Our thanks to Jeff for this. The title of the piece is, ‘Girls should play with Lego not Barbies to make them more interested in science and maths says leading woman physicist’. Athene Donald really should consult a psychology professor at the same university, Simon Baron-Cohen, on what is known about gender-typical choice preferences, which are evident as early as the weeks following birth. We strongly recommend his book The Essential Difference: Men, Women, and the Extreme Male Brain (2012). You don’t see him wittering on mindlessly about experimental physics, do you? What expertise does Prof Donald, an experimental physicist, have in the area about which she is pontificating?
Even if we ignore gender-typical interests and aptitudes, there would remain a perfectly simple explanation for why girls are attracted to Humanities subjects rather than the sciences. Put simply, they require the investment of far less effort to achieve a given grade. Girls’ subject choices are probably nothing other than an early reflection of something the renowned sociologist Dr Catherine Hakim explained in her paper on Preference Theory (2000), namely:
Four out of seven British men are work-centred.
One in seven British women is work-centred.
Apropos of nothing, Simon Baron-Cohen’s cousin is Sacha Baron-Cohen of Ali G fame.
The last professorial winner of our ‘Gormless Feminist of the Month’ award was back in May – Kirstein Rummery, of Stirling University. Her certificate is here.
Justice for Men & Boys 
I would love to comment on this but it is so spectacularly stupid that words fail me. All I would add is that I bought my daughter all sorts of toys if she asked for them, and she did ask for a few cars and I think one gun, and never played with them. Her favourite toy was her little push chair in which she wheeled about her smallest simplest doll (the large and very expensive does everything, wets itself, cries, says mummy and rolls its eyes when gurgling and giggling was stripped of its clothing and discarded when the novelty had worn off.)
Girls, in my experience, don’t do complicated ‘need to think about it’ toys, which is why they tend not to choose science and engineering as careers.
LikeLike
In her book ‘The Female Brain’, Prof Louanne Brizendine related the story of a woman who’d bought her young daughter ‘male toys’ in an effort to avoid ‘gender stereotyping’. One was a red fire truck. One day she walked into her daughter’s bedroom and observed her holding the truck in a blanket, and saying ‘Don’t worry, little trucky, everything’s going to be all right!’ (or words to that effect).
LikeLike
It is interesting because where there has been an increase in girls taking science it has been in those sciences necessary to enter medicine or psychology. So in fact the “segregation” into “care” for women has actually been instrumental in increasing the preponderance of females in the caring professions! The Professor appears to be part of the small band of female scientists who dislike the fact they are simply unusual amongst women and will be an inevitable minority if people are left to choose.
LikeLike