Gender stereotyping is getting worse isn't it?

[Eminybob]

You'd think it would happen less as we become more progressive as a society but that really isn't the case is it? Lego is now split into boys and girls versions, kinder eggs, clothes are now more pink vs blue than ever.

Saw this pic on Facebook today, and my first thought was, well that's why there weren't so many parents transing their kids in the 70's.

What can we do to avoid this?

As a side note, I never noticed Lego Elves was aimed at girls. It has dragons, elves, male and female characters.
The colours include pinks and purples, but also greens, browns and blues.
Not sure what makes it "for girls" really.

I was shopping for pull ups for ds today, the huggies night time ones.
In 2 shops I went into, they had sold out of the blue ones in his size. There were pink ones available, which were discounted. Now I would happily buy the pink ones for ds. The blue ones had Disney cars and a picture on the front of a little boy on the potty, the pink ones had Disney princesses on and a picture of a little girl on the potty.
I picked up the pink pack as I assumed no difference in the actual pants, but ds, who is not quite 3 yet, said no no mummy I don't want girls ones!
Now, again, to be fair, he tells me his favourite colour is blue, and he loves the Cars film and cars in general, so I'm not surprised he would have chosen them when given the choice between the 2, but it was the fact that he, at such a young age, is already identifying themes and colours as for boys or girls.
He did not get that from me. Possibly DH, although I do correct him if I hear him say stuff like that, but mostly probably from nursery and tv.
Like a pp said up there ^ you would have to completely cocoon yourself away to avoid it!

Yes, it is everywhere. There's a thread in AIBU about a nursery making girls wear pink shirts and boys blue.

And some people in all seriousness ask what harm it does. Well, the harm is quite obvious.

It is all over! The other thread about all four houses in a school being named after men is another example. The reply from the head just makes it worse.

One would think that after Harry Potter showed them how to do the house naming right, they'd have done so.

Granted, even in Harry Potter, the houses called after men were the most important one, but you'd think they'd be able to do it at least as well as a book series written over ten years ago!

It's so depressingly pervasive. And it infects everyone's thinking. My friend's DM rang her the other day because she was babysitting her DGS for the first time (my friend's nephew) and didn't know how to play with boys (my friend has an older girl). The DGS in question is 7 months old! Yet the assumption was there was already something different about his interests/toys.

My mum kept some of my old primary school exercise books. I was looking through them the other day. In one (c. 1976) there was a series of worksheets. You had to circle the girls toys and draw a square round the boys toys. Circle the things that mummys do (cooking, washing, taking baby to the park) and put a square round the things that daddies do (go to work, wash the car, DIY). Mens jobs and womens jobs.

I'd got them all right and got a star.

BarbarianMum, it's frightening, isn't it, how things go back to how they were then.

My childhood was spent in the short golden age when at least progressive parents like mine didn't force genderism on children, and the primary schools had learnt to not do it too unsubtly.

This gender shit comes as a complete shock to me, like returning to the Middle Ages or something. It never was normal to me.

OMG barbarian that is incredible!

See that's what confuses me, there is no way in a million years that you would find that in a 2017 school book, as it wouldn't be seen as "PC", yet it's rife in advertising, toys, clothes, everything else.

See that's what confuses me, there is no way in a million years that you would find that in a 2017 school book, as it wouldn't be seen as "PC", yet it's rife in advertising, toys, clothes, everything else.

You're absolutely right! How ridiculous.

I think its complex. I think some things were better in the 1970s (less pressure regarding body image for young girls) but loads of things were actually much worse. My parents wouldn't have seen anything wrong with those worksheets in 1976 (my dad still won't).

But, when ds1 started school in 2009 there was a poster on the classroom door which read: Boys = noise + dirt. Our introductory talk had the basic premise "we know boys dont like to read but this is how we are going to tackle it." When my friend queried her dd's lack of progress in maths, she was told not to worry because her handwriting was "lovely and neat". And, despite all this, its not actually a terrible school, just an ordinary one.

This stuff is so ingrained sometimes I think we'll never get rid of it. Things move around a bit but its all still there. [gloom and doom and despair]

I think its complex. I think some things were better in the 1970s (less pressure regarding body image for young girls) but loads of things were actually much worse.

Yes, it is complex. In a way, times were worse then, but at least people openly admitted to it. You could point at it and say "That's sexist", and no one was able to deny it.

Now, gender stereotyping is everywhere, but always in deniable form. (Well, except the UK. I live in Germany, that girls can be forced to wear skirts in a European country, it boggles my mind)

Now, it is: "Yes, there's a blue toy aisle and a pink toy aisle, but no one says the pink one is for girls! That's just your own prejudice!" and so on and so forth. "Yes, that's a girl playing with the toy kitchen in the advertisement, but that's just a coincidence".

As a general trend.
I have observed plenty of unashamed, openly sexist advertisement and opinions, but to me it seems the sexism is going underground, hiding behind other things. ("Choice" is a very popular one, for example. "Oh, girls just don't choose STEM subjects, what can we do?")

That's it isn't it! They make undeniably pink for girls and blue for boys products, then turn it back on the buyers for being sexist. "Well buy the pink one for your son then" no, that's not the point!!

I had a good school and many girls did STEM subjects (80s). They tried to push me into an engineering degree, which I resisted but ended up in anyway post grad) but at the same time, they made the S1/2 (Scotland) girls do Home Economics (sewing, cooking and house fucking management) and the boys did Techie drawing and woodwork. I would have LOVED to have done woodwork! Do girls get to do it now?

Another bloody thread has just started. The extreme end of gender stereotyping. Teaching girls that boys need to watch porn to get ready for sex.

Is it just that everyone is talking about this? Or has feminism really hit the skids.

They do in ds1's secondary Assigned - at leadt in KS3. By KS4 unfortunately the old patterns reassert themselves to a large extent. Boys cook now but few do textiles and only a few girls take woodwork/metal work (not called that now, has another name that I can't recall).

I had two young children in the 70s and have grandchildren now.

One aspect in which things were definitely less gendered in the 70s was colours and clothes for babies and toddlers. I have pictures of my two baby daughters in brilliant primary coloured babygros - e.g. even a red and black chequered one and an orange and white striped one etc. Now your eyes are assailed by pink - candy pink, fuschia pink, every shade of pink.

But jobs were more gendered. Both my daughters kicked the gendered job thing into the long grass, as I did myself in the 60s.

Do girls get to do it now?

I got to do it in the 90s. There was no segregation of the sexes in anything that I remember, well, except sports. Everyone had to learn how to sew and embroider in primary school.

Got to do wood work at secondary school, but only for half a year, I think it was part of the arts lessons, and might have been an individual decision by our rather progressive teacher.

That was Germany, though, might make a difference?

That was Germany, though, might make a difference?

I don't think so, but are all German schools the same?
My English school in the 80s, all pupils did cooking, sewing, woodwork and metalwork up to around 15 years old when we got to choose our GCSEs.
It seems like not all English schools were the same, though, judging from this thread.

I vividly remember a secondary school tech lesson in the 1990s when the girls were told to get on with their diagram drawing and the boys were told to come and have a look at the new tool that the teacher had just got in...

I'd love to think that this wouldn't happen now, or at least not so obviously

I don't think so, but are all German schools the same?

No, but it wasn't an especially progressive school ... I think, so I would have thought other schools weren't much worse.

The primary school definitely wasn't, and was a sexist nightmare in terms of how some teachers behaved, but there was no sex segregation.

My English school in the 80s, all pupils did cooking, sewing, woodwork and metalwork up to around 15 years old when we got to choose our GCSEs.
It seems like not all English schools were the same, though, judging from this thread.

Mu english school in the 80's "allowed" you to choose from cooking/sewing, and woodwork/metalwork.

However, it was very much the unspoken rule that cooking was for girls, woodwork for boys. We had the "choice", but it wasn't really a choice.

out of 250 pupils in our year, only one girl chose the woodwork option. Me, a new girl from an all girls school who'd never come across subject segregation by sex.

It was ok, but i was very much treated as "lesser". It was ok for girls to have a go, bit it wasn't as though I was going to be any good at it. Plus i had to work on my own, as the boys unsuprisingly stuck together.

I would have liked to continue to gsce, but felt so unsupported i dropped it.

Fwiw, it was exactly the same when i chose a'level physics a few years later.

I didn't think my school was particularly progressive reallanotherone, but maybe it wasn't so bad.
PS. When we got the choice, at GCSE, very few girls did the woodwork/metallwork craft subjects and very few boys did the cooking/sewing craft subjects.
Which is weird, because up to that point everything was equal. So gender stereotyping must have been coming from outside the school.