The stark difference in toy aisles for boys and girls makes today’s shoppers with souls get riled up. Stories from toy store sexism long ago serve as reminders for how far we’ve come and how much further we have to go.
In 1992, Mattel stocked toy shelves with a new kind of doll that would echo gender differences beyond the standard pink and blue. The Teen Talk Barbie, a doll playing at random four teen-like phrases from a pool of less than 270, uttered one questionable declaration to the unknowing young girls who bought the doll.
“Math class is tough!” Barbie said.
Come on, Barbie. In an apology, then-president of Mattel Jill E. Barad said, “In hindsight, the phrase ‘math class is tough,’ while correct for many students both male and female, should not have been included,” the New York Times reported.
No matter how abhorrently sexist that saying may have appeared, this has been, and continues to be, a prioritized puzzle in neuroscience research on sex differences.
Researcher Simon Baron-Cohen answers this question using a binary of systemizing and empathizing with the Empathizing Quotient and Systemizing Quotient tests, analyzed in psychologist Cordelia Fine’s book “Delusions of Gender.”
According to Baron-Cohen, men naturally score to be more systemizing and are thus more analytical, calculated and intellectual. Likewise, women naturally score to be more empathizing and are thus more helpful, better listeners and touchy-feely. Never mind that other empirical research finds men to be inherently passionate and women passionless.
Sexist neuroscience research tries to uncover exactly how the female neurological composition pales in comparison to the male’s in a world where stereotypically male traits are prioritized.
Linguist Deborah Tannen, author of the bestselling book “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” published two years before the Barbie debacle, said when speaking with vox.com’s Ezra Klein that people often ask her about the origin of difference among men and women and hope reasons were either entirely biological or cultural.
“It tended to be the women who wanted it all to be cultural, and it tended to be the men that wanted it to be biological,” Tannen said. “I think the feeling for many men was, ‘Well, if it’s biological you can’t blame me if there are no female CEOs.’”
It’s unclear how heavily neurobiological, cultural or some other inexplicable factor dictates the differences between men and women, but it’s odd to see such a perscriptive approach to this.
Systemizing and empathizing; pink and blue; Mars and Venus. When we’re inundated with this type of messaging, it’s hard to remember that differences between women and men aren’t naturally so dichotomous.
Neuroscience research in sex differences will have to to weed out underlying sexism. By doing so, perhaps we can reverse the self-fulfilling prophecy that girls are bad at math and ask why we would even postulate that in the first place.
jsbourkl@umail.iu.edu
