👋 It’s time for a new post, this time slightly different.
We heard you — getting 5 tips every week is a bit overwhelming even though you know that doing only one is enough to stay consistent. This is why every two weeks we will take a break from suggestions and send you a story and/or learning on the topic relevant to encouraging girls’ interest in technology.
Let’s dig right in!
Is it really ok to have toys for boys and girls?
When it comes to gender differences, it is very difficult to pinpoint what came through socialization, what is in our nature and, everything in between. And this is especially important in childhood.
So, researchers started looking for some of the answers by observing monkeys, as sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough and tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys.
This study compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys.
It turns out that:
Male monkeys showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys.
Female monkeys showed greater variability in preferences.
Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females.
What about studies with humans?
Studies in humans were done as well, and the learnings are similar to what we see around us.
Previous studies have reported differences between males and females in toy choice; that is, girls generally favor toys such as soft dolls, whereas boys generally favor construction and transportation toys (e.g., Connor and Serbin; Liss; Pasterski et al; Roopnarine).
There were also studies that showed one key difference — males actually show a toy preference while females do not! A number of studies of children's toy play and toy preference have reported girls playing about equally with all types of toys and males showing a strong bias toward male toys (e.g., Hasset et al, Carter and Levy; Campbell et al; Serbin LA et al; O'Brien and Huston).
The different results in these studies suggest that the methods of testing (e.g., presenting male and female toys simultaneously or sequentially), types of toys presented (e.g., dolls vs. trucks or cosmetics vs. weapons) and the socialization that occurs with age may, under some test conditions, increase female's interest in some toys.
What now?
There are two key learnings for us:
Girls already have less or no aversion to what is portrayed as “male”
The way we introduce something to them is important
So, let’s keep on going, embracing diversity and respecting the individuality of every kid.
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