A group of philosophers runs a gendered conference campaign, whose goal is to get conference organizers not to plan all-male rosters of speakers.
Does math need a campaign like this?
Discuss.
CJ is, in many ways, in compliance with conventional expectations about little boys; he likes construction sites, vehicles of all kinds, dinosaurs, and roughhousing. But he breaks those rules, too. One of his favorite games is to cook in his toy kitchen (though note that cooking is Daddy’s job in our house.) Based on his loose understanding of human reproduction, he sometimes tells us that he has a baby in his tummy and he’s going to take care of it. And when I recently took him down to Budget Bicycle Center to buy a helmet, he chose the pink one with hearts all over it above the blue helmet with cars, the black helmet with trains, and many other more boy-coded options.
When I was a kid, my favorite color was pink. OK, I’ll admit it, hot pink. (It was the 70s!) And I liked all decorations to be as floral as possible. My parents brought me to the department store when I was 4 or 5 to pick out wallpaper for my room, and I chose a print of pink roses, which created some consternation; my parents felt, possibly correctly, that at 7 I’d feel it wrong to have my room done up in pink roses, so they bribed me with the offer of a giant cork board to accept a more gender-neutral wallpaper. It was a kind of blobby orange-and-brown plaid. Did I remember to mention it was the 70s?
Anyway: should I maintain a rigid neutrality about all such matters? Or is it all right that I feel a little pride in CJ’s pink helmet?
I was pretty excited for CJ and me to watch the Packers play in the NFC Championship tonight. All day I’ve been telling him that we were going to watch the football game, and prompting him to say “Go Packers!” But when the time came, he wanted to watch his kiddie yoga DVD. We agreed as a compromise to watch a little of each. At first, he watched the game with some interest, pointing out “It’s cold!” and “He fell down!” several times each. But at the first commercial he asked for the yoga DVD again.
“Want to watch a little more football first?” I said
“Can you not find the yoga?” CJ asked.
“No, I have it, should I put the yoga on now?”
“Yes, Daddy turn baseball off.”
Thus ends the experiment in enforcing traditional gender roles.
Quomodocumque 