The economic cost of gendered toys

[DanaC]

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:

Companies and shops marketing toys as either for boys or for girls are damaging the economy by causing fewer women to take up science and engineering jobs

Just in case anybody thinks she is speaking purely at a theoretical feminist level:

"Before entering Parliament, I spent two decades as a professional engineer, working across three continents," she told MPs.

As a consequence, she had become accustomed to working in a male-dominated environment.

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

"Boys who have routinely experienced the sense of accomplishment associated with designing and building something, which can often can come from playing with what would be seen as a boy's toy, feel more at home with subjects such as maths and science, which utilise such skills more," she continued.

"By the time they get to university level, boys and girls are strongly segregated in some areas with, on the whole, boys dominating in the subjects that can lead to the most financially lucrative careers."

She claimed that "22% of the gender pay gap can be explained by the industries and occupations in which women work", adding: "But it also costs our economy significant amounts."

Ms Willott explained: "There are skills shortages across the science, technology, engineering and maths sector, but as long as girls continue to feel that that world is not for them, our businesses will continue to miss out on vital talent that they need for future development.

"Put simply, we cannot afford not to allow girls the opportunity to enjoy and pursue the whole range of subjects, starting right at the beginning with their learning through play."

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

Society should therefore aim not to make boys who want to play with a pushchair and girls keen to kick a football feel guilty or ashamed, she argued.


"A boy who has never had a sewing kit might never discover his talent for design and a girl who has never had a Meccano set may never discover she has real potential as an engineer.

"Clearly not every girl that plays with Lego is going to be an architect... but why should we limit girls' aspirations at so early an age by making it so rigidly defined?"

Toy shops gave off clear signals, the consumer affairs minister said: "The shelf may say 'girls' or 'boys' on it, or otherwise girls' and boys' toys may be colour-coded or displayed in separate aisles.

"What message does that send out? What are we telling our children? We are telling them that girls and boys are different, that they like different things and that they have different interests and skills.

"We are telling them that their gender defines their roles in society and their dreams about the future."

"At some point over the past three decades, the toy industry decided that parents and children could not be trusted to figure out what to buy without colour-coded gender labelling."

Science-themed toys were often labelled "for boys", with products like miniature dustpans and brushes marketed towards girls, she told MPs.

"What happened? Did someone dye the Y chromosome blue in the 1980s or force the X chromosome to secrete only pink hormones?

-snip-

"As every successful marketeer knows, differentiation makes for greater profit margins and segmentation gives you a bigger overall market, so with three-year-old girls only being able to choose pink tricycles, then the manufacturer can charge more for that special girly shade of pink and the premium princess saddle.

"And of course, that trike cannot be handed over to a brother or nephew, ensuring further sales of blue bikes with Action Man handlebars. It has now got to the point where it is difficult to buy toys for girls, in particular, which are not pink, princess-primed and/or fairy-infused.

"Why should girls be brought up in an all-pink environment? It does not reflect the real world. I should say that had anyone attempted to give me a pink soldering iron when I was designing circuit boards, they would have found my use of it not at all in accordance with their health and safety."

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

[footfootfoot]

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

[DanaC]

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:

Discover the exciting and explosive science behind the world's volcanoes with the Wild Science Erupting Volcano Crater Factory.

Create flowing lava, bubbling mineral springs, volcanic bombs and colour morphing pools.

Use the equipment and ingredients provided along with the colour illustrated instruction manual to learn about the different types of volcanic eruption whilst having fun.

Your own volcanic island on which to base your experiments is also included.

This Wild Science kit supports many aspects of the UK science curriculum, including scientific enquiry and investigative skills.

And this:

Make colourful super-bouncy balls and an amazing hyperlauncher rocket with the Wild Science Hyperlauncher Rocket Ball Factory!

Discover bouncy ball-istics with this fun product

Make cosmic ray launchers and supersonic bouncers

Learn about the science of elasticity, polymers, energy and motion with this fascinating Rocketball science kit

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

Well, they get to:

Discover the science of soap while you make super soap shapes, including fragrant flowers and fabulous fairies with the Wild Science Luxury Soap Science Kit!

Create multi-coloured creatures and flowers that float in transparent bars.

Blend colours and perfumes for your own signature soap

The kit contains enough material for the many amazing soap projects and sculptures in the booklet

Or they can:

Create your own luxurious frothy bath bombs with the Wild Science Bath Bomb Factory! Loads of fascinating fizzy activities!

Experiment with all the ingredients and make your own scented Bath Bombs, Phunny Phoam, Magic Tricks and much, much more!

Also teaches you the science behind "fizz" and the changes that occur when materials are mixed

And finally, to complete the trifuckta, they can:

Mix, shake and blend your own heavenly scents with the Wild Science Perfume Laboratory! Create your very own signature perfumes, scented crystals, smell gel, pot pourri, scented paper and many more absorbing aromatic activities in your own perfume laboratory. A great gift which will bring hours of fun.

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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.

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

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

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

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.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

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

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.

[DanaC]

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.

[DanaC]

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.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by DanaC

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?

[DanaC]

When shopping for baby gifts, everyone knows that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. But now there's evidence that those colors may be more than just marketing gimmicks. According to a new study in the Aug. 21 issue of Current Biology, women may be biologically programmed to prefer the color pink — or, at least, redder shades of blue — more than men.

Read more: Study: Why Girls Like Pink - TIME http://content.time.com/time/health/...#ixzz2t7AAeQaS

More here:

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


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

This color represents compassion, nurturing and love. It relates to unconditional love and understanding, and the giving and receiving of nurturing.

A combination of red and white, pink contains the need for action of red, helping it to achieve the potential for success and insight offered by white. It is the passion and power of red softened with the purity, openness and completeness of white. The deeper the pink, the more passion and energy it exhibits.

Pink is feminine and romantic, affectionate and intimate, thoughtful and caring. It tones down the physical passion of red replacing it with a gentle loving energy.

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:

According to scientists, the simple explanation why do girls like pink so much is that since prehistoric times, the role of a woman was that of a food gatherer and berries were a staple food, along with other nature's produce, for humans back then. Fruits, especially berries, mostly had purplish, reddish or pinkish undertones that signified ripeness. These scientists support the theory that women developed a better color vision than men to spot the rip fruits in a green vegetation by psychologically becoming hard-wired to pick out red and pink over centuries. Also, females easily express emotions and when a woman blushes, her cheeks appear flushed with blood and the color tone of the skin changes to shades of red. Pink is a shade of red too. When a child is sick, even then his/her skin has a reddish undertone. Women pick up on subtle and indirect clues fairly quicker than men and are more in sync with feelings. Since women have basically been nurturers, they are sensitive to all shades of pink and red. For long, the color pink has been associated with beauty and tenderness.
Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/why-d...like-blue.html

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.

[DanaC]

An interesting counterpoint to all that:

Crudely speaking, the psychological field of gender development is split between those who see gender differences as learned via socially constructed ideas about gender, and those who believe many gender differences are actually “sex differences”, innate and biologically driven.

In Western cultures, girls consistently prefer pink, boys prefer blue. Which academic camp lays claim to this difference? Past research has made a case, in terms of the evolutionary advantage of finding fruit, for why females might be biologically predisposed to prefer pink and other bright colours. But a new study purports to show that girls only acquire their preference for pink, and boys their aversion to it, at around the age of two to three, just as they’re beginning to talk about and become aware of gender. Vannessa LoBue and Judy DeLoache say their finding undermines the notion of innate sex differences in colour preference. “If females have a biological predisposition to favour colours such as pink, this preference should be evident regardless of experience of the acquisition of gender concepts,” they said.

LoBue and DeLoache presented 192 boys and girls aged between seven months and five years with pairs of small objects (e.g. coasters and plastic clips) and invited them to reach for one. Each item in a pair was identical to the other except for its colour: one was always pink, the other either green, blue, yellow or orange. The key test was whether boys and girls would show a preference for choosing pink objects and at what age such a bias might arise.

At the age of two, but not before, girls chose pink objects more often than boys did, and by age two and a half they demonstrated a clear preference for pink, picking the pink-coloured object more often than you’d expect based on random choice. By the age of four, this was just under 80 per cent of the time – however there was evidence of this bias falling away at age five.

Boys showed the opposite pattern to girls. At the ages of two, four and five, they chose pink less often than you’d expect based on random choices. In fact, their selection of the pink object became progressively more rare, reaching about 20 per cent at age five.
A second experiment zoomed in on the age period of two to three years, to see how colour preferences changed during this crucial year. The same procedure as before was repeated with 64 boys and girls in this age group. Among the children aged under two and a half, both boys and girls chose pink objects around 50 per cent of the time, just as you’d expect if they were choosing randomly and had no real colour preference. Among those aged between two and a half to three years, by contrast, the boys showed a bias against choosing pink and the girls showed a bias in favour of pink.

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

[DanaC]

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

I love evolutionary psychologists, because the ideas, like "girls prefer pink because they need to be better at hunting berries" are so much fun. Sure there are problems, like, we don't know a lot about life in the pleistocene period through which humans evolved; their claims sound a bit like "just so" stories, relying on their own internal, circular logic; the evidence for genetic influence on behaviour, emotion, and cognition, is coarse; they only pick the behaviours which they think they can explain while leaving the rest; and they get in trouble as soon as they go beyond examining broad categories of human behaviours across societies and cultures, becoming crassly ethnocentric. But that doesn't stop me enjoying their ideas.

This week every single newspaper in the world lapped up the story that scientists have cracked the pink problem. "At last, science discovers why blue is for boys but girls really do prefer pink," said the Times. And so on.

The study took 208 people in their 20s and asked them to choose their favourite colours between two options, repeatedly, and then graphed their overall preferences. It found overlapping curves, with a significant tendency for men to prefer blue, and female subjects showing a preference for redder, pinker tones. This, the authors speculated (to international excitement and approval) may be because men go out hunting, but women need to be good at interpreting flushed emotional faces, and identifying berries whilst out gathering.

Now there are some serious problems here. Firstly, the test wasn't measuring discriminative ability, just preference. I am yet to be given evidence that my girlfriend has the upper hand in discriminating shades of red as we gambol foraging for the fruits of the forest (which we do).

But is colour preference cultural or genetic? The "girls preferring pink" thing is not set in stone, and there are good reasons to suspect it is culturally determined. I have always been led to believe by my father - the toughest man in the world - that pink is the correct colour for men's shirts. In fact until very recently blue was actively considered soft and girly, while boys wore pink, a tempered form of fierce, dramatic red.

There is no reason why you should take my word for this. Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies' Home Journal wrote: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: "If you like the colour note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention." Some sources suggest it wasn't until the 1940s that the modern gender associations of girly pink became universally accepted. Pink is, therefore, perhaps not biologically girly. Boys who were raised in pink frilly dresses went down mines and fought in the second world war. Clothing conventions change over time.

But, within this study, was the preference stable across cultures? Well no, not even in this experiment, where they had some Chinese test subjects too. For these participants not only were the differences in the overlapping curves not so extreme; but the favourite colours were a kind of red for boys and a bit pinker for girls (not blue); and they had more of a red preference overall. Red, you see, is a lucky colour in contemporary Chinese culture.

And snuggled away in the paper was the information that femininity scores on the Bem Sex Role Inventory correlated significantly with colour preference. Now the BSRI is a joy from the 1970s, a self-rated test designed to measure how much you adhere to socially desirable, stereotypically masculine and feminine personality characteristics.

You mark on the score sheet from one to seven how much you feel you suit words like theatrical, assertive, sympathetic, adaptable, or tactful; and then your score is totted up. So women who describe themselves as "yielding", "cheerful", "gullible", "feminine", and who "do not use harsh language" also prefer pink. Thanks for the warning, I'll try and use that to avoid them in future.

It is worth being critical and thoughtful about these stories, not because it's fun to be mean, but because that's what the authors would want, and also because stories about genes and culture are an important part of the stories we tell ourselves about who and what we are, our sense of personal responsibility, and the inevitability in our gender roles.

· Full references and graphs can be found at badscience.net.

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

[tw]

Originally Posted by DanaC

No. But children pick these messages up. Go into your average toyshop and the coding is very clear.

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.

Originally Posted by DanaC

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.

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.

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.

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

Originally Posted by DanaC

Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies' Home Journal wrote: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.

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.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by tw

... No definitive answers statistically define the relevant gender differences. ... 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.

[Undertoad]

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.