the only limit to it is your imagination. It has completely removed the imagination aspect of the toy, both boys and girls, by bringing out the different ranges that are more like toy kits. While it is annoying that they have done this, if they are going to bring out a range just for girls, why not have all of the roles populated by women (not 'girls, ffs!) I cannot imagine they have a female astronaut in the aimed-at-boys space sets, even though the proportion of female astronauts is far higher than the proportion of pilots who are women, because boys just wouldn't like it. I'd like someone to prove me wrong here though!

It's fairly commonplace to accept that there are certain roles that are 'male.' I see it in my own children, who - even knowing what I do for a living - seem to have acquired views from somewhere that 'girls don't do this' and 'boys don't do that.' My husband and I do our best to try and derail these ideas before they take hold, but they must be coming from somewhere. (My son wished he'd never told his dad girls can't play guitar, whereupon my husband gave him a lengthy education on famous female guitarists and their bands, using Youtube for backup!)

Just coming back to add a link to a write up about my lovely and incredible former colleague Izzy, who won an aviation award at the very highest medal. Nowhere in the write-up (which in now sadly no longer on the GAPAN website, so I have had to link to a, bleurgh, Pprune page for it) does is mention that she is female at all - just her achievements, which are considerable regardless of her gender.

If anyone wants a DHB flying role model for their daughters, this is a good one. It mentions she paid for her own test pilot training - it doesn't mention the cost was in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. I hope she is being well rewarded for it now!

the studies about the effect of gender stereotyping are fascinating. Take this one for example www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2705538/

"stereotypes need not be explicitly endorsed to influence individual behavior. We found that national indicator of implicit gender–science stereotyping was related to nations' sex differences in science and math achievement"

So if you tell children that pilots and doctors are men, women are nurses and stewardesses, because women are caring but crap at STEM, it really isn't so surprising that they might believe you.

backinthebox Can I ask, when you were younger, were you influenced by toys/pink v blue? Did you originally believe that girls couldn't be pilots etc? Or something else?

Being as you're now the unofficial case in point

Of course some women go on to become pilots or astronauts. But not as many as men. Campaigning to encourage them at 20 is too late when many drop STEM subjects that might help them years before.

And of course you can find a link to something about women's football on Google. It's a great search engine. My point is that my daughter can't watch women's football on Tv, can't see a local women's football game and gets teased at school for wanting to play football rather than plait hair at lunchtime. Luckily she's of the 'bollocks to them' mentality. But why should it be a battle at 9 years old? Why do I have to seek out material online to show her 'look girls can do it to!'

There's a bbc doc on gender equality where teenage girls are asked who their female role models are and they could only come up with pop stars. When pushed for a famous scientist, politician, businesswoman, lawyer, Nobel prize winner they came up with Michelle Obama. I'm sure she's a very nice woman. She's just married to power. She didn't really have it.

I played with Lego, climbed trees, rode ponies, and sent my Sindy camping with my brother's Action Man in the garden. I was dressed in pretty dresses made by my mum (and always matched with my sister ) when we went out, and in jeans and a jumper or tshirt at home. I did not set foot on an aeroplane till I was 19. I had always wanted to be a vet but school told me I was not clever enough. By the end of my university years I told the careers advisor I wanted to be a pilot. As far as he was concerned it was the cost of the training that would be the barrier to me flying, not my gender.

I don't think there was as much blue/pink stereotyping in the 70s as there is now - it was all a lot more technicolour . Even though we should live in a more enlightened age now I think there is a massive issue telling girls and boys they can be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do whilst at the same time being far more heavy-handed than we ever were on the influences we press upon our children's minds. For instance, once - if you wanted to drill something, you would buy a drill. It would probably be orange or green - colours not traditionally ascribed to either gender Frequently dad would be bought a power tool for Christmas and he would put up the shelves (badly.) These days anyone can put up shelves, and you can buy pink drills from all the major manufacturers so that you can channel your inner female DIYing power while you do it.

I like pink as a colour (although my favourite colour is green) but am hugely irritated by it being constantly used as the only colour a girl could possibly like while labelling anything it touches as being just for girls.

"I don't think there was as much blue/pink stereotyping in the 70s as there is now - it was all a lot more technicolour"

YES - was just saying that on another thread. All the photos of me and my sisters and our friends in the 70s feature us wearing red, purple, orange, brown, blue, green (also frequently with unisex 70s child haircuts)... I think I owned two pink garments in my entire childhood. I had dolls but also loads of (normal) Lego, chemistry set, puzzles, etc.

Not saying that the 70s were some kind of bastion of gender equality but at least we didn't have to put up with as much of this heavy-handed (as you say) marketing-driven shite.

I work in aerospace industry and indeed we have a handful of female engineers. So of course some women still choose this as a career. But as said, it's just handful.
It's a good career, pays well - certainly better than most female-dominated careers. So why don't more women choose it? Is it because boys are simply born liking planes and STEM, or is it rather because girls hear the drip drip drip of stereotyping about how they are not any good anyway and oh no, that's a plane, a boys' toy, see here's a nice pink beauty salon lego for you..

(someone recently told me that too bad I can't re-use DS clothes for DD on the way. Because surely, I wouldn't put my son's babygrow with airplanes on my DD. It starts before they're born)

My phone just ate a post so trying again and hope it doesn't duplicate.

Shakey, I think your point about footballers is a really interesting one, because for me it really highlights the difference between what we passively consume and what we actively seek out. d

For example, I don't have any interest in football. Zero. None. I could still name at least a dozen footballers thanks to what I've consumed passively through the media and in other ways. All of those footballers are male, because our culture promotes male football. It would be entirely reasonable for someone to think that football is entirely or mostly a thing done by men, on the basis of what they see in our media, in advertising, etc.

I think we're all doing our level best to expose our kids to the ideas and influences that we think are important. But the role of the messages passive consumed via media, marketing, toys, books, peers etc is something I don't think we should underestimate.

Hazle - I saw a stat recently that a single STEM A-level increased a girl's future earnings by an average of £4,500 a year, and two STEM A-levels saw their pay boosted by a third. The impact for boys was not nearly as high.

There has to be a reason that only 6% of our engineers are women, compared to 25% in Sweden or 20% in Ireland, or 22% in France and 18% in Lego-producing Denmark. I'm not sure that it's because British women just aren't as good at or naturally as interested in science or maths.

That's bonkers on the babygros, by the way. I'm having a second boy and the number of 'you can use the same clothes' comments has been interesting. Because as you say, dressing a girl with some dinosaurs or a tractor is insane.

Oh don't get me started on boys and girls babygros. Dd wore her (boy) cousins' hand-me-downs and I was treated as a freak for putting a GIRL in blue, orange etc. People visibly clutched pearls in the supermarket because I hadn't made it clear she was a girl by wrapping a big pink ribbon round her head. Naturally everyone assumed she was a boy because if not wearing a pink frilly dress, it must be a boy right?

Which is why when I talk to friends and colleagues who should know better and I mention a judge I've spoken to that day and they say 'what did HE think' or something, I just wince at having to say, 'actually it was a woman...'

PP is right these assumptions go in pretty much before they're born - like when their parents start selecting toys and clothes and colours for the nursery.

YANBU. Why can't they have two pilots and two flight attendants, a male and female of each?

There has to be a reason that only 6% of our engineers are women, compared to 25% in Sweden or 20% in Ireland, or 22% in France and 18% in Lego-producing Denmark. I'm not sure that it's because British women just aren't as good at or naturally as interested in science or maths

Glad you found the stats, I think it is fair to say that the Scandinavian countries are far better at equal opportunities than the UK. I am surprised by the rest There has to be a reason that only 6% of our engineers are women, compared to 25% in Sweden or 20% in Ireland, or 22% in France and 18% in Lego-producing Denmark. I'm not sure that it's because British women just aren't as good at or naturally as interested in science or maths of the countries...

Sorry cut and paste fail.
What I was meant to say was that I wonder how the numbers of STEM graduates for both sexes compare.

leedy

I agree about the 70s, when I grew up. Seems to me, more girls had short hair then, too

Ironic really, because sexism was rife then.

But now it's more institutionalised, and commodified (is that a word?). Which is more disturbing really - so we've made these gain, but the market's response is to shove us right back