{"id":17883,"date":"2009-12-21T10:23:30","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T15:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=17883"},"modified":"2014-01-20T01:54:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T06:54:44","slug":"gender-technology-and-toys-r-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/12\/21\/gender-technology-and-toys-r-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender, Technology, and Toys R Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on a previous post about gendered gift giving guides at Lego and Toys R Us<\/a>, I discovered something interesting.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by the Toys R Us guide<\/a> because it asked the buyer to specify the gender of the child, but then tended to have more or less the same “personality” and “interests” options.\u00a0 For example, below are the choices for girls and boys.\u00a0 You’ll see that they are very similar.<\/p>\n

Girl personalities:<\/p>\n

\"girl<\/p>\n

Boy personalities (same, sans “Glamour Girl”):<\/p>\n

\"boy<\/p>\n

Girl interests:<\/p>\n

\"gints\"<\/p>\n

Boy interests:<\/p>\n

\"bints\"<\/p>\n

So, why even ask about gender, I wondered?\u00a0 I did a test.\u00a0 For both boys and girls ages 12-14, I checked “techie” and “building” to see what I would get.<\/p>\n

What I got was rather fascinating.\u00a0 I can’t remember where I originally heard it, but someone somewhere observed that when it came to technology, there was a stereotype that men were\u00a0 the engineers and designers and women were the consumers and users.\u00a0 That is, both men and women might like technology, but men were active in producing technology and women just got to benefit from men’s hard, brainy work.<\/p>\n

Well, that’s essentially what Toys R Us told me.\u00a0 Remember, for both boys and girls, I checked “techie” and “building.”\u00a0 Here is the top 24 gift suggestions for boys:
\n\"CaptureB1\"<\/p>\n

\"CaptureB2\"<\/p>\n

\"CaptureB3\"<\/p>\n

So that’s 13 building\/engineering games (like Lego and KNEX), 3 ipod accessories, 4 portable DVD players, 2 MP3 players, and a few other things.<\/p>\n

What do girls get?\u00a0 Seven ipod accessories, 5 portable DVD players, 4 MP3 players, 3 laptop computers, 3 cameras, and one building\/engineering game.\u00a0 One.
\n\"CaptureG1\"<\/p>\n

\"CaptureG2\"<\/p>\n

\"CaptureG3\"<\/p>\n

Sure enough, Toys R Us confirms that girls may like <\/em>technology, but boys build it.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on a previous post about gendered gift giving guides at Lego and Toys R Us, I discovered something interesting. I was intrigued by the Toys R Us guide because it asked the buyer to specify the gender of the child, but then tended to have more or less the same “personality” and “interests” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,55,2099,254,2159,1711,290],"class_list":["post-17883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-holidays","tag-gadgets","tag-toysgames","tag-sciencetechnology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17883"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61060,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17883\/revisions\/61060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}