How far we have come...
 

Because we live in the world and are surrounded by our cultures, the details and extent of social change can slip past unheeded. We look back on the world of our youth and we see that world has changed - but it is not always clear just how much and in what ways. We look at those times through the lens of our own age.

I know, looking back, and particularly through the ready availability of television from that era, that the world I grew up in - 70s and 80s Britain - was a good deal more sexist than the world I currently live in. Some of that is obvious - employment legislation to prevent overtly prejudiced hiring and firing practices - a much greater emphasis on women's own autonomy and a much greater understanding of women's rights as akin to men's.

Gendered expectations have changed - when I was a child, I had many friends whose homelives adhered to and underlined strict gender roles: girls helping with house work, washing up and cooking, whilst their brothers were not expected to do the same but were expected to help dad fix the car; and the tail-end of an education system that expected girls to take Domestic Science / Home Economics and Needlework and boys to take Woodwork/Metalwork and Technical Drawing.

On TV and in the media - women were routinely objectified in ways that, whilst there is now more overt sexualisation and nudity, was actually far more pervasive. Because along with the sexual objectification came a raft of assumptions of women as natural homemakers and unnatural workers. Women on television, even well trained actresses, often had to spend great chunks of their careers playing 'dumb' frivolity to lighten the mood and give the Dads something to leer at. Whole comedy sketches founded on how hysterically funny it for a man to drop a pencil down a woman's top and have to fish it out again from her heaving bosoms - whilst she either stays mute with a look of erotic surprise, or squeals and wriggles and flaps her hands.

Women (particularly if they were young and attractive - women could play powerful characters, as long as they were older) were usually expected to be intellectually unchallenging on television and those that displayed any tendency to outthink the men were undercut with expectations of femininity and patronising attitudes.


I was aware of some of this stuff growing up. But a lot of it passed me by at the time. But it clearly had an impact even if I wasn't quite sure what it was. As a youngster, I loved action adventure and sci-fi (still do). I read voraciously and watched a lot of tv. And I used to day dream - I'd spin fantasies in my head, fuelled by what I'd read and watched, with myself at the centre of the story. I imagined it as film, I saw it play out as if on the screen - but here's the thing: when I tried to visualise myself in heroic stance, I found it very difficult to do - I morphed into a male figure at such times - if I tried to visualise myself as female in heroic pose the image shattered - because I had absolutely no visual reference for women with heroic physicality. If I pictured myself as female my physicality became less heroic. The poses struck by female characters on tv, even when intended to convey strength, actually conveyed overt female sexuality and their movements were undercut by the need to remain resolutely feminine. Think of Wonder Woman, Supergirl, or any female character fighting on a 70's show.

The world has changed so much. I watch something like Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, or Person of Interest and see women inhabiting heroic and anti-heroic personas - with the physicality to match.

We understand now how psycholgically impactful it was for many black people growing up not to see any positive depictions of non-white characters on tv and in the wider media - that to be surrounded by a culture that never really shows people that look like them. I think, without really understanding, that the lack of a female presence in large swathes of our cultural product (detective and action shows, along with much serious drama, were almost all primarily masculine, with one or two female characters in support, relationship, or victim roles) and the distorted depictions of women as comedy props in many comedy shows (very few actual female comics at that time - this was another area that was almost entirely male), had an impact on me and other girls growing up in the 70s and 80s.


This has been a bit of a ramble. But what provoked it was watching this interview, with Helen Mirren, from 1975. The interviewer is Michael Parkinson - very much the top chat show host of his day. The whole interview isn't sexist - but yes, he genuinely asked if she thought her breasts might get in the way of being taken seriously as an actress.

And that question about posing in Playboy was asked of pretty much every good looking actress of the day - the two standard questions to ask of actresses: why did you pose nude in Playboy? and Why did you not pose nude in Playboy? Two of the best actors of the time - Helen Mirren and Diana Rigg - both asked why they didn't want to pose nude for a men's magazine.







The other programme that really brought the change home to me was the three part documentary It was alright in the 1970s. The episode that concentrated mostly on sexism was fascinating to me.

It showed a clip from a show I used to watch every week, The Professionals. I loved that show! In the clip we see Bodie and Doyle (the two leads) crouched behind a car in a stand off with a man who has taken a woman hostage ... She is at this point squealing - which we are told by Doyle (iirc) may be due to the man they're chasing having dropped a grenade down her bra.

They shoot the guy I think, and one of the heroes runs over to the still squealing woman, rips open her top, and we see in great and slow detail his hands moving across her body and breasts (still in bra - primetime tv, no nipples allowed), retrieves the grenade, throws it away and then lies on top of her to protect her from the blast.

Watching it today it is soooo fucking outrageously done. The dialogue surrounding this action is so revoltingly sexist, including banter at the end about the hero half undressing the woman and lying on top of her.

In another clip, from a 'will they won't they', romantic sitcom, the slightly inept but lovable male lead, frustrated at being rebuffed by the female lead, stalks her as she shops in the market, talking to himself and getting more irate. The big laugh, punchline payoff for the scene is that, he gets so frustrated by the situation that he says in a loud voice, forgetting that he is surrounded by other shoppers "Urrrgh - I just want to rape her!" - cue slightly shocked looks from mothers putting their hands over children's sensitive ears, some ribald chuckling from male stall holders and a slightly disturbing amused leer from an older woman.

The whole documentary is fascinating - it looks both at the sexist portrayal of women in the media, and also at the media's treatment of 70s feminists. Across the three eps, they look at sexism, racism, homphobia and the wider society in which the media was operating.

I can't find clips or eps that would play outside the UK, but well worth checking it out if you can find it online. Not sure how much it croses over with the US experience - but it's a fun watch.

In the 80s, my pop culture influences were pretty restricted and the only adult TV shows I can recall being allowed to watch were MASH and Murder, She Wrote. Obviously not much overt sexism in the latter. MASH of course had "Hot Lips" Houlihan, which you would think says it all right there in the name, but at least from what I remember it was actually pretty progressive at the time. She usually wore turtlenecks, was super smart, and it was the men who were portrayed as kind of idiotic for leering at her while she coolly brushed it off and showed them up by fixing their mistakes every time. This is the only clip I could find online, where they are making a big deal about how she's not necessarily like other women, so maybe they're still clinging to stereotypes by making her the exception-to-the-rule. But she was always a character I liked to watch.

Her character evolved over the length of the program. Its fascinating to watch. My sense was that feminism made ground faster in the US but outside of music my British cultural references were limited to Benny Hill and Monty Python...

MASH was one of my favourite shows, and Hot Lips an awesome character.

There were little glimmers that broke through. There were some brilliant female characters on TV - but they were always kind of undercut by their novelty - they were the ones who were good at being a cop/medic/serious character, despite their womanhood. Hot Lips wasn't like the other women - she was almost like one of the guys - she wasn't hobbled by her sex.

I also recall that a lot of tv shows overtly tackled and referenced the changing gender roles. I remember being conscious of that - the storylines of women trying to make it in male fields - the novelty of their presence in those fields (whole sitcoms based on the premise of a woman doing a man's job or vice versa) the hilarity of Les Dawson's comic vision of a distopian future where women are in charge and men are enslaved.

Thinking about it, even just a decade or so ago the idea of a man staying home as homekeeper or being left to raise a baby was considered funny in and of itself.

In some ways it did - mainstream British culture was quite anti-feminist and stuff like Benny Hill (stalking and rape gags to oompa oompa music - good teattime fayre for the whole family :P) was deeply sexist.

But - I am also being a little unfair, because there was good stuff, and there were people changing things and not every old fashioned male comic was a sexist pig - there was engaging and interesting drama, and exciting unusual sitcoms, and there were good male and female characters - but they existed within a surrouding sea of sexist culture and a set of tv staples that reflected that culture.

But one of the reasons I was conscious of some of this, even as a young child, was that it was also a culture that was self-consciously and rather clumsily attempting to question and examine those attitudes.

Dana, that is a fascinating discussion. Well done.

Being a young teen in the later 40's and early 50's when tv was new,
in b/w and only on for a few hours each evening, I grew up following
down the path cleared by the now-called "greatest generation... the WWII vets.

While there are so many government programs created to their benefit, we take them now for granted.
But for me they created a sense of resentment at some of the social norms.
I agree with so many of the images and examples you give above.
For example, in the 9th grade, I was the only boy/male in the "Typing 1" class.
I was there instead being in "Metal Shop 1", as were my friends.

When it came to tv... I resented, and still do, the "dumb daddy" programs
that were the alternative comic themes to the "I Love Lucy" gendre.

I can't write about all that in the way you have above.
So sometime I would really like to see you take on a discussion
of your views of the male stereotypes during that same time period.

My understanding of 70s British TV and sexism:

No women vets on All Creatures Great and Small - no women farmers either. But to be fair it depicted the 1930s

No women in the Goodies or Python (Carol Cleveland not a full member) AND they played the women parts themselves (although it was the best ever)

Felicity Kendal, despite being a studied actress who went on to work with Tom Stoppard, could not have become beloved without being cute as a goddamn button

Mrs Slocumbe not really a sympathetic character. Although to be fair she does run a department

I started this as an examination of where we've come from and how far we have come - but whilst in some respects the world has changed greatly, in some ways we haven't come so far at all.

We now have a western media culture that is able to show strong and heroic female characters - serious and respected female scientists (though the gender ratio of 'experts' called on for comment by news media is overwhelmingly male) - female characters who have deep and flawed internal lives that don't necessarily revolve around the impossble task of balancing being female with having a job - female comics and female leads - shows and movies that feature female characters as the centre of their tale (again the male to female ratio on these things is still not balanced) and so on.

But - in both the US and the UK, we still can't seem to cope with the idea of a female, late night talk show host. An odd one maybe - usually for short runs (I think the US has had 2 or 3 at most - one being Joan Rivers in the 80s, for one series). Women host daytime talk shows - because that's when women, as mothers and home makers are a bigger demographic - and there is an inherent assumption, not just that women want to listen to other women, but that the people who want to listen to women...are other women.

There's also still an assumption that women are second fiddle as comedians. Go to a youtube vid of a male comic and you might find comments about him being great or him being shit - but you won't find anyone saying 'See, men just can't be funny'. But that does get levelled at women. I've seen serious comments from people saying they just don't like female comedians - they just don't find them funny.

Late night talk shows - led by male comedians. Daytime talk shows - led by women (sometimes comedians). Comedy panel shows in the UK - overwhelmingly male. To the point that the BBC recently made a rule that panel shows had to include at least one female guest - because so oftenn it was just two teams of three men, with a male host. Very occasionally there might be a woman on one o fthe teams. Having more than one woman on a panel show is very rare. Panel shows are a huge part of the tv landscape in the UK.

We have come a very long way. But there are still some quirks and survivals that make no sense.

An excellent point. I have talked a little before about the sexist portrayal of men in sitcoms and advertising in particular. The dumb dad image winds me up no end. Positive portrayals of husbands and fathers in advertising were all but absent for much of my life. Dad's were either: slightly inept mini-tyrants against whom the mum and kids collaborated, big kids, with whom the wives were infuriated, or fools to be tricked and cajoled by domineering wives and daughters.

Mainly because, I think, anything that was being sold as a product for the home and family was assumed to be selling to women - and this kind of 'Men huh!' eyerolling was assumed to appeal to wives and mothers.

i love it when I see a really good portrayal of fatherhood in adverts. My favourite recently was the Colman's Shepherd's Pie advert:

To me, comedy is a whole different issue from how women are portrayed in general on TV. I honestly don't think that by the numbers it's any different from other careers women typically haven't had a large foothold in, like computer programming, it's just that comedy is one of the few places that people still feel free to openly declare women aren't as good at it or don't belong.

But even then, I don't honestly know if those numbers are so far off from, say, the open hostility a woman carpenter would receive if she showed up on a construction site. It's just that our stereotypes of lug-headed socially-conservative blue collar men make it easier to write off the sexism in those kinds of careers as to be expected, while we want to believe that savvy media figures are more progressive simply by the nature of their jobs, so the betrayal hurts more when they say stupid things.

If Joe the Plumber says something offensive, well, he's a fucking plumber what do I care? But when a creative professional says something offensive, we instantly look back on the things that person has created that we liked, and feel dirty by association in a way that doesn't happen when all we did was pay the guy to fix our pipes. It's the fact that we tend to self-identify with the things that bring us joy, and can't just see a media personality as another guy doing a job for money, that makes it harder to hear "women don't belong in comedy" than "women don't belong in a steel mill."

As an early adopter of the stay at home Dad role, I tended to notice this stuff. I wasn't really offended though. Pete was offended enough for both of us. I think because she was raised to be a feminist and suddenly this idiot male stereotype asserted itself while she was making career progress in a guy field, while I was making it possible at home.

I understand that, due to recent medical developments, women only outlive men by five years on average, and not seven as it has been for the last century.

That was always the payoff :p

Whilst of marriagable age, women lived under the coverture of their husbands, and in their dotage as elderly widows, having outlived their husbands, they were free to conduct their own affairs :P

I'm just being contrarian here, I'm with you - on the other hand, the 16-to-22 year old version of me laughed pretty hard at Benny Hill, and doesn't want to apologize for that.

Would I laugh today, no, it seems like it had its own context even for its day; and it felt like the context was culturally twisted; like, it feels very sexist now, but back then, it was pushing a certain boundary to a certain limit, which was actually freeing to its audience in a comic setting.

some of that is: there is a partly naked woman and many people like to see that, but it is not permitted, unless it is in a comedy universe where the rules are different

but there may be some other aspects of it that everyone interprets differently. really that is what drama and comedy should do. so i should defend it even if i disagree with it

Without that context, we are lost in trying to interpret why anyone would take so much time as to set up a bit, where a pretty woman stands at a counter and appears to have enormous naked breasts, until she walks away and it turns out to be two bald men face down in front her at the counter with cherries in front of them.

But the 1980 version of me found that to be a riot.

I laughed at Benny Hill as a kid. I was only partially aware of this stuff at the time, and most of that awareness was due to it being discussed overtly on television.

I don't think we should be ashamed of it - I don't think, on the whole, that the people and cultural products of the 1970s should be judged according to the values of 2015. There were odd examples of programme makers who should by then have known better, in which the values on show were behind the times and which were almost defiantly anti-progress - a good example being the Black and White Minstrel Show , which, at a time when most people were aware that blacking up minstrel style and making 'where am dat water melon' jokes was racist, were still peddling that schtick well into the 70s. But for the most part, it should be seen in the context of its day.

I should also point out that 'sexist' jokes and situations aren't all necessarily cruel and damaging. At an intellectual level, I understand that 'mother-in-law' jokes, which were a staple of 1970s club comics, play on a very particular set of stereotypes about women, and in particular the undesirable, battleaxe figure of middle-aged womanhood. That said - I listen to a set by Les Dawson, and it's full of mother in law jokes, most of which I still find funny, because it's cleverly written - and because the persona he played on stage was that of a middle aged man, beset on all sides by domineering women - and the characters on his wife and MiL were regular features of his jokes and monologues. It never felt like he was talking about all mothers in law - or all wives - like some of them did with the throwaway jokes. He was building a persona and a series of ongoing characters.

Some of his stuff doesn't work now - and the cultural assumptions underpinning them have shifted, but it was funny at the time.



And again - one of the few comedians who can do the 'my wife's so fat' schtick and have me laughing

Change is happening everywhere, even Saudi Arabia.

and driving? That's a no-no.

Dana, I can tell you spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like, this... and you make some really solid points.
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I'm with you all the way, sister!

Hehehehe. Very good.

I think the most sexist show in US in the 70s was "Three's Company".

Brit-twist: it was an American re-do of "Man About the House" but, you know, where the chicks are hot. They might as well have designed the entire show in order to run the opening credits every week -- with Suzanne Somers at 0:21. And particularly what her chest does at 0:25. You may watch it, for science:



Did you notice that jiggle? I did... I was 14. So this is pretty much seared into my retinas permanently. I'm not really complaining here.

The show was actually described by network execs as jiggle television.

But when you watched it, Three's Company was also secretly subversively feminist; you I may have watched it for the jiggle, but here was a very heterosexual male actually living with two hot young women and they were friends and he never really set out to bed either of them. This was instructional to a young man.

Found this in today's Grauniad: Video games need fewer 'sexy' women and more you can actually fancy

http://gu.com/p/47d86

Sent by thought transference

Happy I stumbled upon this one - This is an incredibly well done thread with an excellent analysis.

One point I can relate too - if in a somewhat different way - is the experience you describe in the OP as a child, not in regard to gender, but in regards to physicality.
Initially it was fine - I was a skinny kid and it was very easy to imagine myself in most heroic roles - but puberty had other plans for me... Which created a certain dissonance. None of the fictional characters I related too on the level of personality looked anything like me. Large man in fiction usually range between good hearted but dimwitted to outright bullies. The wisecracking bastard who likes to keep cards up his sleeves and think on his feet is almost always the lean short actomorph (The only real exception I remember to eventually arrive was from what turned into a pretty low quality show - Tyr from Andromeda). Mind you, imagining yourself with a different body type is not quite as extreme as imagining yourself as a different gender, but I think the effect is still the same - you feel less comfortable making that connection.

One related thing I am curious about - directed at Dana but anyone can answer - if you dislike the depiction of the dumb dad, how do you feel about the companion trope, the wise mom who was always right all along? Do you think that in itself could have an impact?

I felt like this needed to be in a separate post...

Regarding comedy, I think there's an answer, but it's not quite the same answer as other industries: Longevity.

You can have more female comedians inspiring young wannabes, but there are other hurdles in this case, to have more wannabes in the first place, they are going to need to be not so young.
The reason is that childhood and development is different based on gender, and not just because of the media. For one, young boys use humor to compensate for a lack of other social skills when young girls tend to have more developed social skills to began with. Later in the early teens, while a lot of girls are handling a heavier weight of an earlier puberty and dealing heavily with social adjustment, that's often when boys start getting interested in philosophy and the universe and meaning and the good old road for existential crisis that makes humor into a coping mechanism. Later in the late teens early twenties, when girls are getting heavily into those very subjects, more men are focused on trying to catch up socially and often use humor to get women's attention, while women are rarely rated on their humor at all.
Later in life, things tend to equalize. More men learn to judge women on character, which includes humor and philosophical view points and coping mechanisms with all that comes from it... In part because we can afford too, and because we learn what can happen if we don't. More older women become proud of their humor as a result.
More importantly, while men face a more even slope, women tend to face a much wider hill, from being on top and having things easier then men to the bottom and having things a lot harder then men.
This includes physical trauma (men are more likely to have it from violence earlier, women from health problems later). It includes financial problems (Women have an easier time early in the service sector, but much more difficult recovery after parenthood). It includes dating possibilities - which include within it both desperation and loss, and generally the reality of people being nicer to more attractive people. Even regarding rape, if I remember correctly, males are more likely to experience it as child molestation before puberty, females are more likely to experience it as teens after puberty, which is among the longer digestion periods as far as trauma is concerned.
The overall result is that a lot of the shittier things life throw at you seem to hit women slightly later in life. Comedy usually comes from a dark place of learning to digest all those shitty things life throws at you, and as a result, it takes life longer to cook fucked up women then fucked up men.
Have people live longer and make it more normal to start careers when you are older (Which are trends that are happening), and you'll end up with more women comedians. People living longer less structured lives at a time where it's becoming normal to change careers more and more times in life is what going to enable more female comedians.

Last but not least... Ok, actually totally is least.

Regarding sexualization: I vote for more dicks, not less nipples.

I can only speak from my own experience on this but: I have always used humour as a social coping mechanism. It may be that my experience was different because of my health problems - I had extreme and disfiguring eczema covering around 80-90% of my body for most of my childhood, from around the age of three - so my problems integrating with other children started quite young. By the age of six or seven I was very much an outsider.

I do recall that amongst the friends I did make as a kid (there were ups and downs on that front throughout , as for many I don't doubt) humour was our prime currency. The girls I hung around with, just as much as the lads, communicated through jokes and rehashing the funny lines and catchphrases we'd heard on tv. The girls I was friends with, were usually very much like me in that regard. essentially, I and the girls I related to, just as the boys I related to, were pop-culture nerds.

This idea of girls finding socialising somuch easier - and being emotionally literate at an earlier age than boys may be true for some - but really doesn't describe my, or many of my friends', experience of girlhood.

By the time I got to puberty, I already had the body image issues and the socialising issues. I was into dark speculative science fiction, philosphy and history. I was a nihilist and loner - the word emo hadn't yet been coined.

The problem with generalisations about gender is that they only ever apply to a particular band on the spectrum of experience. Lots of girls struggle with the things they are supposed to find easy and naturally gravitate towards the things that aren't supposed to draw their attention. Same goes for the lads.

In answer to the question about the wise mums in adverts and popular cultrure: I am fine with portrayals of wise women, as long as they are not a counterpoint to, and predicated on, a lack of male wisdom. I find the whole idea that women are somehow emotionally superior, or that they are somehow always the 'grown-up' in the relationship quite distasteful. It pisses me off when people argue that having women in the workplace will improve that workplacebecause of the special skills and qualities that women bring - because it is still predicated on an innate and all-encompassing difference between male and female brains and minds.

That just isn't how the world works. In my life I have known plenty of emotionally inept women, unable to communicate their feelings or navigate social situations and plenty of highly intuitive men, able communicate their feelings perfectly well and navigate complex social situations with ease.

When people talk about the different ways that men communicate with each other and women communicate with each other, it kind of baffles me - because for the most part my experience tells me that we actually communicate with each other in broadly similar ways.

That's because gender generalizations are usually centers of curve balls, not absolutes:
http://www.cakeworld.info/_/rsrc/141...e%20v1%20C.png
I know it's been observed in math skills, language skills, violent crime ratio's, even something as basic as height.

It's never "All [insert gender] are better then [insert opposite gender]". On any spectrum, there's plenty members of the opposite gender who'd be better then the average member of the gender in advantage, and vise versa (Hell if you modernize this to include transfolk as the gender they identify with, the cross sections could even apply to reproduction capacities, though it would be a bit more difficult to find variable criteria to draw a curve ball from).

That doesn't mean though that generalizations can't be talked about, are useless or aren't meaningful, especially in how they impact society at large (Like in the case of various industries and professions), just that they don't make sufficiently good indicator to prejudge an individual.

I agree, but what I am more curious about is less in judging the phenomena and more in understanding it's role in larger dynamics. What does it do to young and still maturing girls to see those depictions? How does it shape world view, ego, ideals for the self, interaction with the opposite gender, and so on?

*nods* which is why it baffles me when people speak of these things in absolute terms. When people say things like 'most girls' do this, or 'most boys' do that. Many of the studies which are talked about in terms of proving the distinction between male and female brains, and between male and female thinking actually show nothing of the sort - they show that one gender, when taken in aggregate, show a slightly greater tendency towards x than y. That then gets reported as 'men really are hardwired to read maps!' and 'girls really are hardwired for empathy!'.

If a study shows that,when presented with a choice between a doll and a toy truck, boys choose the truck 60% of the time and girls only choose the truck 47 percent of the time - then that does not show that 'boys naturally like toy trucks' and girls naturally like dolls'. I remember a study a few years ago that seemed to prove the old theories of girls being more talkative than boys and having more sophisticated language use and vocabulary - but they were looking a single cohort of children. In that cohort, the difference between the two genders was marginal and was only present for about a year, after which they evened out. During the period in which there was a distinction - that distinction was simply that more boys scored lower down the scale and fewer scored higher up the scale. In fact there was much greater disparity between individuals within each gender than there was between the two genders. Yet, again, it was rolled out as proof of the vast gulf that separates male and female brains.

Not sure really, how to answer that. So much of this stuff happens at a subconscious level. I think, like much of this stuff, it is a double edged sword. The idea of women as somehow the 'grown-up' in a relationship (with the fellah as basically one more kid for her to chivvy along) also plays out in childhood with the notion of 'boys will be boys' while girls supposedly roll their eyes at their antics. So - ok, that shold in a sense give girls a boost to their self-esteem - but it can also be a conceptrual trap that makes them grow up faster and take on the expectation that they shold be sensible - it is coupled with the idea of girls as clean and demure - they aren't supposed to roll around in the dirt getting filthy and exploring the world with gay abandon,like the boys who are, in that rubrik, big kids.

Similarly, messages about male strength and vitality may have a positive impact on boys - but can also be a conceptual trap that reduces the number of social and emotional strategies that they are comfortable employing.


Personaly, I always gravitated more towards getting dirty and exploring the derelict factory up the road with my friends. We were a mixed bunch of boys and girls and we were pretty much all covered in grime with scraped knees. It used to rankle with me when my dad or one of my aunties would tell me that what i was doing wasn't 'ladylike'.

The double edged sword of female wisdom is that the 'grown-up' woman, surrounded by her actual children and her big kid husband, seems a bit of a killjoy - where fun and larking becomes a male trait. Games and toys, and fun are for children and men. That was a message I despised as soon as i became aware of it. It also ran counter to my own experience - ten to a penny if there was larking about in our house, Mum was at the centre of it.

As to how that plays out in the real world - it's fairly recent that computer gaming has started to become a mainstream passtime - up until a few years ago computer games were seen as play, as frivolity. Lots of girls played computer games - but many dropped off by the time they hit their early teens. In my own experience, I stayed with gaming for a long time. This past 3 or 4 years is probably the longest period I have had in my life without a game on the go. When I was 12 and home computers really broke through, loads of us got computers for Christmas. As i recall, there were at least 5 or 6 of us girls in our class who'd been given computers (mine was a Vic20, my best friend had a C64, another friend had a spectrum, one girl whose dad was a regional manager of some big business had a BBC Micro - can't recall the rest). We all talked games and swapped and met up at each others' houses and got involved in the computrer club that one of the teachers set up after school.

By the time I was 16, I knew very few girls who played computer games (or at least who discussed them). I knew plenty of lads who did. By 16, girls wanted to seem grown-up and looked down on the boys who were acting like big kids. The whole culture was coding games as play and therefore for children. That meant they also got coded male - or more accurately not female.

There were lots of other factors at play - some of which took 10 or 15 years to play out - but I do think thatmay be one of the reasons that girls tended to drop off games when they got to their teens in a way that boys didn't: boys had cultural permission to continue playing into adulthood and girls did not.

Now that games are becoming more mainstream and there is a greater acceptance of them as an adult passtime - more girls are staying with games into adulthood. Again, there are many factors at play, but I do think this is one of them.

It also plays out in the world of sports. It may well be one of the reasons that girls are less likely to play sports once they leave school than boys. Sports, like computer games, are play - and play is for children and men.

One of the most positive changes in our culture in recent years, to me anyway, is a much greater sense of play extending into adulthood for girls as well as boys. And a much greater sense that boys and men can be emotionally confident and equally socially adept is probably the other really good change. Obviously I'm basing this on British culture, I don't know what it's like elsewhere.

I haven't made a connection between the women-are-wise trope and the scoffing at play-culture, that's an interesting one. That part is certainly cultural - Out of the cultures I've known upclose, the most evened out places in regards to the participation of girls in play-culture seems to be Holland and Canada (At least Ontario).

I admit I was steering towards a different direction: Thinking about my own anecdotal experiences in conjunction with the tropes brought up here, I can't help but wonder if for a woman who is influenced by the imagery of the women-are-wise trope, admitting to be wrong is almost akin for a macho man admitting to be weak.