BBC on gender stereotypes through toys and clothing 😲

[lcakethereforeIam]

Came across this artifact on YouTube!

Yes, that's the bbc getting it horribly wrong.
There most certainly are girls and boys, it should be #NoBoysAndGirlsToys (clothes, games, can'ts and shoulds)

Definitely this.

When DD (4) was born I had very strong ideas about gender neutrality. I avoided buying any overtly gendered toys or clothing and actively encouraged things like construction, vehicles etc. I’m always looking for opportunities to highlight girls and women doing interesting, exciting, physical, risky, sporty etc things. I change the pronouns in stories and rhymes. I try to challenge the ‘default masculine’ eg we’re on holiday and yesterday we were watching some kite surfers - too far away to make out the sex but made a point of saying ‘wow, look at that one; she’s going so fast - oh oh she’s fallen off, look she’s getting herself back up again’ etc etc. DH tries to get her interested in watching sport with him - both male and female, and she’s tried both football and rugbytots as activities though preferred dancing so that’s what stuck!

DD is SO stereotypically girly - right now anyway. She’s all about the baby dolls, the pretty dresses, princesses, unicorns etc. It was there anyway, but has definitely picked up since she started school nursery. She definitely notices what media/ advertising etc have as boys/ girls toys even if they’re not billed as such. But even before she’d seen a screen she struggled to muster much interest in the cars/ garage/ tool bench etc type toys we’d bought her alongside the others. She’s not even especially interested in building with blocks/ magnet tiles etc and only wants to do it alongside you as part of some kind of role play ‘pretend this is the ice cream shop mummy, these ones can be the cones’ type stuff.

As much as I’d still love to steer her away from the more appearance obsessed elements of it (the amount of people who bought her something make up related for her FOURTH birthday was astonishing - obviously only kids/ play type stuff but still!) - I’m trying to remember it’s absolutely fine for her to like the things that are deemed as more ‘girly’ - just as long as she doesn’t feel that they’re her only option and as long as we keep exposing her to all the possibilities and opportunities out there for her. It’s definitely scary how insidious some of this stuff is though.

And is there anything useful we could use these clusters for (this is a genuine question - I'm interested in this area)? For example, say you were hiring for a job involving driving and you had a man and woman both equally qualified. Would you use the knowledge of these loose, class-level tendencies in your decision-making?

I can only think of things involving masses of people, like marketing, where knowledge of these tendencies would come into play. At individual level it strikes me as poor reasoning to think that sex dictates what someone's interests or skills are. But there must be a quantity where it becomes more useful?

Interesting! Would like to read if you can remember the source!

Anyone remember that ape study which many people drag up to “prove” gender is innate?

they gave them toy trucks and kitchen equipment, and observed that the males chose the wheeled objects, and the females the frying pans.

since debunked, as what actually happened is ALL the apes wanted the trucks, but the males were physically stronger so used force to acquire the trucks, and the females were left with the pans.

as someone pointed out, how can liking cars/kitchens be innate to apes when they can’t drive or cook 😂

Marketing is an interesting subject. It seems to me that it's as much about persuading you to want things as it is about giving you what you want.
For instance the re-branding of Lucozade from a sick room drink to clubber fuel.

The latest Gillette adverts are more metrosexual than in the past. Have milk tray done a same sex attracted couple yet?

I was thinking of breakdown mechanics.
I might prefer as a lone woman to have a woman mechanic but a woman might prefer not to do the job for the same reasons.

And my own personal observation at secondary school when choosing GCSE’s..

out of 250 kids in my year only one girl chose wood/metal work. None of the boys chose cooking/sewing. Complete division along gender lines.

was it because no girls wanted to do metalwork? Or boys wanted to do cooking? No, it was social fear of being seen as odd, girly, butch, lesbian etc. of being the only one in a class of the opposite sex.

yes, I was that girl who did wood/metal work. I enjoyed it, I was good at it. But I ditched it asap, because the experience of being in a male class with a male teacher being treated as lesser.

same with physics/maths a’level. Only two girls took physics.

being a girl in a traditionally male environment is hard.

look at computer science/programming. Male subject, yes? But the original coders were female, as it was seen as akin to secretarial working- for typists.

once those females developed computer science to a level where men saw it’s worth, suddenly it became men who had the “natural” aptitude, and women were elbowed out.

@Allthegoodnamesaretaken92

I was the one of the very few girls doing physics and FM in my mixed school. Only the girls who were really good and could beat rather than joining the boys did it. I write scientific software- a field where women aren't quite as woefully underrepresented as other computing areas. I'm not sure why - possibly because many of the people early to the field came from crystallography where there were quite a few eminent women most notably Dorothy Hodgkin.

Whereas at DDs girls' school there was a good sized set doing gcse electronics, two doing CS, then at A level a good number doing physics and FM. (A few did CS to AS and only a couple continued to A level but that was more because the pre reform spec was a bit shite and they're so limited in number of a levels. She has to write code now, nice properly gnarly C for embedded systems as part of being an electronics design engineer.

Isn’t the observation that at girls schools the uptake of “boy” subjects like maths, physics and computing is far higher?

Says a lot about whether the higher uptake in boys is because boys are “naturally” better, or girls are simply socialised out in mixed sex schools.

then it’s no wonder there are few girls and women in male dominated professions. Starts in school where they drop those subjects because they perceive themselves to be “naturally” no good.

i’ve actually heard teachers comment- telling parents a kid is not doing well in Maths because girls tend to be better at English and the arts.

It was a while ago now (1986) but my A Level physics teacher announced in one of our classes that he was not happy that there were girls in his Physics class and it shouldn't be allowed as girls' brains were not suited to Physics.

When it gets as far as interviewing then you'd obviously have to assume that all the candidates were already qualified and interested in the role as advertised; then it would be up to the employer to find the best candidate.

When it gets as far as interviewing then you'd obviously have to assume that all the candidates were already qualified and interested in the role as advertised; then it would be up to the employer to find the best candidate.

Yes indeed. My bias might be that the woman was likely to be more inherently interested and committed to have overcome the barriers.

I was just a little after that. Did all 3 sciences, and each class had approx 14 pupils. Biology had 2 boys, and 1 male & 1 female teacher; chemistry was 7:7, with 1 male & 1 female teacher; and physics had 3 girls and both teachers were men.

One of the physics teachers completely ignored the girls. Didn't speak to us unless asked a direct question, didn't come to our table. The only conversation I had with him was when we were both early to class one time and he asked what I was reading. Not being in the mood for converation with someone I already considered a sexist arse, I just flashed him the cover:

https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780330201421/jutland/used?msclkid=6603f5aa3cde16b1d9429367c7ddb30e

He asked if it was a 'romance novel'.

Er, no. It's an analysis of the largest sea battle of the First World War.

Last week I had to challenge a phd student’s assertion that he had to consider teaching math differently to account for ‘gender differences in cognitive logic’. Sigh. Of course I challenged that but these harmful myths continue to persist.

In a thousand little ways society puts expectations on boys and girls, its a constant drip drip effect and the girls toys v boys toys is just a part of it.

This ^^

and indeed a big strong girl who didn't mind getting her hands dirty was an asset on a farm.

During hay season in 80s Ireland, I always became doubly useful as not only could I cook up a feed of spuds for the men at mealtimes, I could also help lift bales of hay onto a trailer or move the tractor if the men were busy. The rest of the year I would randomly be called away from domestic work and told to water/feed cattle or move them between fields. But still the attitude persisted in my local area that sons were more useful than daughters 🙄

I swear I could have screamed every time I was taken away from doing something I enjoyed with the command, ‘Go and make your brother/uncle/father a cup of tea’ 🤨

That’s really poor from the teachers making comments like that. In the programme the OP linked they tested girls understanding of Maths compared to boys in lower primary. Many of the girls had really poor confidence levels and the boys generally outperformed them. This was because the boys had been encouraged to play with Lego and to solve puzzles from a young age. Whereas the girls were generally playing with dolls and role playing. This creates the myth that boys are naturally better at certain subjects such as Maths and Physics. This carries on all the way into GCSE’s and A-Levels and then University and ultimately careers.

Years ago there was some research that concluded that men had better spatial awareness than women. The results were later reviewed by other researchers who concluded that actually spatial awareness was much more closely correlated to whether people had played with Lego, Meccano etc as children than to sex. The fact that boys were much more likely to have played with these types of toys than girls lead to the misleading connection between sex and spatial awareness.

In general, yes of course we are a product of nature and nurture.

But there is no nurture involved in the stick obsession whatsoever. We had no screens before 3 (and then he only really watched Spot!) and DS loved collecting sticks and using them as weapons from as soon as he could walk.

He didn’t see or play with any other children or attend childcare from the age of 20 months until 3.5 due to covid.

This behaviour - which is stereotypically male - was not encouraged by me or his father. There is no way I would have encouraged aggression/use of weapons. It was definitely an innate thing and whilst I’m sure there are girls who do it too I’ve never met one whereas pretty much every little boy I’ve encountered has done.

I absolutely believe in equality and hate gender stereotyping. My children play with all toys. But I also don’t accept that there are no innate differences between the sexes.

You should meet my daughter, exactly the same. The difference is she wasn't told to put it down that's dirty. No no don't fight etc etc. Its possible you haven't met a girl who does it because they've been socialised out of it.

As I said in my post I’m sure there are some girls who do this. But I’ve never met one, including my own daughter and my nieces who have utter disdain for my son’s love of a good stick fight. There is no socialisation involved either way.

I completely accept that not all humans conform to trends but that is not the same thing as there being no trends.

Ffs how do you know he was being “transed” (also that’s not a word)????
perhaps he just picked his own clothes and hair.

Yes, I understand that.

My question was related to 'what use is it to anyone knowing that, at group level only, there are some traits that might occur at a higher level in one sex and others that might in the other'?

Can you apply it to a specific decision about an individual, can you conclude that due to being male they are better at X (without further testing of this individual on that trait)? (I would hope not, although clearly many people do - the variation within one sex is far greater than the variation between sexes).

For some things - like risk of physical violence - I would treat this as a different kind of decision, because 'predicting whether someone is going to attack me' is less easily testable than 'predicting whether someone is a good listener/ has leadership skills' etc.

I bought my dds "boy" and "girl" toys. They used the Lego to make hotels for their dolls house dolls and parked the cars outside. Train set was pretty much ignored. Both are girly as adults in looks but one does a job that women couldn't even do until recently!

He didn’t see or play with any other children or attend childcare from the age of 20 months until 3.5 due to covid.

But he did before 20 months? So you can't rule out influence.