Toys for boys and girls

A staple of Introduction to Sociology courses is the toy assignment, in which students are asked to visit a local store and take note of the gendered nature of the offerings. While boys and girls might not universally agree with the things that are supposed to be for them, the prevalence of these messages in stores, ads, and TV commercials makes them hard to avoid. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, one company in Sweden is challenging these norms in its most recent Christmas catalog.

A comparison of Top-Toy’s Swedish catalogs with their Danish counterparts shows girls have replaced boys in some photos featuring toy guns, and boys have swapped places with girls in photos featuring dolls and stuffed dogs. In one picture in the Swedish catalog, a boy is blow-drying a girl’s hair whereas in the Danish version, a somewhat older girl is blow-drying her own hair.

Top-Toy also is working on adjusting store displays and packaging to reflect the gender-neutral approach, said Jan Nyberg, Top-Toy’s sales director in Sweden. Boys and girls can now be seen playing together on boxes of “Happy House,” Top-Toy’s own kitchen set.

“We can’t decide what the big toy makers’ boxes should look like as their products are made for the global market, but we can make changes on our own boxes and in our stores,” Mr. Nyberg said.

…

A saleswoman said she hasn’t seen much difference in store displays but noted employees now are trained to avoid stereotypes when talking to customers. “If someone asks for a present for a 5-year-old girl, we don’t automatically take them to the dolls section,” she said. “Instead, we ask them what her interests are.”

Sweden appears to have gender norms that are very different than those in the US, so it seems that the store is reflecting society rather than attempting to change it, but it would be nice to live in a place where kids grow up receiving messages that they could be, and play with, anything that they want.

Via: The Society Pages

 

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Olympic statistics

The Olympics have officially ended (don’t tell NBC, they’re airing the closing ceremonies right now!) but here are some interesting statistics that the Wall Street Journal posted last week anyway. Somebody (probably an unpaid intern) analyzed 129 medal ceremonies from the London Olympics and examined the reactions of the winners. As the article states:

About 16% of them cried at some point during the ceremony. Another 16% either bit or kissed their medal on the podium, while 44% sang along with their anthem—sometimes through a stream of tears. Women cry more than men—25% compared to 8%—but many of the men who did cry seriously lost it. South Africa’s Chad le Clos needed tissues after he beat Michael Phelps in the 200-meter butterfly, while the Dominican Republic’s Felix Sanchez was a complete wreck after winning the 400-meter hurdles.

Among the three countries with the most gold medals thus far, China cries the least, with only 7% of its athletes succumbing to tears. More than 17% of American winners cried, while a whopping 37.5% of athletes from host country Great Britain cried. And since they weren’t crying, the Chinese also sang the most: 92% of their athletes belted out the anthem, compared to 61% from Great Britain and 44% from the U.S.

Additionally, at least one athlete was not impressed with her position on the podium. An interesting thing about these statistics is that Fox News used all of them in a slightly longer article in which they mentioned the Wall Street Journal but did not provide a link. I suppose the fact that they mentioned their source still puts them ahead of Fareed Zakaria.

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The computer says you’re going to leave

Graduate student attrition has been discussed before, but now Google is using employee data and a computer algorithm to identify employees who might quit their jobs “even before they know they might leave.”  As reported by the Wall Street Journal:

The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving at a time when its once-powerful draws — a start-up atmosphere and soaring stock price — have been diluted by its growing size. The data crunching supplements more traditional measures like employee training and leadership meetings to evaluate talent.

A fairly big part of the equation that seems to have been left out of the report (and that may be applicable to the issue of graduate student attrition) is what Google actually does when they determine that somebody might quit.  I assume that they don’t go out of their way to keep those who are not seen as valuable.  Maybe they have algorithms for that, too.

Update: Related to graduate student attrition (but not computer algorithms), Fabio at Orgtheory has a post today (part of the grad skool rulz series) following up on a previous post about when to quit graduate school.

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When religion fails, call Big Brother

Religion may prevent socially disapproved behaviors because of an omniscient, judging other (panopticon religion), but it also prevents individuals from taking action because of a promised “better” life ahead (opiate religion).  It appears that religion is failing us on both fronts.  The potential presense of an omnisicient, judging other does not prevent all of us from doing reprehensible acts, nor does it allow all of us to accept these acts because of a promised “better” life ahead.  Because of this, we look for earthly solutions.

Some make much more money than others, so we tax them at higher rates; some businesses are harmful to the environment, so we create environmental regulations; some are rewarded for the failure of their companies, so we create pay limits.  In each case, there are loopholes.

If Obama really were a deity we wouldn’t have these problems.  As it is, the chance of getting caught and punished for abusing these loopholes appears to be continually outweighed by the potential gains that come with taking advantage of them.  If society were a prison, we could implement Bentham’s panopticon in order to create the illusion of an omniscient other and, thus, prevent these behaviors.  In case you haven’t noticed, however, society is not a prison.

The failure of religion, social norms, and actual regulations to regulate these behaviors creates a situation in which it is easy enough to conclude that we need increased governmental controls on behaviors such as these for the good of the people!  We need a digital panopticon!  Two-way screens in every room to protect us from the worst among us!

shit!

I love Big Brother.

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