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by skimpycompiler 3889 days ago
Even simpler methods exist.

Realize that framing your daughters behavior by giving her babies, princesses, dolls, makeup, clothes and similar to play with, while your boy gets the newest action games, puzzles, balls, competitive and brain engaging fun, will definitely influence her future career choices.

When you take your daughter to look at some princess movies, or some toy story thingy, while you watch star wars and star trek with your son, long into the night, think of what kind of framing is done.

Of course, even if you try to keep all the options open. Someone from her school might make your daughter do "girls only" activities. Or maybe she'll be forbidden from accessing the Star Wars room at Legoland because she's a girl. Whole world is against your little girl becoming like a man. She needs babies so she knows she has to be a mother. She needs kitchen games so she knows she has to cook. She needs to play with dolls, to groom them, to dress them, so that she eventually does the same for herself. She needs to be pretty, and by pretty we mean makeup.

If someone is naive enough to believe that boys and girls have innately different interests, then so be it.

But girls ain't "gurls" because they don't like technology.

6 comments

"If someone is naive enough to believe that boys and girls have innately different interests, then so be it."

Its been shown that male monkeys prefer boys toys while females prefer girls toys. No cultural conditioning required.

http://animalwise.org/2012/01/26/born-this-way-gender-based-...

Before someone jumps in with the notion that monkeys have culture too, it should be noted that monkeys have not developed the wheel. Thus, they are unlikely to have defined gender roles for wheeled toys.
Please use care when dealing with the girls in your life. I know plenty of girls who want to build robots out of the pink legos. Or treat clothing with rules remarkably similar to programming. Please avoid preaching to these girls that they have to throw a ball or play action games to avoid limiting their career choices.

I've met a number of people who espouse views similar to yours. You believe you're sticking up for girls, but all the kids hear is that girly stuff is 'bad' and boy stuff is 'good'. Someday you might know a girl who really just wants to take care of babies. Do you think she is entitled to have that view? How would she take comments like yours? Will she think that because her goals are 'bad' that she is 'bad'. How would a boy who wants to take care of babies react when everyone sees baby toys as lesser? Do you think they will feel free to be more feminine? Or pressured to conform even further. You're reinforcing what you believe you oppose.

I'm not advocating for girls playing boy games.

I'm just saying that there's crazy amount of conditioning here, and that people might unconsciously make choices for their daughters that will lead them to a very different life.

I am also saying that there's crazy amount of pressure from kindergarten teachers, and who knows what other environments.

> Do you think she is entitled to have that view? How would she take comments like yours?

My comment was pretty much black&white. I'm not advocating pressure. I'm painting my views this simple to evoke questioning of one's choices regarding raising children.

Realistically, women do not go into tech do to tech looking unattractive to women. Women find this men dominant field unattractive for reasons that are mostly based on early conditioning. It's not that they are incompetent, they just do not try.

> people might unconsciously make choices for their daughters that will lead them to a very different life.

Do you think that life will be worse than if their upbringing was optimized to turn them into engineers? Playing devil's advocate... traditional gender roles must hold some value otherwise people wouldn't adhere to them. There are also many women who enjoy what would be considered a traditional role. I think this push to get women into tech at all costs is stealing quite a bit of agency from people who are exerting their free will (both in career choice and child raising technique).

When did I say that?

If you believe I'm advocating for women being raised to become engineers then you and everyone else who downvotes me is silly.

I'm talking about gender roles. They are here, they aren't changing, and no, you cannot do anything about women equity in tech without changing the values that are ingrained in human culture.

> They are here, they aren't changing, and no, you cannot do anything about women equity in tech without changing the values that are ingrained in human culture.

It does sound like you are advocating for changing traditional gender roles. Maybe you think there are other benefits to doing that beyond increasing tech adoption for women? All I'm saying is that there are positives associated with existing gender roles and working so hard to change them while ignoring the negatives that will come about doesn't seem wise.

That stuff's been tried and doesn't do the trick. Human nature's still there.
So it's "human nature" that boys like tech and girls like princesses?
Yes its been shown in monkey studies, so its actually deeper than human nature.
Male monkeys like computers and female monkeys like princesses? That's literally literally the most absurd statement I've ever processed.
The research was actually male monkeys like toy trucks, females like dolls. Check out the cute monkey pics:

http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks...

I posted a link about the study elsewhere in the thread.
I'm not really sure how a study about monkeys has any relevance to whether humans have engrained gender roles. People are cognitively far more complex and nature vs. nurture when it comes to gender is not really as decided as it might seem.
Testosterone?
Surprisingly that might work - "Several animal studies have shown that hormonal manipulation can reverse sex-typed behavior. When researchers exposed female rhesus monkeys to male hormones prenatally, these females later displayed male-like levels of rough-and-tumble play."

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/you-can-giv...

I totally agree that a huge part of who we are is our nurturing, but your claims that there are NO innate differences don't really seem to hold.

Have you seen this case that many college psychology courses cover? http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/gender_reassign...

How does Star Wars prepare you do be a programmer, and watching a princess movies does not? I don't recall any programming scenes in Star Wars? And all those movies are made with computers. Girls tend to be encouraged to lots of creative activity which could also come in handy with computer jobs. They also do well in maths at schools (better than boys, apparently).

Can you cite any studies that support your claim?

Agreed, gotta start early like parents used to do with boys. Need to show things are accessible regardless of gender.