TrueChild Blog

Are We Missing the Impact of Gender Norms on Girls and STEM?

Riki Wilchins — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:19:02 GMT

Another TrueChild post, on gender norms and girls in STEM, is featured by the Council on Foundations.

Getting Gender Back in Giving

Riki Wilchins — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:04:22 GMT

TrueChild is featured as a guest blogger for the Council on Foundations.

New Research on Gender Nonconformity

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:41:54 GMT

Straight kids who are gender non-conforming face harassment and abuse from homophobic or genderphobic parents.

IGWG.org -- A Great Resource

Riki Wilchins — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:43:20 GMT

USAID has created the perfect web-portal for sharing intellectual collateral on gender norms.

Thank you American Airlines

Riki Wilchins — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:53:16 GMT

American Airlines announces support for our work for the 10th consecutive year.

Young Black Women & Gender Norms

Riki Wilchins — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:52:14 GMT

Dr. Scyatta Wallace (St John's U) work focuses on gender norms' impact on Black and Hispanic youth, especially girls.

LGBTQ Violence

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:55:26 GMT

The Mayor's Office of GLBT Affairs has provided support to develop a model curriculum to combat fatal assaults on LGBTQ youth of color.

Gender Norms & Young Black Women

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:00:36 GMT

Dr. Scyatta Wallace (St John's U) is a TrueChild Expert whose work focuses on gender norms' impact on Black and Hispanic youth.

White House Briefing

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:46:28 GMT

We've done gender trainings for the Office on Women's Health at the Dept of Health & Human Service for the past year. I'm proud to share with you that...

STEM: Why Girls Opt Out

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:53:47 GMT

Science, technology, engineering and math: for many students, especially young women, achievement in the "STEM" subjects will be the key to high growth rate, higher paying jobs and career advancement in the knowledge economy

Sissy Boys: Dying To Be A Man

Riki Wilchins — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:59:09 GMT

Kirk sometimes played with girls' toys, stroked dolls' long hair, and generally worried his parents. They took him to a psychiatrist, who prescribed and oversaw a steady regime of behavior modification. (Read the CNN story here)

Does J.Crew Really Want to Feminize my Son?

Riki Wilchins — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:36:53 GMT

By now we've all seen (or at least heard about) the ad for J.Crew's Essie nail polish, featuring Creative Director Jenna Lyons holding her son's feet after apparently painting his toenails hot pink. The two are leaning in towards one another, smiling and laughing, obviously sharing a moment of delight and fun.

Into this simple moment, some reactionary commentators have read a plethora of evils: "psychological sterilization," "celebrating transgender children" (apparently a bad thing), and so on.

This is one of those cultural moments when you realize that probably no one mouthing these silly things actually believes what he or she is saying.

Miss/Representation: new must see video

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:13:53 GMT

Tired of how the media treats women (i.e. like Barbie dolls)? So are we. That's why Jennifer Siebel Newsom's new documentary, Miss Representation, couldn't come at a better time...

In Honor of Trans Kids

Riki Wilchins — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 10:43:39 GMT

I recently penned an article for the homepage of The Advocate about kids who are still dying because of their gender identity or expression. Please click the link to read the full article online.

Protecting Our Gentle-Men: On Bullying, Gayness & Masculinity

Riki Wilchins — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:43:05 GMT

"The choice: gay or guy. Many guys think being gay means not being a guy." Dr. Michael Kimmel, one of the nation's leading experts on masculinity, has an op-ed up on heartbreaking suicide of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi and other gay teen suicics that notes: Anti-gay sentiments become a shorthand method of gender policing....

Are sexuality programs ignoring gender roles?

Riki Wilchins — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:51:32 GMT

Are programs and policies directed at improving adolescent sexual health ignoring research on gender?

Middle School & Girls' Bullying

Riki Wilchins — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:00:05 GMT

Outgoing, assertive, active girls turn self-conscious, uncertain and introverted in middle-school. Why?

Are we falling behind international work?

Riki Wilchins — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:50:58 GMT

The groundbreaking work on gender+repro health isn't domestic, it's international -- organizations pushing the gender analysis in a wide variety of countries and environments outside the US.

Rethinking the relationship between sexuality education and gender

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:24:38 GMT

For three decades researchers have known that internalized gender norms and teen sexual behavior are strongly linked, because in sexual situations gender codes define how kids will act. This is especially true for those who are relatively inexperienced -- and thus most at risk for unhealthy behaviors. These kids are mostly likely to believe in and follow popular, stereotypic gender presentations for how boys and girls act in sexual situations because they don't know better. For them, these primitive scripts are reality.

Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Getting Girls into Science

Riki Wilchins — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:57:20 GMT

For a long time we've known that girls are still behind boys when it comes to math and science -- particularly the physical sciences. Now the AAUW (formerly the American Association of University Women) has released a comprehensive new report that documents this problem, "Why So Few."

TrueChild was invited to be part of the news conference: you can view it here, and also download a copy of the report.

The direction of the findings has been pretty clear for some time. Girls can and do perform as well as boys in math and science early on. But once they hit grades 5-9, right around adolescence, there's a noticeable drop-off in interest in science, technology, engineering and match (so-called "STEM"). They do a lot less outside of school too -- playing with chemistry sets or joining groups that engage with science.

By the time kids can exercise choice over what courses they take -- the last years of high school through the end of college -- there's a marked drop in participation as well.

Women are doing better in "helping sciences" like biology, but even in newer fields like computers, they make up a fraction of the students and often perform noticeably worse.

This phenomenon of fewer and fewer girls left in the field is so common it's even got a name: "the leaky pipeline."

What's interesting is that although we've looked long and hard at external barriers -- unfriendly classroom environments, lack of adult role models, parents who think science isn't or girls -- we haven't looked at all at internalized feminine norms. Which -- given that all this starts just when girls hit puberty -- would seem to be a prime candidate.

That's why TrueChild has just submitted its first grants to study the effects of internalized norms on girls and STEM. We think that as they enter puberty, girls have to make a choice between opting out of femininity and opting out of STEM. In fact, that's just the way Dr. Janet Stemwedel, who blogs about girls and science, put it in her post here.

We think we have a pretty strong case to make, and this is exciting – and pretty untouched – area of inquiry.

The big national coalitions that support equity in STEM, like the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) and the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP), think so too, and they've signed on as partners in this project. So have many of the top researchers in the field.

In the meantime, here are some hints to help you keep your daughter interested in math and science, or help your son realize STEM is also a "girls' thing."

Don't talk about science as something for boys only.
Do point out all the TV and movie scientists who are (always) male and ask your child why they think that might be.
Do offer examples of women in your child's life who are into math or science -- a vet, an aunt, etc.
Do offer to engage your daughter in activities that involve tools, batteries, or computers.
Do help your daughter develop computer literacy through popular social networking sites (and monitor her for safe use of them).
Do talk to your daughter's teacher about making sure to call on girls during math and science.
Don't assume that just because your daughter likes pink dresses and princess playthings she won't also find math or science interesting.
Do take advantage of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work and point out the technology parts of your job.
Do encourage your daughter to take optional math and science courses or AP classes.
Do encourage your daughter with gifts that engage her in technology, like portable video cameras or portable electronic games.

Women + Math + Science: The NY Times Weighs In

Riki Wilchins — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:40:51 GMT

The New York Times ran two interesting articles last week under the rubric "The Female Factor” about women in academia. Both are refreshingly positive, which is not to say uncritical or utopian, regarding the prospects for equity for female students and professors in higher learning.

Tamar Lewin's article on women at Harvard starts by recapitulating the embarrassing, painful episode of 2005, when then-president Larry Summers postulated that women's underrepresentation in the sciences may be due to "the different availability of aptitude at the high end” at the bell curve—that is to say, there aren't as many smart women as smart men, and this is genetically determined.

Summers resigned, and since then there has been a boom in women professors offered tenure. And despite the resistance of some older faculty, by and large they report feeling appreciated for their intellectual contributions, not their sex.

Katrin Bennhold files her story from Paris, where a "quiet revolution that has seen women across the developed world catch up with men in the work force and in education” has left one well regarded lab with 21 women and four men. Across the European Union, women researchers are expanding their ranks twice as quickly as men, and even Barbie has gotten into science and technology.

Both articles hint at elements of backlash: Lewin quotes Ann Pearson, the first women tenured in Harvard's earth and planetary sciences department, recounting being ignored by a male colleague during a panel discussion. And Bennhold points out that in computer science "the percentage of female graduates from American universities peaked in the mid-1980s at more than 40 percent and has since dropped to half that.” But across the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) landscape, the future looks brighter than it has in a while.

P.S. TrueChild is submitting our first research proposals on the effect of internalized feminine norms (Femininity Ideology) on adolescent girls' interest in science and math, so stay tuned!

The Axe Phenomenon: Smells Like Tween Spirit

Riki Wilchins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:02:09 GMT

According to the New York Times, Axe grooming products -- deodorants, shampoos, hair gel, and that infamous body spray -- are becoming the "in thing" among tween and pre-teen boys. Along with macho-branded Old Spice Swagger, and "Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash by Dial," they have become staples of many boys' bedrooms, bathrooms, and backpacks. As one 11-year-old said, "I feel confident when I wear Axe."

So just how has Axe managed to reshape tween boyhood in its sci-fi-stylized bottles' image? It's not just the product, obviously. It's a pop culture that unanimously depicts desirable males as muscular, hunky, confident. (See here and here for research on this.) Simple manhood is no longer enough. Products like Axe let boys -- who are increasingly anxious about projecting masculinity in a competitive environment -- feel confident.

It doesn't help that tween boys are stuck in an awkward stage: girls are on their way out of puberty while they're just entering it, leaving them ungainly, awkward, and still trying to master masculinity at a time when girls are into makeup, hair gels and body waxes and wondering why their too-slow boyfriends don't just get with it when it comes to cosmetic products.

So in the arms race to be seen as cool, masculine, older and attractive to girls, boys are looking anxiously for help, and cosmetics marketers are happy to oblige, often with tongue-in-cheek commercials that promise masculinity by also making too-cool fun of it. If the signifiers of pop-culture masculinity -- muscular body, sexual conquests, high-powered job -- aren't readily available to 12-year-olds in the Gender Product Wars, at least they can buy something that puts a little more spring in their step -- while covering up the smell of skipping shower after gym class.

New Documentary Reveals How Gender Keeps Us "Straightlaced"

Riki Wilchins — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:26:17 GMT

Groundspark (formerly Women's Educational Media) has come out with a powerful new educational documentary, Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up. (Full disclosure: we had the opportunity to give feedback on parts of the early version of the film.)

As with their other documentaries (It's Elementary and That's a Family), Straightlaced mainly features kids, alone, talking directly to the camera without prompting and telling their stories in their own, sometimes eloquent, sometimes halting, words.

And what stories they are:

A football star who goes to hug a friend after an emotional win and is pushed away and told, "I'm no fag."
A young Asian woman talking about racially tinged gender expectations that she be thin, pretty, passive and smart.
A young Latino who is attracted to a bright colored shirt while shopping but tells the camera, "If I wear that to school, I'd be killed."

There are dozens of these stories. After awhile, you get a real feel for these kids. You start to see beyond who's gay and who's straight, who's of color and who's white, and you start to see how the gender system affects each and every one of them, in their most intimate decisions, every school day. That's probably Groundspark's intent.

Many of us have observed how when kids finish puberty, learning, conforming to and policing pretty rigid gender role expectations for masculinity and femininity can suddenly seem like the most important thing in the world. Researchers have dubbed this common phenomenon "gender intensification," and it's certainly on high display in this firm. More than a few of these teens talk about their fear of harassment, ostracism, ridicule or even attack.

High school is like a pressure cooker when it comes to fulfilling gender roles. Straightlaced may be the first film to document what life is really like for teens who try to live up to masculine and feminine ideals, want to live up to them, or sometimes simply refuse them altogether. Check out the YouTube trailer here, or embedded below.

The Princess Plague

Riki Wilchins — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:44:50 GMT

Images courtesy Sociological Images

My daughter is just starting to get caught up in the "Princess Plague." We keep pushing her towards Tinkerbell, who has wings, wand and powers, but the princesses keep creeping in.

It's not all Disney, of course, but it mostly is. Their princess line -- which can now outfit your daughter head to toe and every single item in her bedroom -- comprises over 2,000 items and is a billion-dollar business. According to the backstory Disney puts out on it they launched it without market testing and was so wildly popular it just took off.

Perhaps that means that these white-bread, cookie-cutter, 18-inch-waisted femmes call out to something biologically inbred in many daughters that cannot be denied. That's Disney's line, anyway.

But I think three points are important here.

First, even if it's true, it's not true of all girls. These things ways sort out on a bell curve, and there are plenty of daughters who would respond to or even prefer assertive and active images of female power.

These are the girls who have made Dora the Explorer a runaway hit in two languages, and they are legion. Yet the industry continues to ignore Dora's success, and treat it as an anomaly.

Aside: The prevailing wisdom is also that boys won't watch girls' shows. Which is why all the TV shows and movies for kids feature male leads. Yet Dora proves the rule is wrong again: her audience is evenly split between boys and girls. Apparently boys don't mind watching girls at all, as long as they're active, assertive girls in action.

Second, there are many girls out there who simply tomboys, or gay. For them, the princess plague is a double whammy. They are not only bombarded with the passive, pink princesses, but they don't see themselves represented anywhere.

What is it like to watch show after show and movie after movie and never, ever see a single girl who looks like you or reminds you of yourself? To see girl after girl who is a success! who wins! not because of anything she does, but because she can attract a boy to rescue her. It must be painful, off-putting, isolating.

For that matter, what is it like for the chubby girls, or the girls who are -- in the old verbiage -- "plain," who have to see being a real girl equated with wasp-waisted femininity, beauty and the attention of boys.

The problem is, media companies like Disney imagine themselves in the entertainment business. But for little kids, they're now also in the education business.

Kids spend more time today with media than in a classroom or with their parents. And it's increasingly a key source -- not just for entertainment, as it was when I was growing up -- but for socialization.

I was lucky if my family went to the movies once every month or so, and I got to watch cartoon shows when they were on -- weekend mornings.

My daughter can watch movies whenever she wants on HBO Family, and there are at least six cable channels devoted to showing kids' TV 24 hours a day. We try to minimize it, but it does sneak in. And many of the shows are appalling. I grew up on Disney (Mickey Mouse Club with Annette and Jimmy, anyone?) and it saddens me that there are shows on the Disney channel I literally have to lock out.

And it's not just daughters. The whole princess thing isn't lost on boys either. They may not buy it, but they're certainly aware of it. They're learning what kind of girls are considered attractive, and which ones are really feminine and which not. Is it any wonder that over two-thirds of girls are already worried about their weight -- or actively dieting -- by the time they're in third grade?

So write Disney. Tell them Walt wouldn't approve. You can email them using the form at http://sdsmail.org.Teach your daughter some "gender literacy." Here are a couple of great links:

Prepare Your Child, from Packaging Girlhood by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown
Talking to Kids about Gender Stereotypes, from the Media Awareness Network

And while you're at it, sit your son down, and tell him that not all girls are like these princess, nor should they be. There are strong, smart, brave girls, and when he grows up they'll be waiting for him. And they're a lot more interesting than some sleeping beauty who expects him to do all the work, do all the thinking, and probably schlep out the garbage every night!

Halloween Advice from the Onion

Riki Wilchins — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:37:39 GMT

Last week we brought you tips from the authors of the new Packaging Boyhood about picking Halloween costumes for your son. Here's another take on the subject from the folks at the Onion: How to Pick Masculine Halloween Costumes for Your Effeminate Son. Nice to see them taking on the hyper-masculinity kick with young boys. And very funny, too. Enjoy!

How To Find A Masculine Halloween Costume For Your Effeminate Son