DCG posted: " Daily Mail: Making girls wear pink is wrong and could harm
their future, an education expert has warned. Hannah Webster, a spokesman
for a private school's organization, said the idea of having blue for a boy
and pink for a girl is "pernicious" bec" Respond to this post by
replying above this line
New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/dcgere/> Making girls wear pink is
WRONG: Education expert says colour-coding children by gender is
damaging<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2014/05/01/making-girls-wear-pink-is-wrong-education-expert-says-colour-coding-children-by-gender-is-damaging/>
by
DCG <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/dcgere/>
[image: Harmed for
life...]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/girl.jpg>
Harmed for life...
Daily
Mail<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2616863/Making-girls-wear-pink-wrong-harm-future-Education-expert-says-colour-coding-children-gender-damaging.html>:
*Making girls wear pink is wrong and could harm their future*, an education
expert has warned.
Hannah Webster, a spokesman for a private school's organization, said the
idea of having blue for a boy and pink for a girl is
"pernicious<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pernicious>"
because* it leads them towards certain roles regardless of their real
identities*.
She said: "There will be those who say that pink and blue colour coding
does not matter -* that it is just a fact that boys like blue and girls
like pink. They are wrong*."
She added: "If we designate a particular colour to a gender, *it leads us
to designate all manner of other things by gender too*. The result is girls
and boys read different kinds of books, play with different kinds of toys,
study different subjects, consider different occupations, have different
roles within the workplace and family and *are ultimately valued
differently by society*."
"What is pernicious about this is that everyone is then attributed with
roles and characteristics regardless of their individual identities and
talents. *And this then occurs before a child is even born.*"
Writing in the magazine Attain, produced by the Independent Association of
Prep Schools, she writes that, at the time of the First World War, the
colours were reversed.
According to a 1918 edition of Ladies' Home Journal, the rule at the time
was pink for the boy and blue for the girl. Blue was considered a softer
colour which was prettier for girls, and also the colour in which the
Virgin Mary was often depicted.
Ms. Webster, the association's communications manager, wrote: "Most of us
want a society in which people are judged according to their whole
identities rather than just their gender.
"We can only have a hope of this if we stop presuming an array of
character traits - starting on the basis of colour preference - go hand in
hand with a person's biological sex."
[image: The destructive blue
shirt...]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/boy.jpg>
The destructive blue shirt...
Ms. Webster spoke out after the parents' group Let Toys Be Toys* launched a
campaign to remove "boys and girls" signs in shops*.
Marks & Spencer and Toys R Us are among those who* have already pledged to
make its toys "gender neutral"*.
As previously reported in MailOnline, Let Toys Be Toys was set up by a
group of British parents in November 2012, *calling for a change in the way
toys are marketed to boys and girls*.
They had noticed girls were increasingly being encouraged to play with
dolls, prams and kitchens - all inevitably in pink colours - while toys
deemed to be for boys were cars, buns and sports-related.
One of the campaign's founders, Tricia Lowther, 44, a self-employed
copywriter from Durham, who has a six-year-old daughter, told the
MailOnline: "It does bother a lot of parents, we seem to have tapped in to
a huge and growing *sense of frustration with the way toys are promoted
according to outdated, illogical and sexist stereotypes*."
"*I can't speak for any of the others but what pushed me to make a
stand*was the realization, after my daughter was born, that gender
stereotyping
in children's products had become worse than when I was a child myself back
in the Seventies. It's something that has become almost impossible to
escape and* is very limiting for children*."
A similar Let Books Be Books project, calling for reading material not to
be marked as "for boys" or "for girls" is backed by children's laureate
Malorie Blackman, poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and the author Philip
Pullman.
Here's a concept: Why don't parents just expose their children to an array
of toys, books, and other things in life? This girl played with Barbies and
Matchbox cars, played baseball in the cul-de-sac, and my dad even taught me
to shoot.
[image: Try breaking into my
home...]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/dcg-target-shooting-v2.jpg>
This girl was encouraged to shoot!
The genders are different yet can enjoy the same experiences, or not. It's
up to the parents to do their job and actually parent, instead of worrying
about how toy companies are responsible for limiting your child's growth.
DCG
*DCG <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/dcgere/>* | May 1, 2014 at
3:45 am | Categories: Children<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?cat=34928689>,
Culture War <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?cat=20812> | URL:
http://wp.me/pKuKY-qlq
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