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Are Girl-Focused Engineering Toys Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes?
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."
Both genders should have the same opportunities. They don't necessarily have the same interests.
:P thanks for that clarification i just couldn't make the connection before.
Stereotypes exists because they reflect natural gender differences. Yes, boys and girls are different. All research show this.
So why bother trying? You don't make engineering toys for girls, they complain about them not existing; you make them for girls, they complain about them being stereotypical.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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.
Why make science and engineering toys girly? Because of the parents who wouldn't buy a non-gendered toy. Girls enjoy fishing newts out of a pond, making towers and knocking them down. etc. as much as boys, but many parents discourage this. Enjoying these things at 3 to 4 years is a good foundation for enjoying construction and understanding stability, or examining echo systems when they are older.
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]
Shit better not happen!
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, and more to do with men just don't give a shit about those careers. Be it money, status, working conditions, whatever. Men don't want it. Same probably goes for women in technology, construction, and trades. I don't even care if there is a gender imbalance in nursing, early childhood care, or beauty therapy. I don't know any women who care either. But if I did care, I might find that balancing the male side of the equation in female dominated careers already half solves the female side if things in male dominated careers. Men are welcome to join female dominated careers, if they want. Women are welcome to join male dominated careers, if they want. If people don't want, then they don't want.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
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".
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.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
"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.
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.
My son played with them. My daughter didn't. So I bought this 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.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design