{"id":5198,"date":"2017-01-29T10:55:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-29T09:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=5198"},"modified":"2017-01-29T10:55:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-29T09:55:09","slug":"cultural-values-in-a-time-warp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2017\/01\/29\/cultural-values-in-a-time-warp\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Values in a Time Warp"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of the year I wrote<\/a> about my frustrations with the slow pace of change, specifically with regard to the situation for women in science in academia but also more broadly. This week I am forcibly reminded again how slowly our society changes and this time it\u2019s the case of how it impacts on young children. Impact on them means impact on their choices and what they become as adults. \u00a0It is depressing.<\/p>\n

The first story arose from a study<\/a> which shows that girls as young as six decide that girls aren\u2019t \u2018really, really smart\u2019 whereas boys are. It got a lot of media coverage. It is a study based on not a very large number of children, of fairly middle class origin based in the US, so you can quibble over whether or not it is representative, but it nevertheless is fairly shocking as well as being useful concrete evidence about how our society evolves, or more accurately doesn\u2019t. I got to voice my views <\/a>on Radio5 on Friday\u00a0 with Emma Barnett<\/a> (21.42 minutes in), who clearly had got a very informed idea of the paper and its implications so that her questions were a pleasure to answer. Too often this is not the case in radio interviews where sensationalism rather than fact is sought! It is interesting that many of the reactions I have heard to the story \u2013 anecdote of course, not evidence \u2013 go along the lines of parents reflecting how early they have noticed their own children forming views of what men and women can and cannot do from the toddler stage on, generally in standardly and boringly stereotyped ways. Parents can do their best to fight society\u2019s \u2018values\u2019, but the messages bombard children from TV, books, relatives, playgroup and (nursery) school. As further evidence I cite below shows, even those who try hard seem doomed to get it horribly wrong.<\/p>\n

Why does it matter if six year old girls no longer believe they are likely to be \u2018really, really smart\u2019? (Interestingly, the change from when boys and girls are considered equivalent to this viewpoint seemed to happen between 5 and 6.) Just think what options this can close off to them. Apparently becoming a physicist is likely to be one of them, since popular wisdom decrees that physics is difficult and can only be done by the intellectual whizzkids. It doesn\u2019t matter if that belief is true, if it is a message swallowed whole by the kids it is likely to close off paths very swiftly. Close them off not because of aptitude or interest, but because of self-belief or rather lack thereof. Since too many interventions, about physics, maths or any other subject, tend only to come at secondary school, perhaps not till GCSE years, it is clear that these will be at least six years too late to be effective. That conclusion is a clear message that our educators and policy-makers need to grasp if we are to crack the issue of girls not opting for the physical sciences, maths, computing and engineering.<\/p>\n

So what about the interest angle amongst girls? Can toy manufacturers help to encourage an interest, let\u2019s say in engineering. Here enters the second story this time about a Barbie spin-off. I heard about this story initially because clearly if a journalist types in pink, Barbie and science my name gets thrown up by Google as a result of my throwaway comments in my BSA Presidential Address<\/a>\u00a0 (even though I\u2019m no longer the BSA President by now). Consequently a Telegraph journalist, Katie Morley<\/a> contacted me for my views after she\u2019d attended a toy convention. Here a Barbie being created by toy company Thames and Kosmos<\/a>\u00a0 was deemed to be \u2018engineering Barbie\u2019. She came equipped with things she could build: a washing machine, a dress, a movable clothes hanger\u2026. In other words the manufacturers couldn\u2019t get beyond the idea that girls \u2013 even if being generously permitted to build things \u2013 should stick with the domestic sphere. The shortsightedness, the inappropriateness of the stereotyping (did I mention the objects were, of course, all pink?) clearly had not impinged on the creators.<\/p>\n

How many times do we have to revisit the idea that if talent is to flourish it mustn\u2019t be restricted to outdated ideas of what is suitable? It isn\u2019t sufficient for Thames and Kosmos to crawl forward to a position where Barbie is allowed to be an engineer; she has to be allowed to build things across the spectrum of what might be useful. There\u2019s obviously nothing wrong with building washing machines, but the choice of rockets, or cars, or bridges or robots should also be on the menu. Laura Bates<\/a> in the Guardian, as ever succinct and to the point, dissected this new failure neatly. She reminded readers of the classic case of getting things wrong of the EU\u2019s Science it\u2019s a Girl Thing video, pulled in about 24 hours after mass objections so you can only find snippets remaining on the web<\/a>. If you can bear to watch this you will see the video not only involved pinkification, but lipstick and high heels to compound the error. Other attempts have similarly floundered on stereotypes of the worst kind: EDF called its campaign \u2018Pretty Curious<\/a>\u2019\u00a0 to some derision, although the content isn\u2019t all bad and this is probably the best of a bad lot; IBM came up\u00a0 with #hackahairdryer<\/a> therefore also condemning the girls to domesticity. Lego has similarly pinkified those sets designed specifically for girls, an error I targeted<\/a> on this blog five years ago.<\/p>\n

With such a long list of prior stereotyping disasters, how is it possible for another company to enter the fray and get it so badly wrong? Why is it so difficult for manufacturers to grasp the fact that girls are not only<\/u> (and possibly not at all) interested in fashion and domesticity. Conversely boys may not all be gung-ho for pirates, rockets, dinosaurs and violence. Why can\u2019t children be children just as much as toys be toys? Instead the company has another PR disaster on its hands, even if Barbie engineer is purchased in significant numbers. Culturally we are simply and unbelievably still stuck in a stereotyped time warp. My frustration mounts\u2026..2017 is not going to be a good year if the first few weeks are the indicator, not good on so many fronts of which pinkification and stereotyping are just one tiny corner. (I am only too aware that in comparison with some of the disgusting things currently happening around the world, to which this title might also apply, they could be regarded as but mere irrelevant hiccoughs.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the start of the year I wrote about my frustrations with the slow pace of change, specifically with regard to the situation for women in science in academia but also more broadly. This week I am forcibly reminded again … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[257,647,1107,344],"class_list":["post-5198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-equality","tag-barbie-dolls","tag-gender-stereotypes","tag-self-belief","tag-toys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}