More thoughts about gender
So I interviewed my girl, who is 11, on this who gender-identity thing. For her, there are boy things and girl things and neutral things. Now, the tricky part:
1) Being good at computers, according to her, is a boy thing. But, she maintains, boys don't think of it that way. They think it is a neutral thing.
2) On what to be when one grows up - she can list out boy careers and girl careers, and points out that it is hard to find a girl career that is "worth doing" (for the record, according to her, girl careers are waitress, nurse, make-up artist, hair stylist, and flight attendant). So according to her, to be something worth doing, you have to be willing to do a boy career.
So.... hmmmm....
Oh, another interesting point she made, concerning her technology training, was that the male teacher was more sympathetic to the girls than the boys, and that was the only difference she noticed when she was learning about computers. So, she was being taught that having trouble with computers is ok for girls, but is not ok for boys. Hence, being good at computers is a boy thing to do.
More hmmmmm....
And then there is the issue of relationships, which fjm brought up in my last post. One reaction I had to that idea was to wonder what relationships have to do with going to college or not. And I realized I HAVE evidence that that issue is a gendered conversation. In the paper we have already finished, we found that the more that 10th grade girls were invested in relationships, the higher the likelihood they would go to college out of high school, but the higher boys expressed the importance of relationships, the LESS likely they were to go to college. So I do think that fjm is right - the sexual orientation issue may be a relationship issue, but the gender identity issue cuts across that line in a somewhat different direction.
And I am still poking at the edges of this thing.
1) Being good at computers, according to her, is a boy thing. But, she maintains, boys don't think of it that way. They think it is a neutral thing.
2) On what to be when one grows up - she can list out boy careers and girl careers, and points out that it is hard to find a girl career that is "worth doing" (for the record, according to her, girl careers are waitress, nurse, make-up artist, hair stylist, and flight attendant). So according to her, to be something worth doing, you have to be willing to do a boy career.
So.... hmmmm....
Oh, another interesting point she made, concerning her technology training, was that the male teacher was more sympathetic to the girls than the boys, and that was the only difference she noticed when she was learning about computers. So, she was being taught that having trouble with computers is ok for girls, but is not ok for boys. Hence, being good at computers is a boy thing to do.
More hmmmmm....
And then there is the issue of relationships, which fjm brought up in my last post. One reaction I had to that idea was to wonder what relationships have to do with going to college or not. And I realized I HAVE evidence that that issue is a gendered conversation. In the paper we have already finished, we found that the more that 10th grade girls were invested in relationships, the higher the likelihood they would go to college out of high school, but the higher boys expressed the importance of relationships, the LESS likely they were to go to college. So I do think that fjm is right - the sexual orientation issue may be a relationship issue, but the gender identity issue cuts across that line in a somewhat different direction.
And I am still poking at the edges of this thing.