My little lad is a huge fan of Lego. In fairness who isn’t? Although our house is overrun with the stuff and I’ve sustained multiple injuries by standing on various sharp little pieces in my bare feet, I love it too. It’s an excellent, durable, creative toy and has given him, and consequently us, hours and hours of pleasure for several years now.
Lately he’s been wary about showing me his most recent purchases – a series of top quality, mystery mini figures that come in sealed packages and are well within pocket money range. “Great idea”, you say. “Yes”, I agree BUT my objection is that in a world where half of us are women these cute little figures are overwhelmingly male. I know I may well be accused of carrying feminist thinking to its extremes in this instance but hey you have to get ‘em young! What does everyone else think? Is this merely coincidence, a non-issue, or yet another example of marginalisation? At less than 20% representation for women are they merely reflecting real life? Yes, I know I should lighten up (before anyone says it) but the pervasive invisibility gets me down.
Series 1
Look at them. Aren’t they cute! Amongst the first 16 the girls get to be nurses and cheerleaders. The boys have a lot more choice and can be zombies, magicians, clowns, deep sea divers, forest men, ninjas, spacemen, wrestlers, tribal hunters, cowboys, demolition dummies and cavemen. Even the robot is referred to as “he”.
Series 2
Things are improving. Next 16 figures and the girls get to be lifeguards (a la Baywatch), pop stars and witches. The men get to be explorers, karate masters, maraca men, mime artists, traffic cops, pharaohs, ringmasters, skiers, Spartan warriors, vampires, surfers, weightlifters and disco dudes.
Series 3
By now my lad has taken to hiding them from me. In the latest series the girls get to be tennis players, hula dancers and snow boarders. The men get to be samurai warriors, sumo wrestlers, rappers, fishermen, tribal chiefs, elves, race car drivers, pilots, baseball players, mummies (the bandaged variety), space villains and gorilla suit guys. The alien is not assigned a gender so perhaps we can claim her too!
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Elanor,
I’m dismayed. You really don’t seen to get the point of Lego, do you? It is achingly easy to make female versions of any of the characters that you mention, and make versions of bikini models etc! all you need to do is change the head from a female body to a “male” one. *every* *single* body that you mention above can be interchanged between a male or female head. Even just a change of hair can turn a generic bald Legoman into a Legowoman.
When I had Lego myself, I remember getting what you could call “girly” Lego. I didn’t care, I saw some really cool pieces in it I could use (and besides, a millionaire’s miami mansion is fairly gender neutral IMO)
If children only ever made from Lego what was on the box, I would be surprised and annoyed at their lack of *any* imagination.
I haven’t played with new lego, so I don’t know if there’s a clear distinction between male & female heads, but if there is, how many female heads would you have if you managed to collect all 16 without repeats? Oh yeah, two or three. So you could have, say, a female clown and wrestler (without the clown makeup or wrestlers mask or expression), but not clown, wrestler AND ninja at the same time.
In my day, there weren’t different faces. Hair was the only distinguishing feature. But how do you fit on hair and a helmet/mask/hat? And again, there’s only two feminine hairstyles per set.
Ok, so unless there’s a beard or something, you can say the astronaut’s a woman. But not only is the assumption male, which you have to be strong to fight against, you’re told (presumably in the packaging, but I saw it on the website) that all the unobviously female or alien ones are male. Even the gorilla suit one is called “gorilla suit guy”. And as pointed out in the post, even the robot is referred to as “him”.
It’s worse than I thought! The tennis player, hula dancer, pop star and lifesaver all have painted on curves – bust and waist. I could’t see on th cheerleader, cos her pompoms are in the way, and I don’t think the witch does. So again, it looks like the average straight up and down is the default male norm, and female is the signalled other.
Nice try Colm but surely there should be 8 female heads then. Which brings me to the point – why do many Lego girl heads have interchangable faces, simpering and terrified, one either side?
Also all the characters are designated as he or she in their bios and there is no suggestion that they can be either.
I applaude your love of Lego and I think that you are absolutely right and that children do ignore the box & the instructions. Also boys are very open to the notion of strong female characters. My son is loving Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant series where one of the two heroes, Stephanie Edgley, is a girl. In a similar way girls love Harry Potter.
I hate to disturb a good debating point BUT isn’t it a case of chicken or egg: it turns out that boys are overwhemingly the target market for these figures and girls couldn’t care less, therefore you market to boys, your target sudience. Following Adam Smith, if it turned out that girls would like feminine Lego figures the manufacturer would find out and supply them. Why not? Incidentally where do you stand on chicken and egg? My wife celebrates International Women’s Day. I have posed the question, Why not international men’s day, after all the issue of equality seems to demand one? I’m told that every day is a mans’s day so why bother. There’s predjudice for you.
it turns out that boys are overwhemingly the target market for these figures
Are they, though? I played with Lego masses when I was a kid. It was my brothers’ Lego because people had chosen to buy it for my brothers, but that wasn’t exactly my choice.
Though if it is conscious, it’s depressing that “marketing to boys” means “making mostly male characters”. On the same grounds that girls are perfectly happy to read books with male and female characters, presumably, but boys won’t touch icky girl books.
And hey, if you want to organise International Men’s Day, get on that! I’m sure you’ll find plenty of men who are interested. You don’t have to sit around waiting for women to do it for you, you know!
“Following Adam Smith, if it turned out that girls would like feminine Lego figures the manufacturer would find out and supply them.”
Read the Hathor Legacy website. You might find that’s not as true as you might think.
The “Why not international men’s day?” question is essentially not that different from the frequently heard “Why can’t we have straight pride parades?”. The simple answer, of course, is you can. Just go ahead and organise it. Of course, it might attract the type of folk who go to white-pride rallies, but there you go.
But fundamentally I think it’s a nonsense, petty question. The whole of western culture (I can’t speak for cultures I haven’t lived in) is one big straight pride celebration 24/7. 7 days a week. Straight people walking around holding hands? Golly! Straight people openly kissing without fear of opprobrium or violence? Wowzers! Getting married? Imagine! It is, needless to say, somewhat more problematic for gay people to take the same liberties/rights for granted.
Likewise the planet is, by and large, patriarchally inclined. Socially, politically, culturally. I’m struggling to think of all those unenlightened areas of the globe where men’s rights are trodden underfoot and where they’re relegated to domesticity and subservience. If such places exist, then men’s day will leap to the top of the agenda. If they don’t then the question (though sounding semi-sensible) is just daft.
Oh and I’m a man by the way.
*applauds* Bravo, sir!
*standing ovation*
You go, er, boy!
I was obsessed with Lego when I was a kid, particularly Lego Pirates. My favourite was the female pirate figure, of which there was exactly one, and she managed to find time mid-swashbucling to apply garish red lipstick and a corset that showed off her heaving bosoms. Ugh.
You don’t even have to sit around waiting for women to find it for you, but here you are: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=international+men%27s+day
Hi Eleanor,
I have to agree with you, it is frustrating. I’m expecting a boy and have been trying to find non-gender specific toys for him. He hasn’t been born yet and even when he is it will be a good while before he can tell me what he actually likes. of course there are teddy bears and some generic rattles but beyond that, should I decorate his room with Thomas the Tank Engine furniture because the only other colourful alternative is pink Dora the Explorer? I’m not really giving him a choice if I’m already telling him that trains are for boys and anything with pink must be for girls.
Not only do I want him to have the freedom to do choose what he likes but I’d also like him to be aware that women do not have limited roles in society.
Lego is a good example. I loved Lego as a child, however I generally only had the plain bricks. The Lego figures didn’t appeal to me, I thought they were mainly “boys” toys and despite being a budding feminist, my 6-year old self couldn’t handle the ridicule if I’d played with these “boys toys”. It wasn’t that I “couldn’t care less” about buying female figures as a commenter above says, it was more that I didn’t have a choice.
And I have to say I love the way on Feminist-leaning websites, men always seem to be the first commenters to come on to say that women are over-reacting and men do not try to hold them back, so could they just be quiet please?
Why not have a proper discussion guys? Surely the issue of gender-neutral toys is relevant to both sexes. Is it right that boys should be limited in what they play with for fear of being seen as “soft”?
Hi Scamorza
Congratulations on the imminant arrival of your little boy and thanks for your comment. I love having sons and have such great fun with them. I wouldn’t agonise too much about their choice of toy or game. My first boy is Lego mad and number two is never seen without a ball – they are so different from each other – so your boy will soon latch on to his own thing. My first boy had a Dora room when he was little as he loved her on TV. It never occurred to him or me that an explorer who had such brilliant adventurers was “girlie” untill someone “helpfully” pointed it out.
You will undoubtedly do a wonderful job teaching your son to open his mind to the possibilities of girls as heroes and role models too.
I totally agree that little boys who are ridiculed for wanting to play with “girlie toys” and are marched out onto the football pitch even if they have no interest really lose out.
I know I may well be accused of carrying feminist thinking to its extremes in this instance but hey you have to get ‘em young
Oh, I know – this idea that just because we’re 50% of the population, we’d like to see that reflected in children’s toys, parliament, even the Church – is nowhere safe? It’s politcal correctness gone mad, I tell you!
Where is the gender identified, though? Is it in the packaging or something? Because I’m wondering how the heck you tell if a Lego character is male or female? All of them are yer basic humanoid shape, regardless of genitalia, so what is it that makes them male zombies, magicians, clowns, deep sea divers, forest men, ninjas, spacemen, wrestlers, tribal hunters, cowboys, demolition dummies and cavemen rather than female ones?
You can see the genders here: http://minifigures.lego.com/en-us/Bios/Default.aspx
Oh my God! Now I’m actually horrified!
Because men are human and women are like humans but with extra signifiers! And curves are how you know that people are female! And it’s really important that we make sure that small children understand this! Dear God, that’s gross.
Until you posted that I was holding out hope that the ninja, gorilla suit guy, mime and space villain could all be girls. Oh well.
And how bad is it that the robot and crash test dummy are both presumed to be men…
Lord theyre bad!
Although I do like Surfer Girl’s slogen – “The best wave is always the next wave!”
She means feminism, right?
As a matter of interest, how would the issue be solved? an insistence on male/female specific heads to be provided in equal measure? Perhaps the parent should order extra female heads seperately from Lego and replace the heads before giving them to the child?
re: being first to comment, I comment as an avid fan of Lego first, gender second. Lego gave me the creative and inventive nature that has brought me to a love of engineering. My career choices today can be traced back to the “mad scientist” inventions I made out of Lego.
To the poster looking for gender generic toys, Lego is *perfect*, but I would recommend buying a few female heads and throwing then into the Lego box. Remember, a child will place him/herself in the character’s shoes, so a boy will play as a man more often than as a woman, and a girl more often a woman than as a man.
I would like to point out that there is a computer program that, like a modern CAD program, will allow you to virtually build your own Lego model, and then order the model from Lego.
I’d be happy to do some research and post more in a few days.
Like someone has said, the bodies of the Lego characters have “curves” painted on them for the female ones, so your head-swapping suggestion wouldn’t work. Gender is built in more fundamentally to the characters than that. Ugh!
Well then get rid of the curvy ones I’d say. It’s your money buying the toys, it’s your child, you have the ultimate right to raise your child as you want him/her to be raised.
I’d be very surprised if he/she noticed.
So basically, your advice to the OP is to stop complaining about a product she’s bought for her son and how she’d like it to be improved, and throw 30% of it away instead? Well, that’s very helpful.
You’re right, of course. Which I occasionally forget, though a member of a profession (architecture) where women are under-represented at professional level, though well-represented as students. Sometimes you forget because you forget to look around, as you just get on with it. I looked around last week, when I realised I was one of the few female speakers at a conference. For a horrifying moment I thought I was the only one. I’m a researcher now. Same story in academia. Story of my life. I never perceive my self to be out on the edge, or in a minority, but every now and then I get a sharp reminder. There’s the attendant risk that you’ll be considered as some sort of exotic creature, rather than being listened to.
Great post, the gender bias extends beyond Lego. The heroes are nearly always male with the odd blonde princess needing to be rescued and married off. Luigi, Mario etc.
Yay, fústar!
I read that as white-prude rallies at first.
Are there any studies about how gendered toys affect the views of children?
Kind of impossible to do – gender is so pervasive that who would be your control group and how would you control the variables?
I suppose you could do something like the studies that show women & other minoritised groups do worse in tests after being reminded of their group membership.
There’s at least one study that shows that when young children know they’re being observed, they are more likely to choose to play with a toy that’s associated with their own gender. When they think no one is watching, they’ll choose both “boys’” and “girls’” toys. Which indicates (a) children are aware of the pressure to publicly conform to prescribed gender roles from an early age and (b) they’re aware of the gendering of toys from an early age too. This all indicates that gendered toys do reinforce specific gender roles.
Right, I did a bit of digging.
This interesting study looks at children with “congenital adrenal hyperplasia” (CAH), a condition that alters the hormone balance of children before birth. This can produce female children who have very high prenatal testosterone levels. The study points out that these girls are probably socialised as females, so any behavioural differences must be caused by hormones, not by socialisation.
They found that unaffected girls played with girls’ toys more than boys did. Unaffected boys played with boys’ toys more than girls did. However CAH girls played with BOYS’ toys more and girls’ toys less.
They found that parents of CAH girls did not encourage the girls towards boys’ toys, concluding that their preference for boys’ toys strengthens suggestions that “alterations in parental encouragement do not cause the masculinized play preferences of girls with CAH.”
http://psychologicalcounsel.co.uk/doc/Pasterski(2005).pdf
They leave interpretations open, however they are clear that prenatally high-testosterone girls play with boyish toys more than prenatally ordinary-testosterone girls. One interpretation is that preference for a particular kind of toy is determined by hormones, not socialisation.
Other studies looked at “toy” selection by non-human primates. Here, vervet monkeys were observed gravitating towards either male toys (a car and a ball) or female toys (a doll and a pot). Again the male monkeys chose to play with male toys, female monkeys went for female toys.
http://www.x-gender.net/biogender/alexander-etal-02.pdf
The same observation was made with rhesus monkeys:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18452921
So that’s interesting, and gives weight to the behavioural differences being determined by homones, not socialisation. However it doesn’t really answer my own question! It would be interesting to know if access to typically male or female toys alters how children think and behave.
I haven’t looked at the other studies, but the vervet one needs more. What on earth makes a cooking pot feminine for monkeys who don’t cook? They say themselves females are more attracted to the pink/red tones. Would it have been different if the pot had been green or yellow? I imagine the human kids would have still seen it as a girls’ toy, but maybe not the monkeys.
I’d like to see the study done with at least changing the colour of the pot, but also with a greater variety of toys and either the same colour for them all, or enough of a colour range that there’s feminine and masculine colours in all toy groupings.
Also, be careful how you phrase it. Males played with the masculine grouped toys *more than the females did*. Leaving the last bit out reads to me like they played with masculine toys more than feminine or neutral toys, when in fact they played with the pot roughly as much as the ball and car, and played with the stuffed dog the most.
Huh. after a quick look at the rhesus monkey study, what’s striking me the most is that that catgorises plush toys as feminine and shows that female monkeys play with them more than masculine toys, and slightly more than male monkeys do (is it significant? I don’t know how to judge), but the vervet monkey study classifies the stuffed dog as neutral and shows that the male monkeys play with it more than any other toy. Hmm…
Fair enough Mollydot, I just wanted to keep my comment short.
I also was puzzled by the idea of a pot being feminine! :S
However my conclusion to this discussion would be that the onus is on those who want to change things to prove that the present situation truly is harmful. I won’t take for granted that Lego men are harming children, I’m content with the status quo until convinced otherwise.
Thanks Anna!
Mollydot, Those studies about how woman & minorities do after being reminded of their group membership sound fascinating (far more so than the monkey ones!). Have you got a link to any information about them? I’d love to learn more.
Here’s some info about one of them: http://www.arts.ubc.ca/nc/research/single-page-news/browse/4/article/229/researchers-probe-how-stereotypes-can-influence-womens-math-performance.html
Oh god, I can’t remember the term they used for it, which would help searching. I’m just on a phone now, so I’ll see if I can find it when I’m back on a proper computer. Summary of the one I’ve seen, IIRC, is that women do worse in maths tests after looking at fashion magazines. I’ve only seen mention of similar results for other minoritised groups.
More positively, a lecturer found female students did better after doing some sort of writing exercise at the beginning of term. Again, I forget the details, but it was something like writing about their strengths, or why they were doing physics ,or something. I would have linked to it on twitter, but good luck trying to find anything on my twitter stream!
Hello!
I’m late to the dance on this one, but I’m glad I didn’t post when I first read Eleanor’s piece, because if I had, I’d have missed out on all the interesting comments.
Colm, I think your suggestion of ‘creating’ our own Lego characters is a very constructive one. But that one can is news to me and – I would suspect – to many others who read this blog. Unless Lego put that information on the back of packaging, it will be difficult for parents’ awareness to be raised, no?
Shane, there have been a number of studies on gender and toys. A few of them are: ‘Gender stereotyping in infancy: Visual preferences for and knowledge of gender-stereotyped toys in the second year’ (http://jbd.sagepub.com/content/25/1/7.short), ‘Qualitative differences among gender-stereotyped toys: Implications for cognitive and social development in girls and boys.’ (http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2j07l6q54qu4072/) and ‘Children, Gender and Social Structure: An Analysis of the Contents of Letters to Santa Claus’ (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1128986).
One of the books I loved on the subject was ‘Packaging Girlhood’, which looked at how marketers subject our girls to ‘Pink Packaging’ and ‘weak women’ syndrome. Steve Biddulph wrote ‘Raising Boys’ which many parents of sons highly recommend.
Like most people who expressed an opinion here, I bemoan the fact that marketing departments throughout the Western world – and the Asian middle classes – have decided our daughters should wear pink and a few shades of light purple; and our sons should wear green, grey and blue. My youngest daughter loves the colour blue and always has. It is difficult to find pretty, feminine clothes for her in her favourite shades.
All of that said, I think it would be unwise of me to neglect stating that studies have shown that girls and boys are wired differently. We cannot raise gender-neutral children – and perhaps we shouldn’t try – but perhaps what we need to do is allow our children access to whatever toys/clothes/reading material/courses/expectations there are and allow them to decide for themselves what they would like.
You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.
HK
Good work Hazel, I’ll have a browse through those
Very interesting comments to date thanks.
The comments referring to toy choice by gender are fascinating. There are so many variables at play (pardon the pun) that it’s tough to attribute behaviour to the presence or absence of any one effect.
However, the issue here is not one of the choices made by children being determined by their gender. It is the distorted view of the world that is presented by Lego to all children and their parents when they include so few representations of women in their range.
I completely agree with Hazel that boys and girls are different from each other, as are women and men. That’s one of the reasons that reflecting gender balance in government is so important. Each gender complements the other and results in a better outcome for all. Also, within gender groups there are wide variations. I only have to look at my own two boys, raised in the same house by the same parents yet utterly different in the way they play and the toys they chose.
“Also, within gender groups there are wide variations. I only have to look at my own two boys, raised in the same house by the same parents yet utterly different in the way they play and the toys they chose.”
Yeah, totally, we’re all minorities of one. I can remember looking at most of my peers in school and ticking off the things we had (on paper) in common: same income group, same sex, same sexuality, same religious upbringing, same access to TV, same age, same school, same teachers, living within a few miles of one another – yet we were totally, totally different and didn’t get on well. Over the years I would meet people from the far side of the world who had more in common with me than my neighbours!
But getting back to your point…
“It is the distorted view of the world that is presented by Lego to all children and their parents when they include so few representations of women in their range.”
I’d need to see serious research before I’d be concerned about it. How many of us grew up reading sexist and racist books yet didn’t turn into bigots! Several of my favourite books as a child had few or no female characters (Treasure Island and The Hobbit come to mind). Other books were racist (Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, R.M. Ballantyne’s Coral Island, King Solomon’s Mines). Blyton’s Famous Five were a grotesquely sexist bunch! Yet despite this, and despite playing cheerfully with toy guns and toy male soldiers, watching male-dominated action films and reading (violent) male-dominated adventure stories, I’m a peaceful and tolerant enough person today!
So I’m slow to worry about that kind of issue over childrens’ toys, and I’d need strong evidence that this Lego situation is harmful before I’d be concerned.
(Out of curiosity, do you notice your son playing with the male and female characters equally?)
Very fair point Shane. I grew up with Enid Blyton and seem to have escaped unscathed. Children and the adults they become are generally very good at developing their own value systems and filtering out what’s harmful or unfair.
I just wish that Lego hadn’t lazily bought into under-representation. I don’t even mind the figures they chose. Witches are as cool as vampires, snowboarders and tennisplayers are admirable and lifeguards rescue people heroically. Popstars are popular and I guess I’ll just have to live with the cheerleader – she’s no worse than the disco dude. It’s the lack of them that irks me.
As regards which figures he plays with – interesting question! Well he has more of the male ones as there simply are more of them. He also has definite favourites and there are several he doesn’t like. I have to confess that faces have been pulled and groans emitted when the package contained a cheerleader or pop star but he does like the snowboarder and the witch.
And how many of us played with sexist and racist books and toys and *do* have sexist & racist traits? Sexism and racism haven’t gone away. Why do you think there were fewer female minifigs and no potentially neutral ones talked about as female? Or why there’s enough colour variation to have green heads and hands, but not brown ones?
How many of us grew up reading sexist and racist books yet didn’t turn into bigots
Cos the only two possibilities are “bigots” or perfectly well-balanced, unaffected individuals? It’s not possible for gender socialisation to have long-term and lasting but more subtle effects on the life experiences of men and women?
Our societies have plenty of ideas about sex and race that go unchallenged. I have internalised sexism and racism, even though I also spent plenty of my time as a teenager and in my early twenties deconstructing the various narratives of race and gender I’d grown up with. And men still seem to be earning significantly more than women, and that looks like a male-dominated Dail right there.
If women saying that sexism sucks and the mountains of evidence about men’s greater wealth and access to political and economic power isn’t sufficient evidence for you, I can’t imagine what will be.
My default setting is to not be outraged.
I’ve seen two kinds of extremes in thinking about society:
1) Everything should be prohibited unless proven to be helpful.
2) Everything should be allowed unless proven to be harmful.
I gravitate towards the second perspective. I’ll automatically think the disparity in Lego figures is harmless unless someone can prove otherwise.
(Partly this approach comes from seeing periodic panics over popular activities for children. Harry Potter was denounced by Christian extremists for attracting children to Satanism – and criticised by inventor James Dyson for “distracting” children from science. To me it’s just a hugely entertaining series! The onus is on them to prove that HP is damaging, not on fans to prove it’s harmless.)
Dear heavens, where on earth did anyone talk about prohibiting anything? Criticising a product which is marketing to children and saying that you’d like to see them produce something with less gender bias and isn’t First Lessons In Sexism And Seeing Women As Non-People is not the same as saying BAN LEGO.
Don’t look now, but your kneejerk reactions are showing.
Of course, I described them as two extremes, there’s a gradient of views.
The point stands though. Until we see evidence of real negative consequences of sexual disparity in Lego characters I see no reason for concern.
Shane,
You know the funny thing is that when I was writing the post it never really occurred to me to ask if the gender bias was harming my child. I was just really annoyed at the laziness of Lego execs allowing the same old patriarchal patterns to persist and making me feel like a second class citizen yet again. Surely you can understand this reaction.
Now that you’ve raised the issue. Yes absolutely its damaging! How could it not be? It reinforces the notion that women are limited to just a small number of roles in life. Therefore to boys it says “don’t expect to see too many women doing diverse things in life” and “in life only one in five people you encounter will be a woman”. For girls is says “don’t bother, the choices open to you are very limited.”
Although it examines kids television rather than toys, very relevant in this context is the fantastic work done by Geena Davis in gender stereotyping in Kids TV. I wrote about this in an earlier post.
(http://theantiroom.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/where-are-all-the-girls-mum-ready-to-publish/)
Now that you’ve mentioned it I’m even more angry about this. Of course it’s damaging. How can reinforcing the patriarchal society & relegating women to lesser and fewer roles possibly not be?!? I don’t need studies to see that I just need common sense (typed in anger as I bash my keyboard in pure frustration!!)
“Yes absolutely its damaging! How could it not be?”
I think this isn’t obvious. I often mention the fascinating Freakonomics books, and they had a section about child-rearing which busted a bunch of myths. A summary:
“Factors that are not important in determining high standardized test scores in children include: the family is intact, the parents recently moved to a better neighborhood, the mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten, the child attended Head Start (US government program providing education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families), the parents regularly take the child to museums, the child is regularly spanked, the child frequently watches television, the parents read to the child nearly every day.”
http://www.wikisummaries.org/Freakonomics:_A_Rogue_Economist_Explores_the_Hidden_Side_of_Everything
Now it might seem obvious that reading to children every day would have a positive effect. That it doesn’t suggests that the common understandings of how children develop aren’t so good. Common sense is bad at understanding the world: remember that common sense a few decades ago was completely different and sexism then was taken for granted.
So, yes, I demand studies!
A side point.
I am always astonished when I hear people talking about how girls are socialised away from careers in science, maths, politics, etc. while boys are encouraged towards these.
This is the opposite to my experience. In my secondary school most boys did construction-related work and football: nothing else.
Boys who were good at maths, science, languages – in fact any subject except woodwork and technical drawing – risked being bullied by the others. In my Leaving Cert year girls greatly outnumbered boys in biology, higher level maths and physics and chemistry. After LC more girls continued in education than boys, before LC more boys left school early than girls.
The message to us was that boys were builders. They could branch out into engineering, become mechanics or architects, but that was about it. Girls, on the other hand, could be anything at all (except builders). Girls could do business, science, maths, anything academic and competitive, while the boys built stuff or sat about doing nothing – another well-respected pastime of my male peers.
For the most part this division was enforced by the majority of boys themselves, not by teachers, who mostly tried to encourage us either way. The savage peer pressure among the boys created a tribal conformity most of the boys didn’t fight. The stupidest, cruellest and most ignorant were at the top of the social heap, any sign of diligence or initiative was punished. This seemed to be completely different among the girls, where individuals could be popular AND hard-working and interested in education. I’ve lost touch with most of them now but it would be interesting to see which sex earns more today: I would wager the majority of the males are doing dreadfully!
I agree with Eleanor – why do we need studies to prove this is not a good thing?!? If we don’t challenge the way women are represented then children may grow up to accept gender stereotyping as normal and patriarchal behaviour as acceptable.
“remember that common sense a few decades ago was completely different and sexism then was taken for
granted.”
You can thank the original feminists (the inspiration for women like myself and Eleanor and the rest of the Anti Room crew) who challenged patriachy/sexism *without* the reliance on studies for awakening people as to why sexism is harmful and should not be taken for granted.
Shane have you done any reading into the feminist movement? As in books written by feminists about the history of patriarchy and the damage it did to women? I’m sure you would find lots of interesting facts in them that might inspire you.
Yes I must look up more, Aoife. So far my experience is mostly from blogs like this, and wikipedia articles on major feminists.
“If we don’t challenge the way women are represented then children may grow up to accept gender stereotyping as normal and patriarchal behaviour as acceptable.”
They may, and they may not: how can we know without systematically studying it? I’m not going to accept this on faith.
To give another example, some feminists denounce pornography and insist that it increases sexual violence. Yet several independent studies show the opposite: the liberalisation of access to porn has coincided with dramatic DECREASES in sexual violence. One researcher suggested that potential rapists use porn as a substitute for sexual violence: instead of raping victims they masturbate harmlessly at home.
This is a very un-common sense finding, very counter-intuitive. There may also be hidden processes involved in playing with toys that aren’t immediately obvious. I’m not going to simply accept the arguments here and join in the condemnation of Lego when no evidence is put forward to back it up.
I recommend Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender for discussion of all this gender stuff (I think her title gives her away somewhat). Luckily, it is just out in paperback.
Even if boys and girls are wired differently, there is no excuse for the narrow-minded bias of these Minifigures: the lack of imagination displayed for the female roles is dismaying.
Great piece Eleanor and a real hobby horse of mine! I find that there is an increasing tendency for toys and books to be categorised as being for girls and boys. I presume this makes great commercial sense for toy manufacturers and retailers but I really think that it can place limits in children’s minds at an early stage. For example, when my 11 year old daughter was a toddler, Kitchens and toasters in the Early Learning Centre came in primary colours, now they seem to come in shades of pink, potentially putting off little boys. The aisles of toy shops are almost completely stratified into pink and yellow/blue categories. And even bookshops tend to have clusters of books aimed at either girls and boys. It tells girls and boys what they “should” be playing with or reading. You would expect Lego to be gender neutral but like you say, the figurines are predominantly male. The girls are, perhaps, supposed to be playing with the horrible pink lego range. My older girl loved her Polly Pockets, etc but she plays with a range of toys and reads everythng she can get her hands on including Harry Potter and similar.
Natasha Walters argues cogently in Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism that there is a new “Determinism” at play now and she points to much research backing up her “nurture vs nature” argument.
Pauline,
I agree that it’s getting worse. My boys bypass the “pink” aisle in Smyths with an alacrity that suggests Barbie has released the toxic gas! I rush past with them – I detest the pinkification of girls – such a sickly, insipid colour! Give us back our rainbow you bastards!! (ahem)
I read my sister’s books, Polyanna and Anne of Green Gables. Is that down to my hormones? I put it down to not having anything better to read at the time. But then my sister was just like Polyanna. God, was this a stirring of incest? No one told me about that at the time. But I didn’t much care for Polyanna. Oh dear did this mean that I was nervous about strong and independent girls? What a chauvinist I was? On the other hand I did not care for my sister when she wore her Girl Guide uniform and refused to stay with the Scouts when we were asked to show our finger nails to test whether we were clean boys. I quit. So many confusing situations. It’s all too much for me. Does anyone want a selection of my old uniforms. Sorry, no whips!
Oh dear God, what on earth do you get out of posting this kind of rambling rubbish on the site?!
Great, provocative post, Eleanor.
God only knows. I certainly don’t.
You also have to take into account how the children play with Lego.
In “my day”, the only way you could tell whether the yellow-headed-two-eyes-and-a-mouth Lego person was male or female was the length of the hair…sometimes. My sister would put a red peaked hat on her Lego person and we would play for hours thinking it was a boy and then she would say at the end ha, it was a girl all along.
Now my young lad got a Duplo train for Christmas (I love you Santa!) as well as some regular Duplo bricks, including a pig-tailed girl/woman. She gets to drive the train or the truck as much as the official train driver.
Does anyone know what the kids think of these mini figures?
Orla,
Thanks for the comment. Your little sister’s antics made me laugh aloud (LA!) I like the sound of that Duplo train. Perhaps things are progressing after all.
This is a fascinating discussion and I agree with many of the points made by Eleanor. Of course, probably one of the best ways to counteract the message sent out by these minifigures is to point to all the female rolemodels in the child’s life. I still have a strong memory of having an argument with a male scoolmate who was declared that girls couldn’t be doctors. My answer was simple, and couldn’t be disputed: ‘Of course they can. My sister’s a doctor!’ That was the end of that discussion.
Knowing that my sister was a doctor and my mother worked outside on our farm alongside my father every day was a great way of counteracting the influence of Enid Blyton (who I loved regardless) et al.
An excellent point Eileen. For a start he has me and I’m pretty feisty. Also he has 8 equally feisty aunts and a Granny who is a pharmacist & plays violin with an orchestra (not my Mum but his Dad’s)
I’m really encouraged to see that he is reading and loving the wonderful Skulduggary Pleasant series of books by Derek Landy and he adores the three brilliant, strong female characters he has encountered so far. Well done Mr. Landy!! (In fact I’m going to write to him and congratulate him on this)
After a disastrous purchase of a too-advanced LEGO house when I was a toddler, my parents stopped buying me Lego.
By the time my small brother turned up, however, we did have a fairly large bin of the stuff, to which every Christmas was added a pirate ship or a castle or something along those lines. (All gifted to my brother, despite the fact that I was the one who constructed them, designed new structures and invented the adventures of the characters).
The hero of all my stories was Petunia Pennyfeather. She was the captain of the pirate ship, a fearless, swashbuckling badass, who kept her scurvy crew in check, rescued wimpier pirates from captivity and pillaged all round her.
Her outfit consisted of white lego-trousers, a red pirate bandanna, the “girly” head with the red kissy lips, and the “girl” torso with the frilly-looking blouse and cleavage.
On the front of the box she came in, however, she was a bar wench.
I would FAR rather the characters issued by LEGO be released with a neutral torso and random selection of heads, as suggested by Colm, so that the child could gender the toy as they wish (which, in fairness, they can with the non-female-gendered ones, by lobbing a girl-head on them) rather than having explicitly-gendered torsos, which mean that a kid is unlikely to decide they want a male cheerleader, witch, snowboarder or what-have-you.
The biogs could be either gender neutral or there could be a boy-version and a girl-version (with just the pronouns changed!)
Exactly Froodie I couldn’t agree more. I love the sound of Petunia Pennyfeather! She would make a brilliant character in a children’s book. Ever thought about writing one? You should!
Don’t normally comment on these kinds of things but really fascinating discussion. Saw these recently in a toy shop and they jumped out. I have worked in a limited design capacity for a number of toy / game manufacturers and always like to see what is new in the toy world.
One thing I think might be missing from the discussion is that these are ‘boy’s toys’ (for want of a better term) because of how they are sold, not just because of the characters in them. Choosing the characters was probably of secondary importance.
While I’m sure people might object, boys tend to enjoy collectibility over girls, hence the sealed pack and set of 16 figures. If you look at the packaging it emphasises collecting. They are sold near the counter around similar items like collectable card games (which tend to be boy focused).
If this was more targeted at girls (or non-gender specific) then I think you might have seen more emphasis on the actual figures, or at the very least these wouldn’t be secret.
While I’m not saying Lego could do with more female figures – look through the lego range and you will see it is for the most part gender specific (more so than most realise and has been for a long time, maybe 30+ years). This is probably a combination of market research and too many male designers.
Gender specific toys tend to go beyond pink and blue to differences in play. The colours are often just signifiers of these different play styles. Of course there are non-gender specific ways of playing as well!
Thanks ré
I’m really glad that you did comment as your insights are fascinating. They are indeed sold as collectables. They used to have differentiated barcodes that facilitated “cheating” but even these have been removed. That’s very interesting about boys preferring collectability – I wonder why? Is it a competitive thing?
They may have researched and felt that they were taking a risk by including more female characters – boys might stop buying. A real pity if so but it’s a big ask to expect a commercial company dependent on sales to take the brave option I suppose.
“boys tend to enjoy collectibility over girls”
Girls also collect toys- even if they are stereotypical toys like Barbies, Sindy dolls, Bratz etc. How many girls have begged mum or dad for a new doll or toy to add to their collection?
I don’t think that collecting is a male-only pursuit, despite the common perception that it is (particularly in the music world, on another note).
Eleanor
Not sure why boy’s enjoy collecting and I really don’t have reams of research to back it up but think it is fairly commonly understood in toy/games industry.
Aoife
I’m not saying girls don’t like collecting but I would suggest that they do it slightly differently – with stereotypical toys like bratz, barbies, my little pony etc it might be about having an additional toy in their favourite range rather than having a completed set. Completeness seems to be more important for boys than girls and manufacturers cater for this.
Panini sticker albums / collectable card games are other good examples. They emphasise completing of a set and tend to be for boys. While it might not be nice to think of toys being specifically targeted this is a sub-group of overall Lego products and so is probably more tuned towards boys then the range as a whole.
The whole area of gender-specific toys is a bit of a minefield but I there is is a bit more push and pull then you might imagine. I do agree though pink and blue is a crude way to break up the toy world!
edit…
…While I’m not saying Lego couldn’t do with more female figures…
Late to this party too, but just wanted to add my two-penn’orth. I don’t know if anyone here’s been to any of the LEGOland amusement parks, but my experiences were that the boys-first bias is even more marked there: http://nevergoeswithoutsaying.blogspot.com/2010/06/queue-here-for-pink-bricks.html
Really interesting discussion – thanks, ladies and gents!
Mary
I am a satirist. Not everyone likes to be satirised for very good reasons – life is a serious matter as is any one’s opinions on it. But others, including me, think there are many ways of eating a banana – so to speak.
Your comments are meant to be satirical? Seriously? I once wrote an entire thesis on satire, and I genuinely I have no idea what you’re trying to do. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s working under any recognisable definition of satire.
Anna
I think you will find that I never make personal attacks on anyone and I have absoutely no interest , unlike you and Mary, the Abbot and Costello of the art, of rubbishing anyone.My record as an author speaks for itself. If I am so utterly inconsequential and incomprehensible, why do you behave as if I am a menace to you personally and to your arguments?