Are Girl-Focused Engineering Toys Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes? 490
theodp writes: VentureBeat's Ruth Read casts a skeptical eye at the current rage of toy segregation meant to inspire tomorrow's leaders in STEM: "Toys geared at girls serve to get them interested in coding and building when they're young, hopefully inspiring their educational interests down the road. But these gendered toys may be hurting women by perpetuating a divide between men and women." Read concludes, "Ultimately, girls (who will become women) are going to have to learn and work in a world where genders are not segregated; as will men. That means they need to learn how to interact with one another as much as they need to be introduced to the same educational opportunities. If STEM education is as much for girls as it is for boys, perhaps we should be equally concerned with getting boys and girls to play together with the same toys and tools, as we are with creating learning opportunities for girls."
Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Equality (Score:5, Interesting)
Both genders should have the same opportunities. They don't necessarily have the same interests.
And the more "gender equality on opportunities" for a society, the more evident the -biology based- gender differences on interests becomes (since boys choose boy toys/jobs and girls choose girl toys/jobs, because they feel free to choose what they like): a great documentary (first watch it after a fellow Slashdoter posted a couple of months ago) from -maybe the most "gender equality" society of the world- Norway (with English subtitles), called "The Gender Equality Paradox" [youtube.com], with -among other things- scientists proving the gender biological differences (with "toy experiments" on children), plus... "religious feminists" ignoring science!
note: the documentary was made from a usual extreme political correct Norwegian person... not a sexist Greek like me - so: watch it!
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Re:Equality (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
A one day old child has not had the slightest chance to be biased by parents or society as to what they should prefer. The fact that male babies preferred male-oriented toys and similarly for female babies and female-oriented toys means that the preference towards that sort of toy is derived from the nature of the child, instead of nurture. Since the factor being tested here was gender, we can conclude that there is a difference in psychological nature due to gender.
Re:Equality (Score:5, Interesting)
They further looked at testosterone levels in the kids and followed them through early childhood. The children, girls included, who higher levels of testosterone were slower learning communication skills and had more interest in mechanical things.
This (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that there may well be a large influence in the culture handed over by upbringing. That is, we think both genders get the same opportunities only they don't, not really. This was much stronger previously but may still be there more than we think.
Then again, I'm not sure that clumsily done toys to get women into engineering isn't overcompensating the whole thing, and maybe the effect they're trying to counteract and compensate for isn't as strong as the proponents of these toys may have assumed.
To wit, you still see people derping about the "gender gap" in pay, which upon closer examination turns out to be all but nonexistent. There is a maternity gap in pay, but that, while related, isn't quite the same thing. Women appear to be getting paid the same for the same amount of work, but many prefer to work less, moreso if with children. Should employers pay more for the same amount of work done just because the employee is with child? If so, why?
Back to this here thing: I don't know what the problem really is and so I don't know if these toys are going to help or hinder. Of course you can just throw your solution into the market and see how it does. But then the answer is "time will tell".
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Men and women, boys and girls are different, but still the only voice we hear is Wimmin's Studies lunatics shouting for 50-50 everything ( well everything where men currently dominate ).
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not everything where men currently dominate. Not mining, not oil rig work, not farming, not anything involving manual or dangerous labour.
Only fields where there's lots of money and\or social status
Re:Equality (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not everything where men currently dominate. Not mining, not oil rig work, not farming, not anything involving manual or dangerous labour.
There was actually a lawsuit a while ago about a company that wouldn't let women work in the car battery division. Because of the risk of lead getting into the workers' systems, and the effects of lead on a developing fetus, no woman of child-bearing age was allowed to work there, unless she had her tubes tied.
Of course, the job paid more than other areas, because the men and older women who worked there were exposing themselves to lead poisoning every day.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03... [nytimes.com]
other stories of it: https://www.google.com/webhp?c... [google.com]
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Only if they're gay. That's the only socially acceptable time for a male to go into beauty parlors.
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only the none physical and high paying jobs, none of the feminist are trying to get more women into garbage collection, construction, fishing, you know stuff that are hard dirty and dangerous
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently you haven't been paying much attention to the 3rd wave feminists over the last 10-15 years. They're the ones screaming they want 50-50 in everything. They're also the ones screaming when women are required to do the same amount to pass physical tests for important jobs like firefighting. And of course over the last 5-6 years or so, they're also the same ones screaming that womens studies is very, very, very, important and women should go into it. While yelling about how there's a lack of women in STEM fields.
3rd wave feminism is junk, nothing more nothing less. It focuses on first world problems, and when it comes up against something like the mythical wage gap you start running into the people who say that 'women are paid less then men' but they fail to realize that women take more time off, have more sick days, and so on. And of course, these are the same types that would scream from the rooftops for someone like Hillary Clinton who actually does pay women less then men.
Re:Equality (Score:4, Interesting)
My mother was a fire fighter, a logger, a paramedic, a construction worker, and many other things. She became a single parent when I was about 12 years old. She defied the imagined odds by:
1) actually getting the education/certification to perform these jobs, which is more considerable than you think. Especially if retraining later in life. A lot of these jobs have many optional certifications that can improve your pay/standing and make you more employable. She has held more tickets than any other person I've ever known.
2) proving she was completely capable by actually doing the work.
3) strength training to be able to withstand physically demanding jobs. Logging for 10 hours is harder than you think.
4) not acting like a baby when things got tough
5) not sitting around complaining about how it's a man's world, and a women can't make it
The real problem isn't that women are incapable. It's that most women don't have the fortitude to continue in the face of adversity. It's easier to give up, find a man who was raised to do all the heavy lifting and undesirable jobs and move on to having kids. It's not that women are inherently lazy, it's that they perceive certain jobs to be easier than others, and they prefer that which they consider easier.
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The real problem isn't that women are incapable. It's that most women don't have the fortitude to continue in the face of adversity. It's easier to give up, find a man who was raised to do all the heavy lifting and undesirable jobs and move on to having kids. It's not that women are inherently lazy, it's that they perceive certain jobs to be easier than others, and they prefer that which they consider easier.
Not to take away from your point, but being a mother is an extremely important and extremely difficult job, and it's sad that women who desire to be stay-at-home mothers get ostracized by the "feminist" movement so bad.
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The problem is that society has a huge influence on what is accepted for a given gender.
It is perfectly acceptable for a woman to go to bed in a set of boxers and a white t-shirt.
However, it is unacceptable for a man to go to bed in a lace teddy and panties, even when his girlfriend is laying there in said boxers. :P
No amount of blue will make that lace teddy and panties "OK"
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It is perfectly acceptable for a woman to go to bed in a set of boxers and a white t-shirt. However, it is unacceptable for a man to go to bed in a lace teddy and panties, even when his girlfriend is laying there in said boxers. :P
I think a better example would be skirts. It is socially acceptable for a woman to go to work either in pants or a skirt. However, if I (as a male) came to work in a skirt I would be asked into the bosses office and told to go home and get changed. This being summertime I imagine a skirt would be quite cool and comfortable.
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Re:Equality (Score:4, Interesting)
He's talking about acceptance by society at large. Very few people will say anything or even think anything about a girl sleeping in boxers, even though boxers are traditionally "men's underwear". However, if a man goes to bed in something traditionally considered "women's underwear", suddenly most people think he's a "pervert", "freak", etc.
Now obviously, very few people are going to see what clothes you sleep in, since this is normally confined to your bedroom. However, if you went around telling your friends and acquaintances about how you dress for sleep, imagine what they'd say. If you're a man and you tell them you sleep naked, or in boxers, etc., no one will bat an eye. If you're a woman and you tell them you wear lace panties, again no one will bat an eye, but the same is probably true if you say you wear boxers. But if you're a man and you tell someone you wear lace panties to bed, prepare to lose your friends and have everyone look at you weird.
And even though it is normally private, lots of people do sleep with other people, either sometimes or every night if they're in a relationship. How many wives could start wearing boxers to bed every night and catch any flak from their husbands about it? Probably not many; perhaps a bit of griping from a few men who'd rather see them in something sexier, but that's about it. Now how many husbands would probably be served divorce papers if they started wearing lace panties to bed, and the wife tell all her friends about it too?
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Bullshit: the article itself pointed to why there's some sort of problem now right in the first few paragraphs: back in 1985, women comprised 37 percent of CS students. Now it's only 18%.
What's changed?
Obviously, you can say that the amount of interest by the two sexes is not the same, but apparently there was more interest by girls back in the 1980s. Why is it different now? That seems to be the question that no one is asking.
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Bullshit: the article itself pointed to why there's some sort of problem now right in the first few paragraphs: back in 1985, women comprised 37 percent of CS students. Now it's only 18%.
What's changed?
After an initial period of trying out different fields, most women figured out that Computers were not what they were interested in?
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That was a generation ago; these aren't the same women, so your explanation makes zero sense. Something's changed in society.
Re:Equality (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe something's changed in CS. 30 years ago, it was probably more about research into computers. Now, almost everybody who is going into CS has no interest at all in doing computer research. They are mostly interested in doing software development. The entire field has changed focused. More than likely, if you take CS, you'll end up writing code for some thankless corporation who doesn't understand what code is and just wants to churn out stuff as fast as possible. 30 years ago, you'd be much more likely to end up working for NASA, Xerox PARC, IBM, or some other research focused company.
Which leads to another problem. People coming out of CS degrees are often very badly equipped to be doing what they actually end up doing in the real world. Personally, I'm happy that I took software engineering. It prepared me much better for real life jobs in software development than my counterparts in CS who spent a lot more time focusing on the internals of how various algorithms worked.
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I'm assuming the article is referencing this data: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-... [randalolson.com]. That is a pretty striking curve, though there are two interesting points to make:
- Women have made consistent gains year to year in nearly every engineering and "hard science" field, some more than others (biology is a standout)
- The absolute number of women CS graduates is actually increasing as well - it's just that male graduate numbers are increasing at about twice the rate.
H
Re:Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
I also suspect (and this is where the potential mansplaining comes in, but I do have backup) that the fact that women in tech are now WOMEN in tech, versus women IN TECH is probably driving away nerdy women who just want to get their nerd on and not deal with conferences about women in tech, etc. I think this article is a really good read (and the comments from people criticizing her for it are also telling): http://www.linuxjournal.com/co... [linuxjournal.com]
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Oh please, this stuff is all over the tech news these days. It isn't just Slashdot.
Correction, it's on sites where there are declining revenue streams and the sites have to survive on clickbait. And there's a lot of sites that have serious problems with profitability. Then again, Gamergate would never have taken off if the journalists and websites hadn't attacked gamers in the first place. And it wouldn't still be growing if sites like reddit hadn't decided to institute it's 'safe spaces' bullshit, while leaving subs like SRS, SRD or coontown still operating.
In general, people are tire
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Than they did in the early 80's? No, not significantly, not enough to account for the massive drop (especially given the orders-of-magnitude increase in the size of the field).
That "massive drop" is almost exactly countered by the rise of women veterinarians, doctors and lawyers. So, you see a 25% drop of women in CS, then you see a cumulative 25% rise in those three fields listed above, and you still come up with "OMG SEXISM"?
You're exactly the kind of sexist of moron I referred to. When all else fails, you'll stoop to making shit up to justify your nonsense.
The fact that there are more CS women (%) in female-oppressed countries than CS women (%) in liberal countries is not made up. You are free to use that fact when forming an opinion, but note that the existence of a contrary opinion is not enough to change t
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Getting more women into STEM is not about glitter, or color choice, or upper body strength, or the need for occasional time off to bear children. It has to be about overcoming the risk-averse fearfulness that pervades women's culture. Feminists need to accept that this problem exists as a holdover from primordial gender roles and that it is no longer needed in modern society. It needs to be discussed as openly as we hash over the ancient problem of aggression in men. If women are going to make the most of t
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we lacking in programers? Why do they have to be women? These people talk about equality, but then turn around and say we need women and not men. If you want to be equal you talk about how many new programers we need, not which gender we need to fill the jobs.
These people are never happy, they are like forum trolls, they make their living being angry.
Fuck SJWDot (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when this site wasn't constantly about SJW topics and jobs? When it didn't try to make you feel bad for being a nerd?
Screw you Dice.
Why They Constantly Post Gender Issues and Tech (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, just wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just wow... (Score:4, Informative)
Stereotypes exists because they reflect natural gender differences. Yes, boys and girls are different. All research show this.
Down with "research"! (Re:Wow, just wow...) (Score:3, Interesting)
"Research" means nothing to the folks, who confuse the Universe that is with the Universe that should be. And, unlike the former, the latter is malleable and subject to change without notice.
Remember the denunciations — both passionately angry [slate.com] and "scientific" [livescience.com] — of people, who suggested, "homosexuality is a choice", for example? We were repeatedly told both in print [time.com] and
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Sexuality, you see, is a "social construct" now (and since 2004!)
I take it from your scare quotes that you strongly disagree. Perhaps you should read about some socially different societies, such as ancient Greece. The whole rather rigid spilt between "gay" and "straight" is a rather modern invention. In other words a social construct. Sure, men were expected to get a wife in order to produce a son, but that had little bearing on what they stuck their dick in for fun.
They didn't have a term for gay or strai
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No: you said it was a choice, specifically.
There's plenty of evidence that human sexuality is flexible, and it's certainly determined by cultural constructs. Doesn't me I could go fuck a dude now, however.
are mutually-exclusive. And yet, the same people tend to argue for both of them depending on the talking point du jour.
Only in your silly world of absolutes. In the real, nuanced world, both play a part.
Ancient Romans and Greeks both tended to ridicule homosexuals.
No, they ridiculed sub/bottoms. Not homose
Re:Wow, just wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why making stuff more "girl-ish" (or boy-ish" for that matter)"
Because toy makers think this will favour their bottom line. It's up to buyers to demonstrate them right or wrong.
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Exactly; the article actually covered this pretty well. The problem is the stupid parents in this society who buy into this bullshit. Years ago (1970s), we didn't have
all this highly-gendered toy marketing. Some toys were obviously marketed at girls (like Barbies), and others more obviously at boys (like army soldiers) but things like LEGOs were not gendered at all. Even He-Man had his comrade She-Ra who girls liked.
Re:Wow, just wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
In reading the two articles, a good part of the problems seems to be twofold. One is the marketing folks discovered that if they created gender specific toys, sales increased. It seems pretty clear that if you want to make more money, you tune your product to your target audience. If creating pink stuff gets you more sales then make more pink stuff seems pretty obvious. The second of course are the folks who see this pink (or blue) stuff and buy it for their girls. But are parents partly to blame? Is marketing part of the issue where girls see the pink stuff advertised on TV and go for it when they hit the stores? Weren't the 80's a transition from wacky cartoons to toy marketing specific cartoons? Is the transition from a single earner family to a dual earner family (and latchkey kids being babysat by TV) part of the problem?
[John]
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But are parents partly to blame?
Of course they are. It's their job to raise their kids properly and not jump on every stupid bandwagon that society (and especially marketers) comes up with.
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So girls should be interested in programming and other STEM-stuff, but luring them into this field with some pink-colored IDE (or whatever) is ALSO wrong?
So what would be the practical way to get girls interested in STEM-Toys that are geared at boys? It's "Superprincess Barbie" that stamps all those stereotypes onto girls. You can't blame "gendered" science-toys to pick them up in the pink hell where they have already landed.
Re:Wow, just wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we should create a special girls-only class to teach girls about how to live in a world where they won't receive special treatment.
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"YES â" toys "geared at girls" is stereotyping at its finest!"
And I doubt even that claim. Last I looked at it, toy industry is not specifically defended or promoted by government which means that toys, everyone of them, are geared at making money for the producer and that's all. Toy makers produce toys that they expect to sell better than others. If there's any kind of stereotyping it is not on the side of the toy maker but on the side of the toy buyer.
"Stop painting them in pink"
Paint whichever co
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So, you don't consider it stereotyping for the toy manufacturers to think that pink toys will sell better to girls?
Re:Wow, just wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the point is that it's irrelevant. Stereotypes often have a certain amount of truth to them. If this one does as well, it makes the manufacturers money, and that's all they care about. If you want that to stop, change the stereotype.
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So, you don't consider it stereotyping for the toy manufacturers to think that pink toys will sell better to girls?
A casual google search did not reveal gender color affinity studies, probably because someone somewhere would rather sell them to me. How much of pink-stuff-for-girls is nature, and how much is nuture? Certainly there are boys who like pink. When I was young, I liked red. Now I like blue. Where are the statistics?
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"So, you don't consider it stereotyping for the toy manufacturers to think that pink toys will sell better to girls?"
It's only stereotyping if they are wrong. If they in fact sell better that way, it's just business-as-usual.
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Or, keep using some pink, but stop the stereotype that it's only for girls. Most boys are fine with pink until told that it's wrong.
Not if feminists have anything to do with it (Score:2, Insightful)
Ultimately, girls (who will become women) are going to have to learn and work in a world where genders are not segregated; as will men
No.. if feminists have anything to do with it, girls\women will perpetually be recruited and promoted to fulfill diversity quotas and satisfy PR, and the majority of the work will have to be done by men. Capable women would leave the field over 1-2 generations, since, due to feminism, companies are forced to recruit incapable women alongwith capable ones, leading to the entire gender being stereotyped and written off as present and promoted only due to quotas\diveristy\PR
girls (who will become women) (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey! It's a cisgenderist! Can we burn xer?
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There's no winning with the feminist crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
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you're conflating two different schools of thought in order to impugn the entire movement.
Line of reasoning A is: why do they have to be "for girls"? just make engineering toys.
Line of reasoning B is: to overcome the initial resistance (social inertia) caused by stereotypes, some toys can exploit those stereotypes in order to get girls interested, and eventually eliminate them (the stereotypes).
Neither line of thought is wholly wrong.
Re:There's no winning with the feminist crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
The right thing to do would be to make engineering toys that aren't "for" anyone.
That was the first option I mentioned. Just making engineering toys. When I was a kid, I had some female cousins around my age and we'd play with Lincoln Logs and Lego blocks all the time. They were just toys. Then they had their dolls and I had my Star Wars action figures. There were some things we both liked, and other things we didn't. But that's not good enough. There's an insistence that we need more women in STEM because patriarchy, or whatever, and that these toys need to be designed to interest them. Then when somebody comes out and designs toys to interest girls in STEM, the complaint is that they're too girly. That was the entire point of my previous post.
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No, that was good enough back in the 70s when Lego and other engineering toys were gender neutral and marketed as such. If you look at Lego adverts from the 70s and before they tended to feature both genders playing, usually together, with the same kits. That's what we want now.
Instead what we have are different kits for each gender, and they all tend to be highly stereotyped. Boys' kits are usually focused on combat and machines, girls' kits are focused on home making and fashion. In actual fact neither is
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TFA actually explains why this isn't done anymore, but then decides to go on about the pink STEM toys instead of offering solutions to the actual problem: Increasing toy segregation in general.
Re:There's no winning with the feminist crowd... (Score:5, Insightful)
Make a toy that stands on its own merits, then market it to everybody. It's not a "science kit for girls", it's just a science kit, and it's advertised across all applicable demographics, regardless of gender.
Yeah, that's what we were doing BEFORE the SJW's came in and demanded that more girls be made (somehow) to play with science toys and major in STEM fields. Reality stubbornly refused to conform to what they want it to be, so they decided to blame everyone else but the girls/women themselves for it.
Girls don't want to play with science kits? Well, then you must MARKET THE SCIENCE KITS TO THEM! Only you must do this (somehow) without making the science kits stereotypical "girly." Don't know how to do this, you say? WELL FIGURE IT OUT!! Reality WILL conform to what we want it to be, or else!!
"getting boys and girls to play together" (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone doesn't know very much about child development. Specifically, those cooties that girls see crawling all over boys weren't invented by the patriarchy to keep women down.
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How in the hell is this voted Offtopic when I'm commenting directly on the story summary?
(Well, sure I know why: a SJW can't handle the truth.)
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How in the hell is this voted Offtopic when I'm commenting directly on the story summary?
Don't complain about mods, take the good with the bad. I get modded down all the time. It happens, particularly if you make a politically incorrect statements on a left-leaning site like Slashdot.
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a left-leaning site like Slashdot.
I don't read comments -- or post -- as much as I used to, but /. used to have a significant population of conservative-libertarian readers.
Has that changed?
Moral Panic (Score:5, Interesting)
This assumes that most of these girl specific initiatives intend to actually help girls. They aren't, and instead serve as flashpoints to draw money to charlatans, much like any of the "think of the children" campaigns from the last few decades.
I swear the similarities between modern feminism and the Satanism scare of the 80s are becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
And the conclusion is correct- most of the women coders I know were, in part, goaded into familiarity by playing with their brothers.
Re:Moral Panic (Score:5, Insightful)
I swear the similarities between modern feminism and the Satanism scare of the 80s are becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
I've noticed this but not sure what kicked it off. I remember feminism in the 70's and early 80's, then it all seemed to go away. Then some time about 5 years ago it came back with a vengeance. Every day is some man hate article in the local rag, and there's never any counter argument exposing the holes in the logic (ie women on average earn less, because women on average choose lower paying careers AND take more time off, not because they are paid less for identical jobs).
Women get raped, but so do men. Women get breast cancer, but more men die from prostate cancer. Pornography is anti-women, even gay porn etc...
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The 80s and 90s were high points for women in software engineering, at both university and in the workplace. Around 2000 the numbers really started to nose-dive, which is why the issue has come back up again. Once the current issues are dealt with you will hear less about it.
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The 80s and 90s were high points for women in software engineering, at both university and in the workplace. Around 2000 the numbers really started to nose-dive,
It's a lot more than that. The 80s and 90s were high points for all of (western) society. Around 2000, society took a nose dive and everything is going to utter shit. I wish all the time I could go back in time and live in the 80s and 90s again.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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(IF, in fact, they have the same education/training/experience, and are just as good performers, then I agree, they should.)
The stuff I've read says that, currently, for the vast majority of jobs, women DO get paid equally to men for equivalent positions. There are some cases with salaried jobs where they get paid less, and that's frequently chalked up to poorer negotiating skills (basically, men are more aggressive negotiators and more willing to "walk" (or make it seem like they are) if the company does
A mixed bag (Score:3)
I can definitely see where this could become a problem. A lot of the "girl" toys are playing directly into the gender stereotypes to get girls interested. If you want girls to like it, make it pink and put flowers on it. Instead of working to actually make it something that would actually interest girls (or god forbid both boys and girls) they just slap some paint on it and give it a girly name.
The bigger issue though is that they have to make "girl" things because most of them are specifically geared towards boys. That is why the answer they come up with is to make it girly. There is no reason we need special Legos in a pink box with cats and houses specifically for girls. Just stop specifically targeting boys with your marketing and girls will want to play with it (see the ads from the 70s that have both genders in the ads). More stereotypes are not the answer to the current stereotypes.
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Spot on. It's just ham-fisted attempts by idiot marketing divisions who think that this is the way to address this issue and make themselves look progressive.
It's a real shame about Lego. They used to be so good at this, but for decades now have been producing horribly stereotyped kits. I think part of the problem is that they realized that a sort of arms race started with extremely masculine toys aimed at boys, and Lego bought into it, but that meant that many of their lines became unappealing to girls. We
Re:A mixed bag (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, here's my anecdote with a sample size of n=2. I have a son and a daughter.
When I bought my very first LEGO set for them, it was a generic box of plain shapes. Something like this [amazon.com].
My son played with them. My daughter didn't. So I bought this [amazon.com] and mixed the pieces in. The "draw" of the cutesy pieces drew my daughter in. Now she plays with all the pieces.
So...yeah. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think they just "color it pink". Probably a bunch of focus testing and playtesting occurs so they know what draws girls to the toys.
Now, a related question...why did pink and cats draw her in? Is it innate? Or is it something she was taught by society? To that question, I have no answer.
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Now, a related question...why did pink and cats draw her in? Is it innate? Or is it something she was taught by society? To that question, I have no answer.
That's an easy one. It's not innate. 100 years ago pink was a boy's colour, similar to red. Girls preferred blue, a soft and pale colour. In the 1920s it flipped around.
The reason your daughter needed pink bricks to become interested is because she has been bombarded by images and advertising telling her that pink is a girl's colour, and girls should seek out pink toys. What we need is for advertisers to go back to showing girls playing with non-pink stuff, like Lego did before about 1985. Maybe you should
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What we need is for advertisers to go back to showing girls playing with non-pink stuff, like Lego did before about 1985.
LEGO did that for more than 40 years and it did them no good at all.
LEGO's gender-inclusive advertising was worthless because the product didn't appeal to girls no matter how hard they tried to artificially interest girls. Boys like primary colors. Girls like pastels. Boys play with vehicles as readily as they play with characters. Girls play with characters and creatures almost exclusively, and ignore vehicles. Boys play with the outside of structures (think attack on the castle). Girls play with the
Why make science and engineering toys girly? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pfft!
I tried to mold my daughter into a 'tomboy'. I taught her to shoot a rifle; now she wants a pink one of her own. I even gave here two older brothers to really ramp up the pressure.
I'm in tech, her oldest brother is going to be a Chem E soon, and the middle guy tears apart anything with an engine.
Despite all that she is unabashedly, unapologetically a girly girl. My daughter wants to be a veterinarian and you can't get much more feminine than kittens and puppys.
It's like she was programmed before bir
Damned if you do, damned if you don't! (Score:2)
Oh, we're getting special treatment now? That's unfair towards women!
Why don't the boys play too (Score:2)
That is really wrong because we should be tracing 'girl' skills. Learning and hacking cooking, for instance, teaching important skills. Learning to sew is much better at teaching hand eye coordination than video games. It is easier to teach if you pander to the boys, but doing so does not make one a good stem
Why not nursing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not nursing (Score:5, Informative)
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You could equally ask why men aren't flocking to careers in nursing, early childhood care, or beauty therapy. I suspect it has less to do with discrimination
Hold on, who said anything about discrimination? Where on earth did that come from?
This is about stereotyping of toys. It affects both genders. I'd suggest that one of the reasons we see fewer male nurses is because boys are also stereotyped from a very young age. It's actually a huge problem, especially in early child care and primary teaching where young boys need male role models, and quite a lot of money is being pumped into fixing it with things like scholarships and men only taster courses.
The idea th
nice analysis (Score:2)
OK, now I actually read the article... basically, the article is right in a way it identifies the root problem: The segregation of all toys into boys and girls. Including the idea behind it: Creating less reusable toys. But then, the article failed to notice that this has nothing to do with STEM toys or not. In fact, it is one of three possible solutions:
1. Force toy industry to retreat and have a gender-neutral toy section again, which then could include stem/educational toys
2. Bring stem/educational toys
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Well... (Score:2)
That's what I've been saying since the beginning of this whole mess. I firmly believe that any women should have the right to enter the STEM field if she so chooses, just as I believe that any man should have the right to become a fashion model or a ballerina if he so chooses. If we treat both boys and girls with respect and allow them to become whatever they chose, that will do far more for "inequality" than giving preferential treatment to one or special toys for one will ever accomplish.
However, this
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I firmly believe that any women should have the right to enter the STEM field if she so chooses, just as I believe that any man should have the right to become a fashion model or a ballerina if he so chooses.
This. Thank you! That expresses it perfectly.
Girls and boys are different, yes, but... (Score:2)
Absolutely girls and boys are different. They definitely play differently and prefer different toys.
But that doesn't mean that every girl is into pink frilly stuff, building blocks that make a kitchen, dolls, makeup, etc. And not every boy is into muscle cars, soldiers, violent games or spaceships.
Unfortunately, manufacturers rigidly enforce the stereotypes. I was out with my daughter one time at a department store and we were in the kids' clothes section. They might as well have put up a fence wher
How engrained in our society are these stereotypes (Score:2)
I don't think people understand how complicated the matter of gender stereotypes are as far as roles in our society. This begins as early as birth. Parents immediately give their child a pink or a blue cap depending on whether or not it's a boy or a girl. While the child is too young to understand this, they will look back on that picture and understand later in life. The point that is more important is that because how we treat each gender in society and until we learn to break ourselves of this, we wi
Boys need the training (Score:2)
I think we've got girls caught up pretty well; it's time to teach boys how to work with girls as equals. We can start by teaching them that being called a girl isn't a vile insult. Help them break free of their gender stereotypes just as feminism has helped women break free of theirs.
General problem? (Score:2)
worrying about gender reinforces gender... (Score:3)
... reinforces gender sterotypes.
The means are the ends. If you want people to not take gender seriously and just treat each other as equals then you need to not take gender seriously and treat each other as equals.
If you take gender seriously and treat the genders unequally then you'll create a system were people take gender really seriously and treat the genders differently.
Be the change by being the end. By matching your means to your end, you create your goal.
The current idea is increasing gender tensions and racial tensions. IT is not creating equality because it is trying to create racial and sexual quotas.
You're not going to get an equal society by creating quotas or pseudo quotas.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Dr. Strangelove (Score:3)
I finally realized what all this pressure for female coders is about!
The powers that be want to be able to eliminate all their male competition: (e.g. like schools of fish or Dr. Strangelove [imdb.com]). Since the technocracy is rising, they can soon rely on robots for all the heavy lifting -- their only problem remaining is the maintaince and programming of the robots and systems they don't want to be bothered with -- so they still need some annoying technical people around. At the moment they're mostly male. :( Not good if you're trying to be the last man on earth!
Conclusion: if the goal is for the males that are now in power (or their great-grandsons who will be in power) to be the only males on the face of the planet: then for everything to keep going they must somehow inculcate females to code and eliminate the need for all (other) males entirely.
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So... you noticed Nixie Pixel's *frequent* cleavage and plunging neckline's too, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/user/nixiedoeslinux [youtube.com]
It seems like *every* Empowered Young Woman on You Tube feels this deep and overpowering urge to show as much of her tits as possible.
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Of course this is so not helping overcomming gender stereotypes, but can we blame them for using what they've got for personal advantage? It's all about clicks, you you use every kind of click-baiting.
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but can we blame them for using what they've got for personal advantage?
Feminists blame men for perpetuating the patriarchy, and yet young "empowered" women are the ones showing their tits. So... yes, I can.
Besides, it ruined Mardi Gras.
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Aha.. so you're one of the men who are trying to hold back women from using their full potential!
Isn't it nice to have arguments ready that prove you're doing it wrong no matter what you do....
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(cleavage) their full potential
Since big tits and deep cleavage do not correlate -- or, if they do, it's negative -- with the skills needed in STEM, your argument is flawed into Wrongness.
(Though they are positively correlated for jobs like direct sales, especially in "manly" industries like construction, shipping, etc. I've seen it with my own eyes.)
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It's only overshadowed in sadness by the large number of "empowered" young women who think that doing porn will make the a "star."