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• “Boys build houses. Girls keep houses.”

  The above is taken from a 1960s children’s book charmingly titled I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!, which Jezebel discovered via Contexts. My favorite of the captions is definitely, “Boys can eat. Girls can cook.” It’s very important that girls understand from a young age that they are incapable of consuming food. Weight Watchers diet shakes do not count as food. Here’s a full page out of the book, in case you want to share with your kids a simpler time, a time when genitalia alone determined every single life decision. Read More... Posted Apr 10 2009, 01:53 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: children's books, Gender roles, whitney darrow

• Jon Stewart’s Kids Adhere to 1950’s Gender Stereotypes

  If you see Jon Stewart on the streets of New York, he may be “on a date with a aging French hooker,” aka his three-year-old lipstick smeared daughter Maggie. On an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Jon Stewart discussed with Dave his daughter's  ... Read More... Posted Mar 06 2009, 01:00 PM by SunnyChanel with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Gender roles, jon stewart, daily show, david letterman, lipstick, kids and lipstick, Emmit Kelly, gener stereotypes

• Banned Books Week: Little Women

  Let me explain to you how important Little Women is in my personal history: I was named Amy for the youngest March sister.  My daughter shares a name with another, and the other two March girl’s names were top contenders. I’ve probably read this book, no lie, 100 times since I first picked it up when I was 8 or 9 years old. Which is why I found it mystifying when I looked over this list of most frequently challenged children’s books and found Little Women included. I immediately grabbed it for my entry in our Banned Books Week coverage. I found it absolutely, positively mystifying that those incredibly wholesome book – a book which, it must be noted, even author Louisa May Alcott herself found a little much – would be offensive to anyone. Read More... Posted Sep 28 2008, 10:59 PM by Amy Kuras with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: feminism, Gender roles, banned books week, little women, Jo March, Louisa May Alcott

• Feminist Men Earn Less Than Ward Cleaver

  Last week a quiet article in the Washington Post almost slipped right by me in my preoccupation with the latest bank buyouts and the off-again, on-again presidential debates.  But the economic news in this article is worth a second glance. Read More... Posted Sep 28 2008, 11:57 AM by Shannon LC Cate with | with no comments Filed under: gender, feminism, sexism, Gender roles, pay equity, Journal of Applied Psychology, women in the workplace, feminist men, equal pay for equal work

• Are You There, Target? It's Me, Mama

  Target marketing execs? Are you reading this blog. Awww, that's so sweet of you. On behalf of the others here at Strollerderby, I'd like you to know we're flattered. Flattered and pleased! Pleased that you read us ... AND that you respond, so to speak, with changes ... for the better! For the good of young girls and boys and their Target-shopping families and picky, picky mamas. Target, you know what I'm talking about. But a bit of background for the readers. A couple of months ago when I got worked up into a lather over the spring Target circular that showed up in the mail. Every picture of every product was paired with a kid along such predictable and stringent gender lines that even Phyllis Schlafly might have felt uneasy.   Here's the crux:   Read More... Posted May 20 2008, 10:31 AM by Madeline Holler with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Target, Gender roles, marketing to young girls, retail

• 5 Reasons Wives Do More Housework

  A recent study found wives do seven times more housework than their husbands. As I write this post my wife is folding laundry, and I wonder, can this be true? Do wives really do more housework?  Nah, crazy talk. Oh honey, while you are tackling that mound of freshly laundered clothes, could you grab my coffee mug? It’s sooooo far away. Okay, okay who thinks this comes as a big surprise? It's a stereotype, a running joke, a real screw job for women, but I think I have some legitimate reasons why women do more around the house. Old Fashioned Sexism. Not until I met my in-laws did I discover some people really see a difference in “women's work” and “men's work"...   Read More... Posted Apr 15 2008, 06:00 AM by Cole Gamble with | with 12 comment(s) Filed under: chores, laundry, sexism, housework, Gender roles, report, in-laws, men versus women, doing the dishes, dusting, vaccuming, inequality, spring cleaning, Pledge

• Is This The Kind Of Equality Gloria Steinem Was Fighting For?

  The image of the geisha catering to the every whim of her male clients is a longstanding Japanese stereotype.  But now, the modern ladies of Tokyo are lining up for some pampering of their own, courtesy of the increasingly popular "geisha guys" - male escorts that earn up to $50,000 for an evening of "companionship."   Read More... Posted Apr 07 2008, 03:03 PM by Amy S.F. Lutz with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Prostitution, Japan, Gender roles, clubs, geishas, geisha guys

• Controversy: Nature/Nurture

  Madeline's post this week expressing frustration and despair at the blatant sexism in her Target circular definitely pitted the feminist theorists against the . . . I don't know, what do you call those who pretty much said, "Chill out, it's just a Target circular"?    I too was raised to think of gender as a cultural construct.  My mom drilled into my head that girls like pink and dolls and dresses and boys like blue and trucks and guns because society tells us we should.  And I believed it. Now, can I hear from all of those who thought as I did until we had children who thwarted our every expectation?  Because I KNOW there's a lot of us out there.   Read More... Posted Mar 14 2008, 05:30 PM by Amy S.F. Lutz with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: stereotypes, Target, sexism, Gender roles, nature-nurture

• Gender Roles In Children's Literature

  Back in second grade, when I and many of my classmates were forming Harriet the Spy clubs, complete with code names and symbols to indicate various personality traits—including “suspichis” and “meanie”—brassy characters like Harriet starred in just about all the books I loved. It never occurred to me that I was behaving in ways that could be considered “unladylike.” But when the book first came out in the 1960s, that’s exactly how Harriet’s character was received, according to an NPR segment this morning. Read More... Posted Mar 03 2008, 12:40 PM by Hannah Tennant-Moore with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Harriet the Spy, tomboys, misfit characters, Gender roles, children’s books