Giving your son a dinette will not be enough to forge gender equality

Ihere are many ways to reproduce or reduce inequalities between girls and boys, and later between women and men. The Christmas holidays have seen the reappearance of a “chestnut tree”: should children be offered toys traditionally associated with their gender or not? An incitement to gender confusion for some, a tool for promoting gender equality for others, the classic partition between dolls, tea sets and cookers for girls, trucks, construction games and pistols for boys still organizes a number of commercial departments.

Even parents who have bet on toys allowing brothers and sisters to play the same things have a hard time escaping the last-minute gift that puts blue and pink at the foot of the tree. A recent analysis of the contents of toy parks showed how much the content of these varied, not only between children from well-to-do families and from modest families, but also very markedly, and whatever the social group, between girls and boys. Early learning of gender stereotypes thus notably involves play and participates in the construction of what sociologists call gendered dispositions: lasting ways of perceiving, thinking and acting, associated with the feminine and the masculine.

But is it enough to offer a dinette to his son and a truck to his daughter to make them adults concerned with equality between the sexes? Gendered dispositions are strongly shaped by what children observe at home, and ‘neutral’ toys will be no match for the daily spectacle of a father allergic to laundry and housework. It is the weight of paternal participation in family life in the acquisition by children of an egalitarian vision of feminine and masculine roles which is precisely at the heart of a recently published article by sociologists Tomas Cano and Heather Hofmeisterin the Journal of Marriage and Familya reference journal in the sociology of the family in the United States.

Specialization in domestic tasks

Male and female involvement in family life has been measured for several decades in many “Northern” countries through qualitative and quantitative surveys. They show very strong inequalities in domestic involvement between men and women, to the detriment of the latter. These are measured both in the time devoted to this involvement, and through the specialization of each other on certain tasks: DIY, gardening, games with the children for some, cleaning, laundry, cooking and washing up for others.

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