On Gender, Part 1

Some people might remember the Larry Summers (then president of Harvard) speech from 2005: the transcript can be found here. That speech offended me (and everybody else) as a feminist, but it also offended me as a scholar. He discussed issues of women in science and math fields, hypothesizing reasons for the underrepresentation of women in those fields, while ignoring the three decades or so of solid research documenting the differential treatment women and young girls receive in science and math classrooms. It's irritating when somebody in a position of power ignores empirical evidence related to a topic on which he feels justified to speak.

But I'm not going to discuss that here, instead I'd like to highlight one small portion of his remarks from that famous speech:

"There is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization...So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize."

Although Summers never specified what he meant by the vague "something", he implies that girls prefer to play at caretaking and boys prefer to play at bridge building.

I think about these things a lot given that I have one girl child and one boy child. Summers' reference to his twin girls was silly, as any good researcher knows that anecdotes don't make data. The implication in his remarks, moreover, is that his girls were treated just like boys, which ignores the overwhelming influence socialization likely played from the moment those girls were born. Even if Summers and his wife were so forward-thinking about gender (which, by the way, is unlikely given the content of his speech) as to shield their children from all media, from all other children displaying typical gender norms, and from well-meaning friends and relatives bearing gender-stereotypical gifts, they still would have had to negotiate the subtle and ingrained gender-based behavior we adults display towards babies and small children. Parents describe newborn boy and girl babies differently, and they interact and play with babies differently. Research on child-parent interactions has shown that parents talk to girls more, encourage autonomy in boys more, challenge boys more, and help girls more. Studies in the 70s and 80s showed evidence of these types of gender-based behaviors towards babies regardless of the actual sex of the baby: adults who thought a baby was a girl treated her like a girl, and adults who thought the baby was a boy treated him like a boy.

Even the color we paint our nursery and the clothes we pick out for coming home from the hospital are influenced by our knowledge of the baby's sex, if we have it. The overwhelming influence of early gender-based socialization of babies and children makes it remarkably difficult to tease apart what is nature and what is nurture. Some differences in brain structure have been found in girl and boy newborns, but how these differences would manifest themselves in behavior (much less toy preference) in a gender neutral world is not so easy to figure out.

Parents don't treat boys and girls differently because they're necessarily biased or sexist. We all do it unintentionally. We've been socialized to do it. Back when I taught school, I started to read articles about how teachers called on boys in math classrooms far more often than they called on girls. I was intrigued by this, and pretty sure that I didn't run my classroom that way. After all, I cared a great deal about girls' participation and success in math. I started audiotaping my own classroom and those of the other teachers, and found that each and every one of us called on boys 2-3 times as often as we called on girls. I never would have guessed this to be the case based on my own assessment and memory of how I taught. It's difficult to escape our own socialization about gender, no matter how well meaning we are or how hard we might try to pay attention to these things. If a well-meaning feminist ends up calling on boys more often in a math classroom, then how many other millions of little interactions subtly influence how girls and boys are taught to behave in the world? How difficult is it going to be to constantly watch how we behave as parents with our children?

That's why I don't believe that Summers' little anecdote about his twin girls means much at all. 2 and a half years old is certainly old enough to have learned a great deal about how to behave as a girl, even if their parents gave them nothing but trucks to play with. I also wonder what all of this means for Nora and Milo. They have many gorgeous, adorable outfits that are pink for Nora and blue for Milo. Before they were even a few weeks old we were dressing them according to gender. Just the other day I was remarking how much Nora sounds like a little girl with her high-pitched squeals, and how much Milo sounds like a little boy with his husky baby voice. We dress them according to gender, we noticed gendered traits, and we probably describe them in gendered terms as well.

I'm never going to stop wondering whether I am treating them fairly. Do I talk to Nora more? Do I cuddle her more? Does Milo happen to be better at tummy time and rolling because I subconsciously push him a little more than I push Nora? Is it just a coincidence that many days when I come home from work, the Twin Whisperer(tm) happens to be holding Milo while Nora patiently plays on her own? I notice that we often remark how strong Milo is. When is the last time I described Nora as strong? I can't remember doing so. I call both of them beautiful, and I think both of them are smart, but how often do I describe Milo as social, even though he is just as likely to light up with a smile as Nora is? The words we use to describe the babies shape how we think about them, how we interact with them, and ultimately influence how they behave. Are we doing everything we can to make sure that Nora knows she is a strong person, and Milo knows that he is a social person?

I want Nora to have plenty of blocks and trucks to play with, and I want Milo to know that dolls are fine for him to play with. I want Nora to know that it's okay to yell and run around and bang things and get dirty. I want Milo to know that it's okay to cuddle and talk and take care of people. I know that they have to live in a gender-stereotyped world, one that probably influences them even now, and will do so in bigger ways as they get older, make friends, receive particular types of toys as presents, and observe how adult men and women act and interact. I hope that Jake and I can do a semi-decent job of helping them negotiate those influences and grow into people who embrace both feminine and masculine ways of being.