So tonight there’s a program about gender neutralness and/or gender awareness, focused on boys and girls stereotypes and gender preferences. It’s becoming a hot topic and I’ll throw in my two cents on this issue, because it is interesting. To begin, parents do the buying and choosing mostly for the products that children consume in the very early years. As children get older they will be more vocal and specific about the products they choose and consume. Naturally all companies follow the demands of the market, and children are a big part of the market, and what children like the most, they will buy the most (or nag their parents to buy for them). Next what obviously determines gender specific or gender neutral products being consumed, are the parents, who either make a big deal about this or not so much. Recently a study by the World Health Organisation, where they questioned tweenagers and a parent or legal guardian, about gender roles across social classes and cultures, ignited this debate. And the conclusion is, what they refer to as a gender straightjacket of harmful stereotypes, that can potentially have dire consequences for boys and girls. Next they go through a whole list of bad things that happen to boys and even worse things that happen to girls, all based on the notion that the cause is this gender straightjacket, we as a society put them in.

Some argue that these stereotypes need to be changed and fought, at the young age of 10 maybe earlier, because terrible things happen, especially to girls. They recommend gender neutrality as the solution, but with no practical approach on how to do that. And they might be connecting things that have no causality whatsoever with innate, biological preferences or cultural and social pressures. Personally I would like to see more data and studies, because I’m not even sure if you can measure things like this, and promptly view it as a cause for all these stereotypes that can be harmful. I have seen the verifications for this, like almost everyone, but I yet have to see the falsification for these claims. Show me completely gender neutral kids, that don’t have to deal with stereotypes from culture and society and its influence on our lives. For me personally the differences between boys and girls are wonderful, and sometimes a burden both genders carry, but the study does seem to stress that girls have it worse. It seems to me that a gender neutral world is not what nature does, unless you look at slugs and hermaphrodite plants. I remain sceptical and I would stress that we are highly social creatures, constantly influenced by our family, friends, cultures and society, and it’s a dynamic process that is hard to measure and gather proof about, because just like the world it changes all the time.