The gender stereotype is alive and well

Gender and Stereotypes

I appear to be quite fascinated by gender differences and stereotypes. Why? Well, it is a topic I find myself repeating. The first time I blogged about gender was way back in 2009 when I was trying to figure out how come boys become boys. Then I pointed out the differences between my husband's reading shelf and mine in 2012 and most recently when I talked about the boys' and girls' soccer team names in 2013.

More Gender Stereotypes

Well, I recently visited my son's class to help with a writing assignment - the assignment was to write a "how-to" report: procedural writing.

It is always enjoyable to see how they think, and the things that are top-of-mind for them. Here are some of the topics the kids chose -

HTML Tables

Topic	Gender
How to braid your hair	Girl
How to do the highschool cheer	Girl
How to do the crow (a yoga) pose	Girl
How to lace your ice-skates	Girl
How to tie your laces	Girl, but for some reason I expected a boy
How to install Minecraft	Boy
How to be a (soccer) goalie	Boy
How to ride a bicycle	Boy
How to find the square root of 100	Boy
How to read a chapter book	Boy, girl

While I'd like to think that I do not act on stereotypes, and there were also a number of topics that could have been done by either a boy or a girl (e.g. how to whistle, wash your hands, etc.), it was amusing to see the stereotypes borne out.

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