Re:Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
by varjag on Sunday August 29, 2010 @07:53AM
(#1643661)
I'm not sure how much of that is the result of "Western monoculture". Girls throughout the world reliably prefer dolls to robots.
Re:Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men.
by thwarted on Sunday August 29, 2010 @10:15AM
(#1643821)
That's interesting because the difference between dolls and robots is one of the skin/themes placed on humanoid shapes (albeit, robots can take on other shapes and still be robots). In the common case, they both have the same, painted on non-interactive expression. Robotic dolls and doll robots -- what exactly is the choice here.
With my son, we have a lot of animal themed toys that come out of the box without an associated gender. This hasn't kept us from adopting gender specific names for them though (Mr. Monkey, Sophie, Boss Hog, Leeroy Jenkins, Charlotte).
(edit: in fact, as anecdote - girls supposedly have more tastebuds, yet professional cooking is heavily male dominated. Though women cooks can put up with just as much if not more than men. Physical traits have no bearing on this particular cultural quirk.)
Conversely, all of that /can/ be explained as cultural artifacts, amplified by years of exposure, an encroaching western monoculture, and a feedback loop of expectations. When you stick "pink" and "blue" in front of a kid and ask them what seems more girly to them, you're already presenting a pre-existing baggage of cultural conditions, be it through subconscious impulses, or because the kid's been around long enough to know what his or her peers prefer.
Let's not lose sight that scientific experiments have to be interpreted, yeah? The process of science isn't nearly so clean that we can reliably say that any one experiment isn't tainted by subjective bias. Half of the fights over any one theory in any field at all is because of it.