The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[DanaC]

Stuff like this, as tiny as it is, really gets under my skin. Partly because it seems insane to me to bracket children so tightly (and if it is so fucking natural and innate why do the people who feel that way also seem to feel the need to encourage and reinforce it so strongly in children?), but also because it resonates with some of my own experience of growing up - where what I thought being a girl should be didn't always match what the culture I was in thought being a girl should be. To be clear I mean the wider culture - my family pretty much let me be what I wanted to be and explore what I wanted to explore - which was a range of stuff some of which was seen as boyish by others some of which was more 'girly'.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...be-pirates-too

I am with my three-year-old twin daughters at a princess and pirate-themed child’s birthday party where there is an Anna from Frozen character dishing out temporary tattoos. She is, however, nonplussed by their preferences. “Are you sure you don’t want a princess one? Look at this sparkly tiara! Or there’s this fairytale castle!”

“No, this one please.”

“Are you really sure?” Lookalike Elsa’s wide eyes look to me for confirmation.

“She’s sure,” I say, pointing to the skull and crossbone tattoo. “She loves pirates.”

“Oh-kay,” says Elsa. “If you’re really sure. Look! Here’s a glittery wand!”

“No thanks,” my daughter says. “I really like this one.”

By now I’m giggling. I’ve just spotted my daughter’s twin sister behind her in the queue, and she’s holding a transfer with a pirate’s galleon on.

“Another unusual choice! There’ll be none left for the boys!”

Daughter number two looks absolutely crestfallen. Her hand falters. “Of course you can have a pirate one too!” I overcompensate for Elsa’s overly pencilled arched eyebrows.

“My girls are really into all things pirate. They love Peter Pan and Swashbuckle’s their favourite CBeebies programme …” My girls break into a rendition of the Swashbuckle pirate salute, and nearby parents smile. They don’t think my daughters are odd. Do they?

“Proper pair of tomboys you’ve got there.” Elsa’s parting shot.

“I’m not a boy!”


“I’m a girl, not Tom boy. She’s a silly lady!”

“Yes, she is a bit silly, isn’t she?”

Even before that:

At their two-year health check, one of the tests was to identify words on picture cards. I spotted the friendly childcare assistant quietly putting aside certain cards, while cherry-picking others with an excited, “Ooh, you’ll get this one!”

What was on the discarded pile? You guessed it, pictures that could be considered to be for boys: trucks, tractors, worms and dragons. As soon as I spotted what was happening, I asked the lady just to turn the cards as they came up, explaining that my twins loved playing with a range of toys. I know she’d meant well, but it just sat too awkwardly with me not to say anything. Why should they only get to look at princesses and ponies? Why should their world be shrunk in such a way?

There's quite a bit more, but this bit struck me as particularly interesting, given the earlier comments about the effect of this stuff on boy's opportunities:

A friend recently asked me whether she should be concerned that when she picks up her three-year-old boy from nursery he’s often dressed as a fairy. Another friend’s son is usually to be found pushing a vacuum cleaner or making everyone cups of pretend tea. She gets constant comments about him being “soft”.

“It’s worse for boys,” both friends have said when we’ve nattered about our non-fixed-gender-play conformist children. They feel that girls can get away with being tomboyish, but with boys the assumption is that there’s something seriously wrong with them if they embrace what are considered to be feminine traits and behaviours. “I bet you’ve not seen a boy attend at a themed party in a dress …”

Until this month, they would have been right. That was before Paul Henson, a dad from Virginia, posted a picture on Facebook of his son dressed in his Halloween costume of choice – Elsa from Frozen. Paul explained that his son had chosen this costume for a Halloween party, and that he’d also asked him to go along as Anna, something he was game to do. “Halloween is about children pretending to be their favourite characters. Just so happens, this week his is a princess.” The post went viral, featuring on BuzzFeed, and had over 28,000 Facebook shares in a week.

What an awesome dad.

Why the fuck shouldn't a little boy play at being a princess? We're fine as fucking dandy with him imagining himself as a dying soldier (remember how fun death throes were as a kid? They were the best part of a pretend battle), or a gun-wielding criminal, a morally questionable, rage-driven super hero, a tiger, a lion, a wolf, or an alien species from a different galaxy - but to imagine themselves momentarily as a female character is an unnatural and dangerous reach.

[xoxoxoBruce]

If boys wear dresses the Ghey can sneak up from beneath, even kilts invite the Debbil hisself.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm now trying to find evidence of the original campaign and cannot find any.

We didn't need it anyway -- but if anyone can point to evidence of the original campaign that would be great.

Hereby documented: the first time the outrage machine had no original source. It's self-aware now, and of course, growing. Good luck to all of us.

[DanaC]

A spokesperson for IBM said: “The videos were part of a larger campaign to promote STEM careers. It missed the mark for some and we apologise. It is being discontinued.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...aimed-at-women

I've seen in a couple of articles, particularly the ones which are more sympathetic to IBM's situation, descriptions of some other elements of the campaign. But I have seen so many articles about it, I can't recall which ones they were.

I was happy to take IBM's word for it that this was only one element of their attempt to engage girls, rather than the entirety of it.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Hereby documented: the first time the outrage machine had no original source. It's self-aware now, and of course, growing. Good luck to all of us.

How hard did you look?

[DanaC]

I understand people's concern about the 'outrage machine'. On the other hand I also can see the frustration of those women who are in STEM with the same mistakes being made over and over by companies big enough and well-resourced enough to do better. Innovation is king in tech - but not apparently when it comes to trying to tackle gender inequality. It's the predictability of it all that is disheartening. And the drip, drip, drip of it.


From one of the articles HM cited:

A common complaint was the whole thing felt patronizing: Trying to attract women to tech with the lure of hairdryers, even with empowering language, felt a bit like offering pink lab coats to women instead of seriously addressing systemic barriers that discourage women from entering the tech industry. For instance, a 2014 Center for Talent Innovation study found that women in engineering and tech were far more likely to leave the industry than their male peers, at least in part due to factors like "hostile macho cultures," exclusion from the "buddy networks" of their peers and a lack of female role models.

[BigV]

Now there's only one country left in the world where women can't vote.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

How hard did you look?

Thanks. Your last link is the Facebook video page for the campaign with 60 shares and 3633 views.

That, I could not find. How long did it take you?

All I could find were stories about the program's termination. Which are your first four links. Your first four links are the outrage machine in operation.

[Undertoad]

The campaign was launched on October 2. At some point in October it was cancelled. That video was down before Google's cache of the page on December 1. So.

search Google News for "Hack a hair dryer". You get thousands of outrage take results.

Use Google's search tools to restrict your search to October.

This is the period during when the campaign was launched, and the outrage machine is not visible. There are no criticisms of the campaign. The first search result is a Vimeo page of - I did a little digging - the Art Director for the Hack A Hair Dryer campaign! The video is gone, but the cached search result includes the tag:

"The concept: take a hairdryer – something typically viewed for beautifying purposes – and make it gender-neutral..."

Here is the idea that made it through corporate. The original campaign actually INCLUDED the outrage take!

The first result not from IBM is a reaction to the campaign from the blog: "Tech Savvy Women". Their blog entry is still live and so you can see how women in tech reacted, when the outrage take hadn't launched:

One of the ways we will increase the number of women in STEM fields is to break through traditional thinking and consider a different perspective. A program that is embracing this idea is the Hack a Hair Dryer campaign. The idea is to take something feminine that is used on a regular basis and transform it to serve a different purpose.

It would appear that the outrage engine geared up on December 7. (That's when it arrived here.) And the BBC story HM linked to points that out:

After running for a couple of months more or less unnoticed online, IBM's "hack a hairdryer" campaign suddenly attracted a barrage of criticism by Twitter users who called it patronising and sexist

The campaign's take "make it gender-neutral" was nuanced, a little complex. That's why an appealing, simpler take could outweigh it. Original campaign: 3,633 views. Outrage engine: tens of thousands of news stories. Each story designed to tweak your outrage, and attract your attention, clicks, and shares.

But eventually we will not need the original campaign.

[Undertoad]

And one more thing... I'm actually sorry for getting geared up over this, it's just that I find it to be utterly fascinating!

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

And one more thing... I'm actually sorry for getting geared up over this, it's just that I find it to be utterly fascinating!

It is fascinating. I didn't think you were getting 'geared up' it just seemed like robust debate to me. I've really enjoyed the discussion - it's been some nice back and forth, and I learned a lot from it.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Thanks. Your last link is the Facebook video page for the campaign with 60 shares and 3633 views.

That, I could not find. How long did it take you?

I googled "IBM hair dryer".

All I could find were stories about the program's termination. Which are your first four links. Your first four links are the outrage machine in operation.

And you what, assumed that they made it up? That a program that was terminated never existed?

It seems like you're searching so hard for the "outrage machine" that you're doing what you're claiming it does.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

I googled "IBM hair dryer".

Ah, I should have done that. It's result #22!

And you what, assumed that they made it up? That a program that was terminated never existed?

Ha! Ha! Of course not!

Did you think when I said "the machine is self-aware" that I believed the machine was self-aware?

Come on now. It's gonna take at least another six months for that.

[monster]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Why the fuck shouldn't a little boy play at being a princess? .

Hebe was going to a princess party. Hector got invited to go keep the brother company so it became a princess and king party. Hector insisted on a princess dress to match Hebe's. And got one. When he got there, the brother was in a long flowing robe as a bishop

I'll have to fish out the picture. He wore the shoes better than Hebe too

[Happy Monkey]

Dilbert creator's Scott Adams's words inserted into his comic:

http://mradilbert.tumblr.com/