Pink/blue scientific calculators

[FairPhyllis]

I needed to buy a new scientific calculator today so I was looking on the Casio UK website and was flabbergasted to find that along with the bog standard grey/black ones you can also get ones in blue or pink (and in no other colours!). I then looked to see if they were available at WHSmith, to see if this a freak thing that isn't actually available at general retailers, and lo and behold WHSmith not only have them on their website, but actually do their own pink scientific calculator as well (but no blue).

Perhaps this is something you have encountered before if you are a parent but as I am not I was really shocked that it would occur to anyone to gender a scientific instrument.

And where does it stop? Pink instruments for science undergrads? Pink stethoscopes for medical doctors who are women? Do the women scientists at CERN go into a meltdown if things aren't coloured pink for them? (educated guess: I bet they fucking well don't)

Are girls and women now so utterly brainwashed by gender messages that the only way science can be made acceptable to them is by pinkwashing things? Or is it a sign of patriarchy's discomfort with women engaging with science that it feels it has to send them a message: 'we'll let you do this as long as you remember you're just a woman after all'?

Brains are pink? But That Bastard Poirot said they were made of "leetle grey cells".

Bloody patriarchy.

Now there you see my DDs are in no danger, the telescope is brown wood and big enough to need it's own shed, the microscopes are pale grey and black (flower petals are actually fascinating because if the way the colours are distributed), chemistry is in escapable because both DH and I are chemists of sorts.

IME boys like butterfly gardens too and polished rocks clearly become jewellery, it's good soldering practice. Actually harder than electronics, which both DDs can do.

I'm a bit split on this one. Firstly there's all the blue for boys, pink for girls crap, and it is so tiresome that everything gets marketed in a sexist way like that.

But we do desperately need to improve the numbers of girls who choose to do maths and science and technology, and if they've been so indoctrinated into the "pink means it's for girls" idea, then maybe it will make them more likely to consider maths than they otherwise would have, in which case it's a good thing.

(It's the end of the week, and I'm in quite a good mood and prepared to give everyone the benefit of the doubt just now.)

If you conclude with "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," Buffy, I may have to summon Drusilla to drown you in the apple bobbing bucket.

Actually, DD2 would claim that ownership of a pink calculator was taking a stand against the scientific indoctrination that she gets everyday.

I'm wondering if I should get some pink tinsel put up in the datacentre or something.

They did change the signs on the doors which said, "Take care! Men working behind doors!" It's no more safe if I'm the one who's been lifting floor tiles. I got an apology, too, which was more than I'd asked for or expected.

Wanna pink camouflage bible now.

a pink camouflage bible

so that would be useful when you're in need of divine inspiration while hiding in a feminine environment, would it?

How's this for having your head screwed up by the patriarchy....

I have that very Casio pink scientific calculator - when I first saw it on Amazon I was like WTF do they need a pink calculator?! Just another fucking pinkification of perfectly normal everyday stuff. I'm not buying that shit!! Then I was like - but if I purposefully don't buy it because it's pink, am I not denigrating all things girly...??

.... so I bought it.

And that is how y friends is how the patriarchy gets inside your brain, twists everything around with its fucked up logic and leaves you dazed and ....

If they did calculators in all colours of the rainbow, I'd probably want to buy them all, so I could line them up like the spectrum. They're clearly missing out on a marketing opportunity.

I do still want the pink camouflage bible, though. I have a collection of bibles from various forebears, and they're all black or dark blue or dark green or dark red, and a bit dull.

Unfortunately I fear the pink pipette filler would still get nicked. We had so few that worked the men would have got past the pinkness very quickly.

Also a pink calculator does just what a grey one does. The problem with kinder eggs and some happy meal promotions is the boys get a car that has play value and girls get some sort of doll or worse plastic jewellery that falls apart.

DDs were very scathing about a recent Lego promotion that did cars and planes clearly aimed at boys and a friends figure having a picnic for girls.

I have 10 pink calculators that I lend out to pupils who forget to bring theirs to my lessons. I bought the pink ones because I want to be able to spot one of MY calculators disappearing into a pupil's schoolbag. Interestingly, in my classes, the girls don't want to use my pink ones so they bring their own all the time, the boys think my pink calculators are cool and seem to "forget" their own calculators more regularly.

I would have preferred red or green tbh, but my basic requirement was that it stood out from the ones most pupils have (the basic grey ones that we sell cheapish at school) and pink fulfilled that requirement.

Girls perform slightly better at Maths at GCSE at my school than boys do, and our A level classes have slightly more girls than boys as well. I do appreciate this may not be the case everywhere, but it has been in all the schools I've taught in. University Maths degrees tend to be roughly evenly split between the sexes, even though the stereotype is that Maths is a male subject. I don't see pink calculators changing that.

Oh, that worked, WhentheRed. That was far too many pink bibles, and I'm over the idea now.

If they're going to get away from grey I want hi-viz colours. Can never put my hand on mine more than two seconds after I put it down, and the one on my phone is horrible to use.

Oh yes to high viz colours, what a brilliant idea! Sod the pink, day-glo orange is the way forward.

Oh yes to high viz colours, what a brilliant idea! Sod the pink, day-glo orange is the way forward

for calculators....not binoculars though!

My dd has one of these calculators. She is in Y7. She chose the blue one.
Just because pink exists doesn't mean a girl has to buy it.