reinforcing sexism: long post but read it

[aliki]

From butterflysneeze:
From Assburger:

Assburger Researchers have recently found that the Discovery Store website's "Toys and Games" section has a list of Boys' toys and a list of Girls' toys. As lifelong nerds, we at Assburger have suffered accute azuritis of the testicles as a direct result of the exclusion of females from the sciences. We've compiled a list of Boy and Girl toys, highlighting the differences between the boy list and the girl list. Almost none of these choices make sense. Vive la 'diff(1)'!

Follow the link above, read the whole list. I mean honestly-- toys listed in girls only catalog include: "Bling Bling Bracelet & Ring Kit", "Deluxe Jewels & Gems Jewelry Kit", and "Discovery Learn to Crochet Set". Toys listed in boys only catalog include: "Discovery Awesome Avalanche Kit", "Kingmaster III Electronic Chess & Checkers Game", and "LEGO (tm) Mars Exploration Rover". When did LEGO and chess/checkers become a male-only toy.

I've posted about gender reinforcements and stereotypes that we impart on our children numerous times in my journal before. An exerpt from Phyllis Burke's book Gender Shock:

In one experiment, two female and two male sixmonth-old babies appeared in both sex-appropriate and cross-sex clothing, and they were given gender-appropriate names for their apparent sex. Women, who were themselves mothers, then interacted with the babies, whom they had never before seen. The sex they perceived the baby to be changed their behavior toward it. When they perceived that they were playing with a boy, even if they were not, they verbally encouraged the baby in its gross motor activities, responding significantly more often to the "boy" baby's movements. The researchers concluded that it would be no surprise that boys tend toward higher rates of activity and physical prowess, not because of a natural tendency toward it, but because of stimulation during infancy.

Another study identified an infant as "Adam," and dressed "him" in blue overalls. The same infant was later identified as "Beth," and dressed in a pink dress. Three toys were made available for the adults to give the baby: a duck, a doll and a train. The adults were parents who had both girls and boys of their own. The mothers gave the doll significantly more often to the baby when identified as "Beth," yet espoused the view that boys and girls should not be trained in sex-stereotypic roles. Most fathers reported themselves aware of playing more physical games with their sons, but the mothers showed no awareness of their differential treatment of "Adam" and "Beth."

In 1980, there was a study entitled "Baby X Revisited." The infants used in the study were from three months to eleven months old, and they were dressed in gender nonspecific clothing of T-shirts and diapers. The same baby was introduced at different times as male, female, or with no gender information. Sixty undergraduate subjects at Hunter College were told that they were in a study concerning "young infants' responses to strangers." The subjects ranged in age from seventeen to forty-five years, and the racial composition was White, Black, Hispanic and Asian. Three toys were made available for the subjects to present to the babies: a small rubber football, a Raggedy Ann doll and a teething ring. None of the men presented a "girl" baby with the football, and 89 percent of them presented "her" with the doll. Eighty percent of the women presented a "boy" baby with the football, and 73 percent of them presented a "girl" with the doll.

And from a study by Condry & Condry in 1976:

A group of people were asked to describe the emotional behaviour of some 9 month-old infants, who had been startled by a Jack-in-the-box. Those, who had been told the infants were boys, described the reaction as anger. If they thought the infants were girls, they described the reaction as fear. Thus we make attributions based on the child's perceived sex, and have expectations which the child reflects. The suggestion is, that boys may react with anger, and girls with fear, because we expect them to. All through our lives we tend to behave to match the attributions people make from social stereotypes because, to behave untypically, sets us apart. We are unconsciously behaving how we are expected to. To do otherwise, puzzles and alarms people. In effect, we are merging with, and adapting to our environment. Otherwise we run the risk of being labelled eccentric unless, of course, we are able to make a virtue of it.

Comments

Re: Refix

[jonlaor.livejournal.com]

Hi. We recently learned a theory about this in my Economics of the Employment Relationship class called Statistical Discrimination. If you are an employer, you have to make a choice on hiring based on the information you have, without knowing everything about the person. So what you do is compare that person's traits as markers and look at the general population. Like for instance, someone with a high degree is more likely to be more responsible than a drop out, and less likely to be resonsible than a college graduate.

The same thing, though it's unfair, can be applied to race and sex. A manager wanting to maximize profits will choose the least risky option, meaning hiring a white male. If all other indicators are the same, statistically they are most likely to be properly educated, grown up in a stable home, least likely to take time off to raise children, and so on. Also, women and minorities are more likely to be paid less, so an employer will offer them less knowing they have fewer other options. So over the entire economy, it's a self-perpetuating cycle that women and minorities will have to work harder to get the same benefits.

The same thing can be applied again in politics. If people are going to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a candidate, if given a male and female with equal qualifications, they'll choose the male because they want every possible advantage.