BBC on gender stereotypes through toys and clothing 😲

[lcakethereforeIam]

Came across this artifact on YouTube!

Technology or the 'means of production' have always been with us, though, just at different stages. Rubbing two sticks together to create fire; the invention of the wheel; rudimentary hand tools ( animals create tools too) and so on. Technology and tools evolve.

animals create tools too

They do - but there's no sex differential. Male and female sea otters both have favourite rocks to open shells. Male and female.chimps equally make rods to fish for termites. With Japanese macaques it was a female.who first discovered the washing technique to speed up the process of getting the rice grains put out by researchers, then the whole troop learnt it.

And interest in technology- and particularly in modern aspects like wheels and cars - is not.down to a gene on the Y chromosome. It's because baby boys are handed toys with wheels and have cars pointed out to them, while girls are handed dolls (which some of us took apart to see how the blinking eye mechanism worked and then lost interest).

Technology or the 'means of production' have always been with us, though, just at different stages. Rubbing two sticks together to create fire; the invention of the wheel; rudimentary hand tools ( animals create tools too) and so on. Technology and tools evolve.

We don't know who invented what in prehistory. Chances are inventions and refinements of technologies were done by whoever was most involved in a particular task, and we don't know exactly how gendered roles were prior to agricultural societies.
It might be that if the idea that typically men hunted and women gathered and tended the hearth was correct, then men would be most involved in producing weapons, women would tend to be the ones make the advances in fire making, developing cooking vessels and making clothing.

It might be that if the idea that typically men hunted and women gathered and tended the hearth was correct

Although recent archaeological evidence suggests it isn't. And if you look at current hunter gatherer societies you find it tends to rely on a rather circular definition of 'Men hunt (which we define as hunting because it's what men do), women gather (including gathering animals, but that's not hunting because women are doing it, and anyway they don't use spears, no a harpoon definitely isn't a type of spear ...)'.

Yes, I should have bolded the 'if' in that!

However - my theory is that men and women are both interested in 'technology' and have participated in its r&d over millennia. But the domains of apparent interest are delineated by gendered cultures rather than anything inherent. And to a large extent the 'feminine' areas are routinely undervalued vs the 'masculine' ones.
An exception to this may be that there does seem to be an all too real sexed difference in aggression and propensity for violence so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a real sexed difference in interest in offensive weaponry. Maybe that extends to other areas ... if you see someone in one of those ludicrous farting sports cars aggressively accelerating and braking along urban streets is it ever a woman?

I remember reading, years ago so forgive me if I misremember, something about types of wear on old bones. The male skeletons had wear that suggested they spent a lot of time sitting on their arses haunches chatting, while the female bones showed use from heavy labour like using grind stones. Don't know how they sexed the skeletons, perhaps some of them had their heads tilted 🤔😃

I simply don't think this can be true - that chromosomal sex has no impact on tendencies. There do seem to be definite tendencies ( not hard and fast rules, though) regardless of what toys or interaction is being had with children.

My eldest son didn't have vehicles thrust upon him, yet he still developed an obsession with tractors ( our kitchen over-looked a farmer's field) - and one of the highlights of an early holiday in France was that we rocked up in a barn to shelter from the rain, and lo and behold there was a muck spreader in it. He was beside himself.

I certainly didn't thrust dolls and girly stuff on my daughter. I had her when I was 19 and I was very much into 'gender neutrality'; yet I simply don't recall her ever being into vehicles - even when presented with them. She had a wooden train set - but didn't show much interest in it at all.

Obviously these are just a couple of personal anecdotes, but i'd be most surprised if the biological differentiation of the sexes did not have a corresponding set of behavioural/preference/attunement differentiations - even if just at the most general level.

Pretty sure that pattern of behavior is still widely observed, OP

I can't really think that accounts for why professional female musicians are less inclined to collect equipment. Bonnie Raitt isn't avoiding going down to the local guitar shop due to excessive testosterone in the air!

men and women are both interested in 'technology' and have participated in its r&d over millennia. But the domains of apparent interest are delineated by gendered cultures rather than anything inherent. And to a large extent the 'feminine' areas are routinely undervalued vs the 'masculine' ones.

Absolutely. There's a patchwork quit thread at the moment discussing of whether a number 10 sharp or number 11 milliner is the better needle for English paper piecing. Thats just as much 'technology' as the best choice of wah-wah pedal to go with your Fender Strat. And to go back to the earlier point about collectors, I bet women who have an opinion on that sort of technical.detail of quilting needle also have an extensive collection of hobby-related equipment.

Crafting items women for sure. Though I don't know of any men into crafting as such so I couldn't even guess what a male crafter might collect in terms of craft stuff. One thing I've noticed at my workplace is women come in to use the silhouette cutter which Is apparently "craft" whereas the men come in to use the 3D printer. But they are super into the printer itself and don't always care what they build - the women seem to see the cutter as a means to an end. They never get excited discussing the specifications even if they are happy it can accomplish their project.

Kitchen gadgets - I'd put men here, they tend to collect more weird things. Not your amazing creuset casserole dish, but things like automatic sauce stirrers or other gadgets.

ON gardening I am not sure about gadgets, but I do see men typically as the ones who get into niche areas. Like, when you see an episode of Gardener's World, who is it that had 150 differernt examples of snowdrops on a shelf in his garden? Not a lady, 9 times out of 10.

There are a lot of very aggressive female drivers around, though. We all expect men to be aggressive not so much women. I've witnessed a woman trying to over-take me on a very narrow stretch of suburban road: as a result knocking an oncoming male motorcyclist ( who had right of way) off his bike. She then had the audacity to make it all about her and her feelings, rather than the damage she had caused and how she could have killed him.

I was over-taken in my own road ( a 20 mile an hour residential road) at very high speed by a big, black four by four....who then came to an abruupt halt at the traffic lights. I got out to speak with the driver...it was a woman - who gave me the middle finger - before driving off like a bat out of hell, mounting a pavement to get around a traffic queue........I've seen her around since, and she's totally mental.....

Driving insurance premiums for young males are much higher, though, than for any other age group.

DS has always been interested in vehicles, construction work, and collecting sticks to whack things with.

I have actively discouraged all of this as I find the vehicle interest tedious and the sticks annoying. There is no way he was encouraged or socialised to like these things. (And he didn’t go to nursery until he was 3.5, and was shielding with me during covid prior to this so didn’t get it from anyone else either).

He is 6 now and very much still interested in hitting things with sticks. Maybe this is completely unrelated to the fact he is male but I don’t accept that it comes from societal pressure or conditioning either.

Yes, both of my sons would automatically pick up sticks to imitate weapons whenever we went for walks in the wood........I was dead against giving children guns or weapons, but due to this tendency of theirs ended up buying them swords...as these seemd to be a more 'honourable;' type of weapon than a gun.

I used to like peeling sticks as a child......and still do. It must have prepared me for the endless vegetable preparation that comes with being vegetarian. 😉

I’ve used this before in class, it’s great! Even the language that is used with boys and girls is very different and subtly leads to stereotypes.

People say oh I didn’t force tractors onto my son but he became obsessed with them etc or my girl naturally love unicorns and playing with make up. It may appear that way because gender stereotypes and norms are everywhere! Advertisements on television, toy divisions in shops, the clothes they wear, the peers they interact with who potentially have had gendered toys, watching how their parents behave and what they do, grandparents expectations etc. I hear it a lot when parents are like oh she just absolutely loves dolls and it isn’t anything I have done, it has just came naturally. It hasn’t. It is very very subtly encouraged by the world we live in. So interesting!

Reminds me of the film 'made in Dagenham'. What constitutes skilled work?

I think there's a massive element of socialisation, my dad taught me to love art, literature and poetry, my mum taught me to love science. My ancestors were artisans who worked hard so I value skill and craftsmanship and anything that requires great application.

We're all a product of nature and nurture.

Is that because boys are bought/given/encouraged to play with cars early, where girls aren’t?

I loved vehicles and wheels as a kid, so bought mine lots. I always wanted a scalectrix but never got one cos girl.

i remember once my toddler with me at a school event, and one of the mums (with boys) starting on about how she would really want a girl, all the pretty clothes, doing hair etc. she only got boys and had to put up with car obsession, because all boys like cars, girls sit and draw nicely.

dd promptly sat down, opened up her little pink handbag, and started pulling out cars, trucks, ambulances, helicopters, and fire engines, vrooming them round.

the look on the woman’s face was priceless.

even when I was pregnant the baby met stereotypes. If they kicked it was “ooh maybe it’s a boy, a footballer”. Anything wrong and it was “it’ll be a girl, giving mum grief already”. Everything was attributed to a stereotype.

so I don’t think anything can be seen as “innate”, when babies are indoctrinated practically before birth. After all, many find out the sex so they can buy gendered baby stuff-neutral colours aren’t enough, it has to be pink or blue.

It's very hard to say 'my DS/DD was never exposed to ANY stereotyping, ever, and just grew up boy-boy/girly-girl'.
And that's not even addressing the parents' own unconscious bias.

Things were getting a bit better - the Argos catalogue stopped having separate 'Girls' Toys/Boy's Toys' sections, but it was informative to see how the toys were still clearly gendered, without being labelled.

But of course the trans movement has now so vehemently reinforced strict gender stereotyping that any deviation from the sugar'n'spice/rats'n'snails dichotomy involves a flag, language-mangling, law-altering, possibly lifelong Big Pharma + surgery, pronouns etc...

I loved cars and guns and Junior Woodwork sets and Meccano when I was a little girl. I would have sold my soul for a train set - we couldn't afford one anyway, even if I'd been a boy. But I also had two dolls that I loved - just two special ones, though I never had any interest in acquiring any more.

My parents were surprisingly cool about it all, but I think that was the era - it was OK for girls to be tomboys, and indeed a big strong girl who didn't mind getting her hands dirty was an asset on a farm.

I think it's plausible that there might be an inate reason why girls may be more attracted to "baby like" dolls than boys. In evolutionary terms it would be an advantage if women had an inate attraction/protectionism for babies probably more so than for men. I do however believe that girl/boy toy preferences are mainly due to socialisation.

When my eldest son was a toddler, dressed in a blue sunsuit, a stranger came up and said how nice it was to see a girl dressed in blue what was her name, so I said his (traditional english male) name and the reply was that it was an unusual name for a girl.

😂
I would have liked to see that stranger as part of this study.

How does that theory fit kids who much prefer toy dogs to toy humans?

tbf most dogs are nicer than most humans...sorry.

I didn’t like that hashtag at the end, #NoBoysandGirls, I agree we need to tackle boy/girl stereotypes but I can’t help see that through a dystopian lens that pretends girls and boys don’t have their own specific needs.

That said, the points in the film are important to get out there. I’ve watched similar footage examining how people speak differently to tiny babies according to whether they perceive them to be male or female. So the nature/nurture bit is impossible to tease out, because the socialising of boys and girls in stereotyped ways begins from day dot.

My DD loved Cars and she had all the lightning McQueen toys. She did used to play with them differently to most boys though, more about the characters interacting than watching them speed down anything.

But we handed them to her your siblings when he was old enough and he couldn't care less. He prefers construction.