Playtown: Doctor Jack and Nurse Nancy

Playtown: Doctor Jack and Nurse Nancy
Originally uploaded by Gemmitygem

Given that the UK has one of the highest levels of occupational segregation by gender in the EU, toys like this aren't doing kids a favour. Just better hope your daughter doesn't expect to become a doctor!

domestic goddess

domestic goddess
Originally uploaded by Gemmitygem

wrong on so many levels! This T shirt is available from newborn onwards.

Why only men use their phones for business

voda
Originally uploaded by Gemmitygem

My husband spotted this on the vodafone website.

If you want to check your account, and you have a business account, you have to click on the man. And if you want to check your private account, you click on the woman.

That's because... er... men are business people and women are private people in the domestic or leisure sphere. Hmm.

This is a sobering and somewhat depressing example of something which must have been developed and tested quite carefully. Maybe more men use their business accounts, who knows? But so many more? These tired cliches are surprising coming from a European company with, one assumes, customers of both genders.

What's so special about YOU?: injecting life back into concepts of gender equality

Gender fatigue, or rather gender apathy seems to be a feature of EU policy at the moment, especially in non-traditional areas such as environment and health. Ludovic Lacaine of the European Men's Health Forum bemoans the fact that the 2.1 billion Euro Public Health Programme 2008-13 does not even mention gender, you can check out his analysis here. The same is true of the European Employment Strategy (EES) where gender concerns have been watered down in favour of 'activation', that is, getting people into work.

One factor is the plethora of groups seeking equality. Inequality has many faces; what marginalises people? Gender, yes, but also where you live: in a forgotten rural community or derelict inner city, your level of education, degree of poverty, disability, age, race, caste, sexual orientation or certain cultural attitudes and practices: so many interlinked dimensions that you suddenly wonder: is gender actually that important? Shouldn't we move beyond it into some kind of more holistic index of inequality, taking into account various factors to determine the barriers faced by a particular individual?  A kind of inequality DNA whose different faulty genes need to be addressed all at the same time?

There is no easy answer. Of course the involvement of men and of those who are more equal than others is indispensible in solving the problem of inequality. But then you have the turkeys campaigning for Christmas problem, or in this case the top dogs: how will it ever be in their interest to let the more marginalised rise to the surface? Perhaps that's what underlies gender blindness in (male-dominated) EU and member states policymaking, a generalised reluctance that beneath its apathy, is all about resistance to actually changing the balance of power in any meaningful way.

I wonder what the best way is to wake up the gender-weary. Whichever way we choose, it's time to set the alarm.

Dad in a skirt

Despite reading a lot about gender recently, especially the very scholarly and interesting articles by Professor Sylvia Walby, UNESCO Chair of Gender Research, about how different types of gender regime have developed in Europe and have influenced ways we think about gender, and why 'gender mainstreaming' is so European (lots of her articles are available here:http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/profiles/34 ), I've been too mentally fuzzy to draw many conclusions. This bodes ill for the draft of a gender policy for the NGO I work for.

So your gender tidbit for this week is something I spotted while at the local children's farm in the Westerpark area of Amsterdam with my 2 year old son this afternoon. There was a couple with a kid of about my son's age, but there was something about the father that made you look twice: he was about 6'4'' and well-built, wearing a plain black jacket, long biker-style hair, and: a denim knee length skirt, 60 denier brown tights and brown leather knee-length boots. He was cross-dressed, but not ostentatiously, really it was only the skirt that led one's gaze downwards to the boots. His wife was dressed in the normal Dutch anorak mumsy look which I was sporting myself. I wondered about the story behind it; would he have liked to look more feminine but restricted himself, or was he just making a statement? In any event the effect was very surprising, as the other parents there did the same double-take,  just because it so strongly confounded people's visual expectations of a father out with a toddler for the day. 

Next week: children's clothes.

the post-Soviet woman

A brilliant analysis can be found at http://valt.helsinki.fi/staff/rotkirch/gendcontract.htm

It's a few years old: I will search for more recent work by these people.

Lovely kids' books: pity about the sexism part 1

Do you notice how kids' books are still propagating the same old gender stereotypes? 

I'm picking on Julia Donaldson and Axel Schaeffer, purely because their books are lovely and imaginative. They're great, but they are sexist! Take a look at these three:

Rabbit's Nap:

Rabbit (female) tries to sleep while various busy male animals, Builder Bear, fox chopping wood and tortoise on a bike, mice musicians, all keep her awake. They are mostly wearing tweeds. Finally, they sing her to sleep. Whilst the book is very charming, it's clear that the female role is reclining, static, the passive recipient of annoyance, and the male roles are all active: chopping, building, cycling, playing music.

The Smartest Giant in Town:

George the giant gets a new suit of clothes but gives each item away one by one to animals in distress. At the end they thank him. It's beautifully illustrated and takes place in a semi fairytale, semi-real landscape. However, why do all the characters have to be busy fulfilling stereotypical gender roles? Women are shown pushing prams, hanging up washing, shop assistant helping male shop manager. Men are shown wheeling wheelbarrows and reading the newspaper. All the animal characters George helps are male except for 'mother mouse' who is only defined through being a mother and having lots of children. 

The Snail and the Whale:

Snail is female, whale is male. The whale plucks the snail away from her static existence and shows her the world, opening her eyes to its wonders. He is the mentor, teacher, enabler, and is physically massive and powerful. She is small and the pupil taking it all in. She does, however, save the whale through her intelligence. 

Now I'm not advocating some sterile universe of kids' books where everything is PC, but it would be so easy and liberating to to project the idea that all kinds of people do all kinds of things in the illustrations and stories.  The Shirley Hughes books, though dating from the 1970s and 80s are streets ahead. You can be folksy and imaginative without being sexist, you don't have to copy tired old stereotypes into beautiful imagined worlds. So come on, let's see Mother Mouse with a hammer.