The economic cost of gendered toys
 

Interesting little piece on the BBC news site today.

Jenny Willott, the Consumer Affairs minister, has launched a scathing attack on the practice of gender segregation in toys and toyshops, stating that: Just in case anybody thinks she is speaking purely at a theoretical feminist level:


So, in what ways does gendering toys harm the economy?


But it isn't just the girls who miss out through heavy gender messages in toys and toyshops.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26064302

I need clothing sections to be gender segregated because can't visualize what clothing looks like unless it's on a manikin. And even then sometimes I need to look for the datts

It's some time since I had cause to be looking at or buying toys, so I wondered how bad things had actually got?

Looking at the Argos catalogue shop toy section, I noticed a few things. Firstly, that shop is being very careful not to segregate their toys along gender lines. Of the various drop down menus to help select toys, there are price and age options, but not gender selection. This is good.

I went looking at the sciencey type toys. Interesting. Some manufacturers have taken on board the potential damage of always showing a boy on the box, playing with their science sets. So, most of those manufacturers have elected simply not to show a child on the box at all. Some show boys playing with active looking sciencey type stuff (including radio controlled toys and spy kits) one shows a girl and a boy on the box.

But one manufacturer is still going all out to show which of their science sets are for girls and which are for boys. You can tell, very easily and quickly. Because Wild Science makes kits for boys, with boys on the front, and a blue background, and they make kits for girls, showing girls on the front and a pink background.

So, what do the boys science sets allow them to do and/or discover?

Well here we go. They get to do things like this:

And this:



What about the girls then? What do they get in their Wild Science kits?

Well, they get to:


Or they can:


And finally, to complete the trifuckta, they can:


Please do note that out of the three kits for girls, only one of the dscriptions includes any sense of what 'science' this will actually help them learn, and then it seems something of a throwaway line compared to the two kits for boys.

Is there a sign saying parents are only allowed to buy the color/gender coded kits for the matching gender child? :eyebrow:

Does a gender difference even exist? Larry Summers asked that question with three hypothesis in 2005. So many so little understood what he said as to assume he was accusing women of not being wired for science; accusing him of sexism.

Just asking these questions or noting trends can get many to assume they know what you think. And then viciously attack for thinking what they thought you said.

Are gender suggested science kits that bad? Or does it simply market to its most likely customers? I do not see any hard facts to suggest this marketing is right or wrong; desireable or undesireable. Since basic questions (such as a variability of science aptitude) are not even answered.

No.

But children pick these messages up. Go into your average toyshop and the coding is very clear. And, it's more colour coded than it was when I was a kid.

Is it the reason girls are put off from the high status scientific and engineering fields? No, highly unlikely that it is. It is a contributing factor? I would think most likely, yes.

Just as marketing computers, computer games, and computer magazines at boys and men has, in my opinion, a good deal to do with the drop off of girls from computing and gaming after the initially very ungendered explosion of home computing in the 1980s. Something that has only recently started to change.

Even now, in some shops, the computer games magazines are housed on the 'Men's Interests' shelf. Something that has been pissing me off for a very long time.

The masculinisation of computer gaming is something I watched happen around me. Because I, along with about half the girls in my class at school, was a gamer. Loads of us had home computers. I had a Vic20, my best mate had a Commodore64, others had BBC MIcros, or ZX Spectrums. When one of the teachers started a Computer Club after school it was a pretty steady mix of boys and girls. And most of the games were aimed at no particular gender.

I watched that change. I saw gaming become a boys thing, and games become marketed ever more strongly at boys. The magazines changed. Suddenly the front covers of gaming magazines like PC Format had big breasted babes on the front.

And what was the overall culture telling us? Well, we had the rise of the computer geek/nerd. And that was a male image. The lads got teased for being pasty faced nerds without a girlfriend. And the girls? We became a dangerous novelty in gaming. And the gaming communities did not want us there. I know this, because as a female gamer, I faced things the male gamers just didn't.

It's hard to stay on something when the rest of the people involved are actively and explicitly telling you don't belong.

The trouble with gender messages is they're often quite subtle. They also affect us at an early age, much earlier than any conscious understanding of how they are affecting us can develop. And it's hard to think back and see the ways in which they may have been present sometimes.

I think of myself as not having a head for maths. For years I have more or less considered myself to be number blind. I struggle with scientific and mathematical subjects. I'm a communicator, good at language and the humanities. Fairly typically female in that regard. I tend to think of myself as always having been that way.

But actually, when I was 11 years old I was top of my year in maths and science. I was so good at maths that I was off working through the next year's workbooks on my own: whilst the rest of the class were still struggling with improper fractions, I was learning how to do binary calculations.

Somewhere between the ages of 11 and 14, I stopped being good at maths and science and took on a different sense of self.

Why that was, I'm not wholly sure. But it's a very common theme amongst girls. Was I taking messages from the culture around me? Was it the way the school taught those subjects?

I don't know. But I do know that when it came time to choose subject options at 14, I was persuaded to continue with physics and chemistry but failed both those exams in the end. In those classes there were around 3 boys for every girl. The teachers were male. One of them, Mr Singardia, was awesome. Lovely man who expected as much from his girls as he did from his boys. The other, Mr Leigh, was old school.

The only science subject that had more girls than boys in the class, was biology. Also the only science subject with a female teacher.

So what messages were being sent out in those classes?

Here's a few examples of how those classes were masculine in nature: textbook illustrations all showed male scientists; tv programmes we were shown all had male presenters; other than the biology teacher, all sciences, maths and computer science classes were taught by male teachers. And those teachers spoke to boys and girls differently - for instance: kids talking and not listening would get pulled up, regardless of gender: but when the boys were told off it was for messing around in class, when the girls were told off it was for 'holding a mothers meeting' (yes that exact phrase was used several times, it was one of the chemistry teachers favourite little barbs). Male teachers made jokes about girls being more interested in boys and makeup.

Was any of that why I changed from having good maths skills and understanding, to a lack of skills and a self-image of not having a head for numbers? I don't know. But it was one of the key reasons I changed my mind about what I wanted to do when i grew up. For years I had wanted to be an archeologist. But I remember, very clearly, realising that a lot of archeology involved technical and scientific engagement. By the time I was 14 I wanted to be an English teacher.

I still consider myself appalling at maths and sciences.

As a final point in answer Bruce's question: there's an alarming number of parents out there who want their children to be proper little girls and proper little boys and buy them toys that adhere to those definitions.

And there are lots of parents who don't really think about this stuff at all. They go and buy dolls and jewelry making kits for their daughters, and toy trucks and meccano sets for their sons, because that's just what ya do.

And maybe if their girls really wanted that other stuff, and maybe of their boys really wanted a wendy house they'd buy them. But what do you do if your little girl wants pink princess toys and your boy likes taking things apart? If that's what they want why would you not cater to that? Why they want those things though is a complex stew of stuff including the messages they are constantly surrounded by - girls supposedly love pink. All their toys are pink. The aisles of 'Girls' toys are a pink paradise. And we all nod sagely and say yes, it's natural girls love pink.

Except they didn't used to. It's an entirely modern conceit, yet we have expert after expert telling us why it's so natural that girls want pink, soft, fluffy and passive and boys want red and black, hard edged and active.

Overall I agree with your points, but you're just making this stuff up here at the end. I've never thought it was natural for girls to love pink, and I've heard more girls say they hate pink than say they like it. I've also never heard any "expert" tell anyone that girls naturally want pink. Which experts are you talking about anyway?

More here:

http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/sci...urite_research


And the pseudo scientific so-called experts are as bad:

http://www.empower-yourself-with-col...olor-pink.html

So...how is it that a century ago, pink was the traditional colour for boys in our culture?


And oh look, here we are again: why do they like pink? because they were busy picking berries whilst the boys were hunting mammoth:

The article itself is quite good.


I bolded some text there, because, as I mentioned in the What men Want thread I have a particular hatred of the 'it makes sense because of our hunter gatherer past' bullshit argument.

We do not know how our ancient ancestors divided tasks between genders. We have very little actual evidence for men being hunters and women picking berries. Most of what we 'know' about humans of that period is based on modern hunter gatherer societies, a handful of skeletal remains from prehistory and a whole lot of assumptions based on modern conceptions of gender.

What little physical evidence there is (for example skeletal development affected by certain task types like sitting back on your heels and grinding corn) suggest much less of a divide.

On the basis of almost no physical evidence whatsoever, the world has decided that men have always exclusively been the hunters, and women have always roamed about picking berries. yet, in our closest cousins, apes and chimps, both males and females hunt and gather. There is no reason at all to think that only men hunted, or that women all picked berries. Yet that is seen as fact and other stuff like an apparent liking for pink is viewed through that 'truth'.


And oh look: women are carers and more in touch with their feelings than the brutish men who would never notice the red skin of their ailing child.

Give me a fucking break.

The article itself breaks down some of that supposed logic, quite well.


[eta] sorry, that annoyance was not directed at you.

An interesting counterpoint to all that:

Oh for a time machine. I'd love to see if the pattern would have been reversed during the 18th century, when pink was the traditional colour associated with boys (for warmth and activity) and blue was the colour for girls (for cold and passivity)



http://bps-research-digest.blogspot....efer-pink.html

And the ever wonderful Ben Goldacre (author of Bad Science) in response to that 2007 study (itself one of many)

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...%20body%20link

On that part, there is no dispute. Since a child's brain is, in essense, culturally programmed to think in a certain way. Most of a child's thought process is from a more primitive brain that learns by (rote) memorization and emotions from reward/punishment programming.

Same questions that Larry Summers asked in 2005. At those ages, a new brain part begins to take over. The part that separates adults from children. One hypothesis proposed by Summers was that the part that does cognitive thinking forms (is wired) differently between men and women. Therefore, he proposed as one option, we should accept that. For similar reasons that many drugs work differently on mens's and women's bodies (ie a current study on Ambien). We need to learn of these differences.

Problem with these hypothesis is a serious lack of good experimental evidence. Since social rhetoric (ie cultural training) is not easily separated from what the brain actually prefers.

Also completely missing in so many denials is what Summers noted. A statistical trend was completely misunderstood by many who then became emotional and critical. Boys in math and science classes do significantly better. Numbers say so. That remains undisputed. But numbers also say boys do worse. That part gets ignored. IOW a standard deviation (variation) among girls is much smaller. Girls tend to do equally well. Whereras some boys are really good at STEM while others are particuarly the worst.

So many only observe the best boys are better than the best girls. They only hear a soundbyte and do not demand details - the reasons why. Therefore they fail to learn a number of simply competant girls in math (for example) is greater than the number of simply competant boys.

In short, many make errors by assuming 'binary' logic (a characteristic of extremism). In this case, conclusions are completely different when using ternary categories.

Starting at the age of 14 is significant. Since that is when a pre-frontal cortex begins taking over. When 'thinking as an adult' takes over 'from thinking as a child'. Biases (and abilities) may indeed be based in gender differences that become especially distinct when an 'adult' brain forms and takes control.
Insufficient reasons exist to believe or disbelieve what is either wild speculation or hypothesis.

This entire subject has no honest answer. Virtually everyone with an answer is using emotion or speculation to justify a conclusion. Because facts and experimental evidence are lacking.

We know the results. Statistics identify a sharp decrease in women in the more STEM oriented subjects. But reasons why remain ambiguous or speculative.

An example: Does blue and pink packaging reinforce gender preferences? Or does it instead help create the bias? Unfortunately observation (proposed as experimental evidence) is from a closed loop system. Observations of a closed loop system cannot define an "X results in Y" conclusion.

Requoted by Back in the early days of football, Penn State's uniform color was pink. If this preference for color is created by social rhetoric, then what suddenly changed after 1940? Why was pink no longer "a more decided and stronger colour"?

To use color as an example of gender preference or as to how it promotes bias, one must also say why pink, that was manly in 1900, is no longer manly in 2000. And again, no definitive answers exist; only speculation by some and hypothesis by others.

Due to lack of good reasons why, appreciate how emotional this becomes. Many proclaim a "give me a fucking break" attitude that implies an emotional (ie primitive) attitude rather than one based in hard facts (ie numbers). Hard facts are missing. Many curioius observations exist - only sufficient to form a hypothesis.

Many viciously attacked Larry Summers in 2005 for simply proposing those hypothesis and suggesting strategies based in those hypothesis. Larry Summers was attacked because too many have hardened (radical) beliefs in a subject that has no good answers. Their conclusions and allegations were only based in emotion or other personal biases. Since missing experimental evidence, from controlled environments or from statistacal analysis of an open loop system, is unavailable.

A soundbyte conclusion is dishonest or unreasonable. Leading to disagreements only based in primitive emotions. No definitive answers statistically define the relevant gender differences. We only know the best boys in math tend to do the better than the best girls. And that the worst boys do even worse than the worst girls. We know the statisical trends / conclusions. It is not clear why.

Statistics can change with time which is why they are not always reliable indicators of definitive answers and the reason those who know why will always be in charge of those who only know how.

Two anecdotes that don't prove anything and that I merely enjoy

Carolla has fraternal twins, one boy one girl. One day he gave the girl a pair of toy cars. By the end of the day, she presented them to him upside-down, in a doll bed, the blanket tucked in at the front wheels.

I was raised by a single parent mom. In our house I was not allowed toy guns. By the age of 8 I was building guns out of LEGO and using a broomstick to play "war" with the neighborhood kids.

When I was little, I used to take a toy to bed with me. But...I'd feel so guilty about all the other toys left out of the bed in the cold toycupboard, that sometimes I put them all in my bed. Everything from the teddies, to the dolls, the toy soldiers, and giant soft dinosaur, and even the rockinghorse, perched precariously on the end of the bed. It was basically me, under a mountain of toys.

Eventually, I figured out a way to outsource my responsibilities. I invented an invisible fairy helper, called Susan, to whom I delegated bedtime care of the toys.

Problem solved *smiles*

I played with everything as a kid. I had a wendy house, and a Tiny Tears doll, a chemistry set, toy guns and water pistols, skipping ropes, He-Man and Skeletor figures (with pull back punching mechanism), toy soldiers and a cowboys and Indians set, a bendy rubber Spiderman doll (which my bro adapted for me, by drilling a hole through one of the hands so he could slip down a wire, spidey style), a toy dog that jumped and barked, an Atari games system (pong and skeet ftw).

I played war games and house. I liked them both.

My big brother loved dangerous sports and risk taking. But he also loved cooking, and reading for hours.

Both of us were expected to do housework. Both of my parents did housework and cooking. Not saying it was shared equally, and I think it was a lot more traditional before I came along. But by the time I was around, they had a fairly equal relationship in that way. When mum went into nursing, dad took on the role of childcare during the times when she was on odd shifts.

I always found it really odd that so many of my girl schoolfriends were expected to do housework whilst their brothers were exempted. But that was fairly standard in many northern homes in the 70s/80s.

@tw: the reason i gave the age of 14 is that this is the age British schoolchildren choose their subject direction for gcse exams. I can't tell you exactly when I fell off maths and science. I can only say that by the age of 14, in other words by the time I had to choose my subjects, I didn't really want to continue with science.

All sorts of things were going on then. I'd had a year out of school through serious ill-health - during which time I experienced the fear of possible fatality. I had the first of a series of breakdowns. I had become the target of serious and relentless bullying from boys and girls and was desperately trying to find some kind of place for myself within that school community.

I also went through puberty along with everyone else, so yes, maybe there were physical changes that affected my inclinations. But I don't see that as any more likely than the idea that I started to become more conscious of my gender and sexuality and therefore more conscious of what that meant in my society. Possibly intensified and made more urgent by the crippling self-consciousness.

And my 'Give me a fucking break' response was not to say that the hypothesis put forward is wrong. Just that it is wild speculation and entirely unprovable, yet stated as fact and as the starting point for a lot of unscientific nonsense paraded as viable scientific theory.

I think the lesson of Adam Carolla, Undertoad, and countless millions of other children is that you can't change who your children are. Whether you have a touchy-feely girly-girl who cries at dog food commercials, or a rough-and-tumble boy who pretends to blow his friends' faces off, you can't make them more balanced and androgynous any more than you can make your gay kid straight.

... but you can leave the door open for new and different possibilities that the individual child can embrace or reject. Both my girls are good in math and sciences but lack an innate passion for them. In my own life, I've found a few niches that make me happy. One is in the classroom with young children which is a job for the ladies, another is with a saw, and another with a sword. We just have to be sure doors are left open so people are less miserable in their day to day existence.

Well said. There's a difference between being who you are, and not knowing what you're missing. Plus, even if they still reject all the same choices the closed doors would have kept from them, the simple act of defining themselves is good for their long-term character development.

Beautifully put!

And this is something that matters for boys and girls. And its important for us as a society. Because we don't just risk losing potentially brilliant scientists and engineers from the girl's side of things, we also risk losing potentially brilliant carers, teachers and nurses from the boys side.

And we risk moulding individuals to a set of experiences that don't allow them to fulfil their own personal potential.

Carolla regularly talks about his twins and how remarkably different they are, for having an identical upbringing. The girl is the risk-taker who, at age six, wanted and got a zip-line installed at their house. The boy, complete opposite, bawls at the idea of going on a rollercoaster.

On the left from back to front is Carolla, his boy, and his girl. I think it's Space Mountain. Terror at Disneyland. At his age I would have done the same thing.

http://cellar.org/2014/carollacoasterpic.jpg

I want a zip wire outside my house.
A pink one. Who do I talk to about that?

If you want pink or hot pink, any painter will do. If you want neon pink, you'll have to talk to an electrician.

My buddy near Saratoga Springs has a long one. http://www.ziplinegear.com/store/pro...FaE7Ogod7T8Afg

I think I read about him on a toilet wall...

No doubt he has appeared in such places!

New study out of UC Santa Cruz: Girls who play with Barbie see fewer career options for themselves.

Nonsense, all girls want to be Princesses.

I read, or was read fairy stories as a little girl.
I never wanted to be a Princess, because I grew up in a country which actually had Princesses, and they were normal women who had to observe rigid protocol, live in the public eye and be nice to everybugger.
They weren't especially beautiful with big eyes and tiny waists, they couldn't sing or charm woodland animals and they certainly didn't live happily ever after.

I blame Disney.
Then again I blame him for the smell of cat pee in my room.


Oh sorry, that's Dizney
(Diz's original name which I changed as soon as he came to live with me because I dislike the cartoons so much.)

God above, they only played with dolls for five minutes. That's fucking terrifying.


[eta] Bruce, that picture is awesome!

I think it also indicates that the process can probably be reversed as quickly, though. At least a few of the randomly-assigned potato head girls must have been big Barbie fans at home, after all. It would take a lot of systematic Barbie exposure to do lasting damage, I think.

True enough.

That said: from the Barbie.com website's list of interesting facts - they're listing achievements, but I've cherry picked the really worrying bits



http://www.barbiemedia.com/barbie_fa...e-numbers.html

I definitely believe this one. Minifobette has zero-point-zero interest in Barbie and she still has probably 4 or 5 of them floating around somewhere... it's the default birthday present for a school acquaintance when you don't know the little girl well enough to pick something she'd like. *shrug* I could get rid of them, but I'd have to bother digging them out first.

Pete is vocally anti-Barbie as are her girls so we ducked that. :)

Indoctrinate them young

Maybe growing up in a culture with actual princesses is a reality check, as Sundae says. It's easy to romanticize/relegate to fantasy something that you never see in real life.

My anecdotal contribution relates to my own kids. I homeschooled the four of them until my oldest was in 6th grade. I bought Lego sets and science kits/toys for all of them and let them each explore the things that really interested them. We did plenty of math and English, but history, geography, science, and everything else was a huge mash of everything that interested us. My daughter gleefully made volcanoes and built Lego kits and refused to wear dresses - until she went to school. At which point she decided she liked pink, which she never had before, and became frilly. And although she's bright and talented, to this day she's convinced she cannot learn science or math. Thank you, public schools and peer pressure.

I guess I was weird enough that peer pressure didn't 'take'. Actually, I was unpopular enough, shy and geeky enough, that there really was none. I always did well in math and science and hung out with the male geeks. My home environment was one of benign neglect with respect to academics. I wasn't expected to do anything in particular but neither was I pressured into specific choices. So in the end it was probably a benefit, although I didn't see it that way at the time.