My six year old daughter has just told me her baby sister can't be a 'boss baby' because all bosses are boys

[weekfour]

We’ve just had a chat at bed time, after watching Boss Baby, the animated movie. We talked about the funny bits and about how the siblings love each other and then we had a laugh about how her younger sister is the boss** baby. She looked at me so sincerely and said..

but she can’t be the boss baby can she? She’s a girl. All bosses are boys.

We’re a feminist household. Both me and her father work. We have THE SAME JOB! Her favourite book is one that we got from The People’s History Museum about feminist heros! She enjoys ballet and cricket and reading and running and would never expect a boy at school to be any better at anything than she is. We model equality and have a wide circle of friends from lots of different backgrounds. Off the top of my head, we know nearly as many women ‘bosses’ as men.

But it’s still there. Is this where the pay gap starts? With the expectations of six year olds? What do I do? How do I stop it? Where does it come from?

I recall I went and sat in the school playground to listen to what games the kids played - just out of curiosity- and was horrified to hear them playing bosses and secretaries- where the bosses chased and had to catch a secretary - I kid you not - mine you we were in Sydney at the time The kids were around 8 years old at the time

Was this fairly recently womanformallyknownaswoman?

I don't see subjugated women

Yeah... I think that's part of the problem.. lots of people don't see the subjugated ones.

I think that it's as some others have said, within this narrow context (ie. the movie boss baby) they've seen that the bosses are all boys. They haven't widened it out to their own actual day to day experience.

My boys do the same - girls like pretty stuff and boys like cool stuff - yet DS2's favourite colour is pink, and he loves a pretty butterfly/flower. It does seep in, even at a young age, and the most effective thing I've found is just to ask 'why?' - to make them think it through and realise it's rubbish for themselves.

Yeah... I think that's part of the problem.. lots of people don't see the subjugated ones

The only subjugated ones I see are victims of a religious ideology. I don't see it in this country, the UK. Sorry.

The Leader of this country is a woman for goodness sake.

The easiest way to deal with inequality is to pretend it doesn't exist.
No one who works for organisations such as Women's Aid have the luxury of being able to do that. They have to deal with reality.

I smell bollocks

Yes, I think I smell that too!

Nice to have our suspicions confirmed - XY people really do smell different, huh?

The easiest way to deal with inequality is to pretend it doesn't exist

The leader of the country is a woman.

No one who works for organisations such as Women's Aid have the luxury of being able to do that

I was talking about the supposed patriarchy not the violence perpetrated by men on women.

You keep saying that Theresa May is a woman, as if its a gotcha. Just off the top of my head;

• women are the ones bearing the brunt of austerity measures
• More children are being taken into care than ever, because ditto
• The Govt is about to debate removing benefits including housing benefit from women in domestic violence refuges

You're still not proving to me that I live in a patriarchy and women are subjugated.

Do you have kids A4710? If so, I’d be amazed if you haven’t seen these things first hand.

As for this...

Almost all TV adverts show women in a positive light and the man to be in the incapable one.

What utter, utter —MRA-style— bullshit.

A4710
No one here has to prove anything to you

This thread is not about you

you are not even the op.

And yet here you are barrelling into a thread, changing the topic to suit what you want and making petulant demands that the women here drop their interesting discussion in order to coddle you.

No wonder you don't see subjugated women. You think subjugating women is standard.

Do you have kids A4710

I do. He goes to a nursery where 90% of the workers are female. He's also goes to Reception where 100% of the staff involved in his class are female.

Ha, never worked in the property industry then.

I was told to take my wedding ring off when attending milkround interviews, told I was given a temp job in a government dept as "no-one else will employ you and this might give you a chance" and then the deputy head of the professional body told me "you're too old to be taken on, won't get the work out of you" but what he meant was I was childbearing age.

I was also told lots of other stuff to do with recruitment (one firm only took on blonde girls according to my law lecturer) and had a lovely (well meaning) posh boy, happy with his predicted 3rd, consoling me on not getting any interviews (obv a 1st isn't good enough to outweigh being a mature student female.) Needless to say, he got a fantastic job...

I'm one of those people that people just say stuff to and it's amazing what has been said to me over the years.

Don't even get me started on builders or some van drivers (go on a van forum and spot the "do you let your wife drive your van?" comments)...

Did the person saying there was no subjugation miss the recent naming and shaming about the reasons not to put women on boards? That's worth a read! No good ones left...

No wonder you don't see subjugated women

I don't see it because it's blatantly not true. All I see around me is successful females.

'Lady bosses' is a horrible phrase.

I do. He goes to a nursery where 90% of the workers are female. He's also goes to Reception where 100% of the staff involved in his class are female.

Yes Child care is a low valued and underpaid job. It is predominantly thought of as 'women';s work' and that is what you ... and your child are seeing. Women look after children. Men are the bosses. (Males in teaching are massively over represented in SLT)
So thanks for backing us up.
And can we get back to the OPs discussion now?

(seriously everyone else - I've 'met' A-whatever a bunch of numbers before on a brexit thread. Goady fucker doesn't even begin to cover it. If there was an 'ignore' button I would suggest you use it. Instead just employ it in your mind. Don't let him derail.)

I can see the headline now - Man in realising that women fill the majority of caring roles shocker!

Man in realising that women fill the majority of caring roles shocker

It's their choice to do that, just like it's my EX P's choice to be a mum and a full time Medical Professional.

I would have said something about a Theresa May or Angela Merkel being the "boss" of their whole country.

We didn't even get to page two before an MRA turned up to tell us that women aren't subjugated. Go to the "transphobic sun" thread and read women's accounts of street harassment. The biggest positive discrimination that men receive and benefit from is much lower rates of sexual assault and harrassment compared to women.

I would very happily sacrifice all-women shortlists, boardroom quotas, if some kind fairy came with a wand and said "I can end all male sexual entitlement and violence FOREVER, but you have to give up positive action that benefits women for me to do it".

this is quite an interesting programme, for anyone wondering how children perceive their sex.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09202jz/episodes/guide

well worth a watch.

Nope, not 30 years ago, this sort of stuff is still very much alive and well. In fact, I actually think it's worse, it used to be easier to deal with when it was verbalised.

I instructed solicitors last year and despite me doing all the communication through the sales process, when it went to the solicitors, they wrote to my DH solely, not even a name check. Not even an apology when I pointed it out, I should have fired their arses...

There's a chapter in 'Delusions of Gender' which I think is called 'Gender Detectives' which is all about the way small children try and work out clues of what boys like and what girls like by the world around them... and some of their 'findings' are amusing to say the least.
There's one anecdote of a boy and his dad sitting by a stream dangling their feet into the water and the little boy comes to the conclusion that only boys like dangling their feet in water - because there aren't any girls around.
Children really do pick up the strangest world views, and then become quite entrenched in that position... so even when their own first hand experience tells them their wrong - they refuse to see it, or file it away as anomalous. A particularly frequent one is the 'women can't be doctors' belief - even when the child in question has only ever been to women doctors. Sometimes in the case where their own mother is a doctor. It is that entrenched.

My point is that he is surrounded by women at school and nursery. So, presumably, is the OP's daughter. So where are these "insidious" thoughts coming from? As mentioned previously, I call bullshit on the OP.

Your point was ridiculous and ill thought through. No one said women weren't teachers. The OP's daughter said women can't be bosses. Nursery workers are not bosses - and the ones that are will be so mixed in with the others that a toddler cannot be expected to pick up on the hierarchy. What they see is women looking after children. Just like mummy.
When they get into primary school - they see female teachers, looking after children. Just like mummy. The big man in the office who doesn't actually do any of the teaching or child care... well a lot of the time, he is a man. And they are old enough at this point to see the hierarchy.

Children know that women work - no one is disputing that. The point is that children's books/ children's films/ T.V programmes/ insidious every day language used by adults/ and a bit of first hand experience reinforce and idea that men are the bosses. And this becomes entrenched - to the point that, like a creationist refusing to except evolution, they just don't see the examples (and you have to admit these examples are fewer in number - statistics back that up) of women as the boss.
Seeing predominantly women in nurturing/ child care roles, if anything, will be intensifying that belief - not breaking it down.
Hence your point did exactly the opposite of what you thought it was doing. Because unfortunately you don't have any understanding of the discussion in hand, nor do you seem to have done any reading around the subject - as many of us have, but thought you were qualified to weigh in anyway.
Because you think a man's opinion is always valid and worth hearing, and that a man knows more of women's reality that women do. And then you dare to claim omen as a class are not subjugated.
slow hand clap