Just Because I'm a Girl doesn't Mean My Technology Has to be Pink

Boy version of an electronic drum kit

Girl version of an electronic drum kit

Nat and I took a stroll down the isles of Toys R US and we found that all the girls toys that were related to technology were located in the section with all the toys marketed toward boys, such as science and equipment for means of media production, such as this pink, electronic drum kit. Also, any technological toys were appropriated for girls, they were pink, flowery and represented as the "token technology". Girls being involved in technology is not the normal. While boys' telescopes, chemistry sets, and mock electronic gadgets look very close to the real thing, they are black or blue and simple, much like in real life, the girl- gadgets are glammed up, they are pink and decorated with flowers and graphics. Lipkin addresses this very socialization, appropriation, and gendering of children's toys. She explains how although gender coding runs strong for both sexes, gender-typing is much more restrictive for for boys than girls (2009, p.p. 9). Girls are assigned with the roles of physical beautification, cooking, cleaning, and having babies, and boys are assigned the jobs, working with tools and technology and earning money, and this was strongly reflected by the girls and boys toys Nat and I observed today. On one hand, girls were allowed to "cross-over" into the boy's realm, but these girl-adapted versions must be hot pink and flowery. Boys on the other hand, boys were not given this freedom. There were no dolls or cooking sets marketed toward boys, not even in blue.

What can be made of this? Although girls are given a measure of flexibility in terms of gender socialization however, the fact that technology-based toys had to be altered and "gussied-up" to suit girls means that girls in technology is not normal, it is a token circumstance. This socialization of children, via what is available to consumers in stores, has caused the slow raise of women and girls being involved in technology. This acts as a barrier to girls when pursuing technology and production of media, because they are not supposed to do it, they were not trained to be work with it, and therefore they are tokenized when they are involved in it.

In the real world, when little girls grow up, if you are a D.J., your decks are not going to be pink. In a standard laboratory, microscopes are not going to pink. In an office, the desktops are not going to pink. Is consumer culture subtly suggesting that girls interacting with technology is a fairy-tale or merely a game of pretend? The boy's world is the real world, the norm, and as reinforced by this pink plastic the message communicated to girls is that they do not belong there.

Glammed-up girl version of a Blackberry

Barbie's pink computer, good grief!