BBC on gender stereotypes through toys and clothing 😲

[lcakethereforeIam]

Came across this artifact on YouTube!

I come from a very rough and tumble family and I don't think either my mum or I, have a tendency to treat babies differently based on their sex. We are extremely affectionate to baby boys and girls, while also being quick to throw and swing them through the air as soon as their necks are strong enough. While encouraging them to be active and mobile as soon as possible, whether a boy or a girl. I think it comes from the fact that both my DM and I were considered tomboys as children. We are both grew up feeling stifled by other people's perceptions of us due to our sex and have a pretty strong drive to make sure baby girls in our care, get to have every bit as much fun as baby boys. While we're also on the more daring end of what we'll encourage babies to do.

In an interesting twist though, my DM is insistent that my DN is wilder and more physical than my DS was, because my DB, DN's dad, was wilder and more physical than I was. She thinks DS is just like I was and DN is just like DB was. My DS surpassed physical milestones at a very young age, ie attempting steps at 7 months, controlled walking before 10 months, cycling at 3. But my DM insists that if DN had been encouraged like my DS was, she'd have been even faster.

And while my DB has always been consistently sporty, I do think a lot of that has to do with him having a lot more access to sports as a child. I was always underestimated in sports because I'm small, which would have been fine if the coaches would let me play, but they used to put me on the younger teams, which I hated. Especially as I was actually good and would almost always score or defend well, if i was given the chance. While the sports that I am best at, that I was always drawn to as a child and have turned out to be really, really good at as an adult, were too expensive for my family when we were kids.

Actually, some of the men from the forum I mentioned were instrumental in setting up a campaign group called '20 Miles More' whose aim was to convince the government to link our city to the proposed northern leg of HS2. Given that our city is just 20 miles off the WCML it seemed ridiculous and negligent not to connect it to the high speed network - whilst it was proposing to connect another city, also 20 miles( east|) off the WCML to the network. Cities without a connection would suffer a detriment and a subsequent reduction in inward investment in the event of being left off the network.

I've seen the arguments in favour of HS2 via participation in said forum. The arguments were as much about capacity and thet were about speed, Our city, for example, lost lots of its direct conections as a result of the Beeching cuts; and given congestion on the current network it was no longer possible to provide the necessary connections to many cities. Freight capacity is also required - especially if you want to remove HGVs from the motorway network and onto rail.

Of course transport is central to growing the economy and to moving people around it. It is also vital to get people out of cars and onto local public transport systems if we want to met our carbon emission targets

Virtually every other city in Europe has a high speed network ( as well as decent mass rapid transport systems in local metro areas), and also a far more affordable transport network than we have in Britain. We've become useless at major transport infrastructure projects - which is a real irony given Britain was the home of the industrial revolution an hence home to the very first passenger railways.

Now we've got a line (from not even guaranted to be actually in London itself) to Birmingham - but absolutely nothing else. Without a wider network it makes no sense at all.

That's the extent of my engagement with rapid transit systems and rail networks - and unlike most of the men on the forum I have no interest or particular awareness of guages and loads etc

What these studies seldom mention is that girls and boys are drawn to their interests in real life.

My boys both found their way to fixations on diggers, planes, tractors, trains and buses merely from observing them in real life. Toys didn't do it, they've always been much more interested in the real thing.

I personally have observed innate interest in things that are traditionally gendered 'boy stuff' in my children.

What I find an interesting thing to think about is if you have two boys, or two girls, which of their characteristics would you attribute to being down to their sex if one was the opposite sex? That's quite garbled, but for example:

A family with two boys, where one boy is boisterous, always active, into sports etc. The other quiet, studious and into coding. If the latter was female no doubt there
would be people pointing to the difference and saying it shows how boys like football and girls like quiet cerebral activities.
The other way around, people could say the former is a loud demanding "diva" and the boy is a typical computer nerd.

It's worth looking at the spectrum of behaviours within each sex. You might conclude that none are particularly exclusive to either sex.

@Keepingcosy It's interesting, isn't it, that children love vehicles! I used to love caravans when I was a kid. And car transporters - vehicles within vehicles! Lots of moving parts that 'do things', I suppose, that can be controlled.

This clip is from a longer series- 2 or 3 parts.
We all watched it at home and really helped us as a family - more because he could articulate it better than me!

But if that happens differentially between girls and boys, it's still within the context of many 'gendered' interactions and expectations from adults. My dd seemed to have more 'innate interest' in things you'd probably call 'boys stuff' too.🤷‍♀️

My daughters learnt early on to identify makes and models of tractors and cars because of my job. We also used to stop and watch construction sites.
I'm not autistic just a rare woman in engineering in the 90s.
They still know the difference between a pile driver and a screw auger.
It's all about the early conditioning and expectations. Many men (and I've worked with a lot), are bored shitless by sport, transport or coding just like many women. They hide it to different degrees.
"Did you see that ludicrous display last night" as the IT Crowd learnt to bluff.

I think the BBC clip I linked was actually more about the behaviour of the adults around a child that they believed was a boy/girl when in fact it was the opposite sex. When they were told and they faced up to their own pushing of stereotypes.

Fwiw trips to the dentist were made bearable because there was a box of sticklebricks in the waiting room and I would have dearly loved a Tonka toy.

@popeydokey I notice that the parents who are most adamant about boys and girls behaviour being innately different have one of each. Their children are also involved in stereotypically boy or girl activities and are dressed in stereotypical boy or girl clothes. Families with any more than a single girl seem to understand that personality accounts for differences much more (not so much for families with multiple boys and one girl who still seem to hang onto the stereotypes)

i read an article once on some research into the way adults interacted with babies and even before birth clear differences were noticed in how they spoke to boys vs girls.

Almost all families are going to be such small sample sizes that nobody could really draw any meaningful inferences either way.

When I was in the military, I trained young soldiers and part of that was around recognizing different types of vehicles. Quite a few kinds which are very similar, so very detailed.

Overall men did somewhat better at this on average, but what I think was more interesting was that to a very high degree a fair number of the men were really really into this stuff, whereas the women in general weren't, they did it as part of their job but didn't have collections of models or posters as a hobby.

My friend who is a musician made a similar observation to me once. He said most of the professional women guitar players he knew had a limited number of instruments and equipment. Of the things they really needed, they found what they likes best and that was that. A lot of the men were basically collectors, always looking for the next new thing, with as many guitars and as many gadgets as they could afford.

I imagine the interest drives some of the achievement at this stuff, but it's the interest that seems divergent to me. I don't really think socialization accounts for the gap there which is really significant IMO.

Interesting @TempestTost . My DD is a brilliant guitar player, lead, acoustic, classical. She has a limited amount of kit. Mostly because she won't go into a guitar shop by herself, my DH goes with her to talk to the male shop assistants and shield her from the mostly male customers.
It's actually quite an ordeal. Spending 1000s on an instrument with the amount of testosterone flying around.

I buy a lot of car parts, I can't tell you how much I love the anonymous nature of the internet for research and then ordering. I never want to go back to queuing at Speedy Spares with the naked calendars, the open stares, the silent and vocal judgement.

Gendered difference in interest in vehicles or technoligy cannot possibly be innate, given the tiny proportion of human hsitory for which those things have existed.

I'm not sure .. you may just be noticing some types of kit. Think of kitchenware - I'm betting that while men may be a bit more into Japanese knives or whatever, women are more likely to collect gadgets etc. Or gardening - there seem to be plenty of women who collect both tools and plants. Crafting items ...

I love showing this when teaching gender stereotypes, it always sparks a good discussion.

I did that too, and knew the model of every car in my street at three.
I still dont know how to drive however 😂

@XLondoner I own a hot hatch. When I went to pick it up after a service the guy behind the counter said "oh your car is ready" pointing to the white Ford KA. No thanks mate, I'll take the car I came with. He apologised when he realised his mistake but it did make me realise that my car doesn't really match with my frumpy mum aesthetic.

I have two boys and I try to teach them to be capable and independent but I notice parents, particularly dads of girls, stop their children playing with mine and telling them they're too small to do that. Both mine like to climb, my 14mo could climb before he could walk (barefoot up a very high slide). I too stop myself saying "be careful" and prefer to get them to focus on the task at hand, placing of their feet etc.

My eldest (3yo) seems to be big into puzzles and how things work etc. My youngest is into wheels in a big way and gravitates towards them, when the pushchair is folded he will sit for ages just spinning the wheels. They're still young. I like to think I have encouraged their interests rather than pushed ones based on their sex. But I'm not the only person in their life and I can't control sex based bias entirely.

Is that right? Or are pre pubertal boys bigger and hence stronger and faster? All the boys little athletics results records are faster than the girls of the same age class in our state and the other big state in Australia. That’s not coincidence, there is some clear factor distinguishing boys athletic results from girls athletic results from very young. The Girls under 9 70m record is 10.36, boys under 9 70m record 9.82 . That’s a bloody huge gap, for 8yos! That gap persists through all the events and all the junior age groups. U11 girls 1500 4:48.14 , boys 4:35.25

i remember seeing/reading a detailed review of sex differences years ago and one of the only statistically significant difference noted between the sexes (and can't remember how significant) was the interest shown in wheels by boys

Like my DH. Knows the cars, reads the reviews and has opinions on them all, watches grand prix. Doesn’t drive.

Re the heart in the mouth moments as they teeter in the air, I used lots of positive phrases. Two hands! Watch what you are doing! Hold tight!

Never never ‘don’t fall, don’t spill’ etc.

I'm very bossy, myself! I think the best leadership is also based on inspiration and confidence - as well as seeking and influencing co-operation, of course.

It is probably true that no particular activity or interst is totally exculsive to one sex or the other, but that there are tendencies, sometimes strong tendencies, for grouping/clustering around certain types of activity or trait that do correspond with sex.

That is very interesting!

I love driving, but have no real interest in car makes and types, apart from knowing what looks good to me. Whereas, almost without fail, most men i know always comment on the makes and models of other cars on the road.