My Final Post!

Well... here it is. My last post! My survey has officially been completed by all 10 children who I asked to fill it out. For the most part, they fell right into the gender socialization trap. The boys liked cars and trucks, the girls liked dolls. The boys liked blue and green, the girls liked pink and purple. However, there were notable exceptions (such as the one I wrote about last week) and there were plenty of gender neutral answers. Three of the children - two boys and one girl - said their favorite color was red. Another big surprise was my ten year old neighbor, Ben, who said that his best friend was Isabelle. At that in-between age, it is assumed that your best friend is the same gender as you, but Ben broke that stereotype with his girl best friend.

Overall, I wasn't surprised by my results. I had hoped to see some gender neutralization, and some answers that stood out to me as different. This did happen, along with the usual gender socialized answers one would expect. Who knows what could happen 20 years from now though. There were some gender-neutral answers here... maybe by then there will be even more.

Almost There...

After handing out the full survey to 10 children (6 boys and 4 girls), I have received 5 back, all from boys. These boys have answered, for the most part, true to what I expected. Their favorite toys were either Legos or Thomas the Tank Engine. Meanwhile, their favorite shows seemed to be gender-neutral shows on Disney Channel, which was nice to see, since it was better than being strictly male. One shocking answer came from my 7 year old neighbor, Christopher, who said that his favorite singer was Taylor Swift, which seemed to me to be a more feminine response than I would expect from him. I can't fully analyze my results until I have all of my surveys back, however, so by next week I'll be able to analyze them a little better.

The Details

The survey on childhood gender socialization has been completed! Some questions include "What's your favorite television show?" and "What's your favorite color?" I plan to administer the full survey to my neighbors and the children my sister Maggie babysits, in total 12 children - 7 boys and 5 girls between the ages of 4 and 12. I'm going to print out hard copies to give to them, and they'll return them the next day since we all live in the same town.

I'm predicting that boys will choose stereotypical "boy" answers... like for the favorite toys they'll choose trucks and for favorite color they'll choose blue. Likewise, I hypothesize that girls will choose "girl" answers... they'll say dolls and pink. Hopefully I will see some sort of crossover, though, because I would like to think that children are breaking stereotypes. After this survey, maybe I'll see some of that.

Socialization Survey

In keeping with my previous post, I'd like to now administer a survey to see if my observations were true. Are children in today's era becoming less gender aware?? Or is gender socialization still a huge part of our culture??

In order to explore these ideas, I will create a survey with subtle gender questions to give to children I know (both boys and girls) to test their gender positions.

Breaking the Stereotypes

This short documentary, made by fifth graders in Brooklyn, is focused on breaking gender stereotypes using clothing and sports as their examples. The boy in the video wears a bright pink scarf and hat and shows the reactions of his fifth grade peers, adults, and teenagers. His view and the view of his friends making the video is that there should be no issue with boys wearing pink. They touch on topics like being gay and assumptions made based on gender stereotyping, which can be seen throughout the video. The fact of the matter is, though, that there is a group of fifth graders out there willing to challenge the stereotype. Who knows? Maybe this could mean that the stereotype will someday disappear?

This video made me really happy, honestly. Watching a group kids have the bravery to make a video about breaking away from the traditional views they were brought up made me smile a lot because it shows that there are people who understand the negative effects of gender socialization and who want these effects to disappear and change. This is a good last post for my blog because it offers hope --- hope that maybe someday, gender socialization won't be as potent as it is today. Males and females will be treated as equals, and boys will be allowed to wear as much pink as they want.

HEN

"The country also proposed a new single gender-neutral pronoun – 'hen' – to replace 'he' and 'she' in order to minimize gender stereotyping."

Sweden is taking gender socialization to a whole new level. The article about gender neutral toys  I was originally reading surprised me at the end with this huge statement. It first is talking about a toy magazine released in 2012 featuring boys playing with dolls and girls shooting toy guns. Classic gender neutrality. Then, at the end, the article goes on to talk about this new proposed word that would replace he and she to make a gender neutral word for people. In fact, a Swedish child author, Jesper Lundqvist, released a book titled 'Kivi and Monster Dog' featuring the word "hen." This debate, some have argued, has gone too far and this word is unnecessary... but who knows if this is going to become a social norm?

In my opinion, this is taking the argument to an extreme, but I do see the points of those advocating for the new word and total gender neutrality. There are obvious negatives to separating boys from girls. Is it really necessary though to get rid of gender entirely? I don't know about others, but I'm definitely proud to be a girl. I'd be offended if someone called me "he." Even if gender-neutral advocators don't want to admit it, gender is a part of who we are. And if this argument about "HEN" is continued... who knows what other debates it could spark? If babies are born not knowing the difference between boys and girls, homosexuality may become more prominent since children have no concept of gender. There are so many issues surrounding the idea of getting rid of gender completely. It's interesting to consider them.

The Negatives for Females

Childhood socialization into gender roles can definitely be viewed as a negative. Many studies have been conducted and opinions have been voiced about the bad parts that come with separating children into their specific gender roles. A 2009 Yahoo! Voices article speaks to all of the downsides of gender socialization, mapping out the path from birth until parenthood and how being socialized into gender affects the typical boy and the typical girl. The language the author uses is extremely harsh, as she says that a "baby girl generally brought home to a pink room" and "a boy... given a blue room" is "worse" than putting pink and blue hats on babies at the hospital. It then goes on to say how girls throughout their lives are expected to be submissive and family-oriented while boys are encouraged to explore and focus on their careers. Of course, since the author is a woman, the article is biased to show how boys benefit from gender socialization and women are at a disadvantage.

To me, this article seemed very outdated and wrong, but after further consideration, I realized that maybe it wasn't so far off-base for perhaps other socioeconomic settings. In the area where we live, northern New Jersey, and in the school we come from, all-girls IHA, we are encouraged as women to pursue careers and break through gender stereotypes. In many other parts of the country, though, there are places where women are still expected to be below men on the social ladder, and this starts with the pink hats, dolls, and being called "sweetie" until the age of 8, just as the article describes. Gender socialization definitely has its negatives for females.