As we’ve been considering the hazards of gendered science kits for kids, some have suggested that it is simplistic to paint pink microscopes as an unalloyed evil.

One response on the potential value of girls’ science kits comes from Meghan Groome at Pathways to Science:

As someone who studies the formation of science identity in middle school students, I see everyday how girls try to navigate acceptable girl identities with those teachers look for to identify science talent.  For many girls, upper elementary and middle school is a time where they are expected to lose both boisterous and intellectually curious elements of their external personalities.  Day in and day out, I observe teachers, boys, and other girls in the class act as “gatekeepers” for smart, vocal girls in science. It’s subtle but once you point it out, it’s unmistakable. …

Teachers look for somewhat specific characteristics to define a kid who is smart or good in science. Those include excelling on exams, participating in class, and showing an interest in the content.  Excelling on exams is a fairly private affair but class participation and curiosity become high-risk behavior for girls lead to them hiding their interest and talent.

All students have to make choices about who they are to the outside world, but for girls, there are fewer ways to be both a girl and someone who is outwardly interested and good at science.

So, when I originally read about girly science kits I balked at what appeared to be a gross exaggeration of girly identity.  I’ve had similar responses when I got to robotics competitions and see the all-girl teams decked out like princesses or cheerleaders.

But upon reflection, I wonder why we adults are so quick to shut down another way that a girl can navigate being a girl and being a scientist? Do I personally want to be a scientist who acts like a Barbie? No, but who am I to shut down someone who chooses Barbie Scientist over Tom Boy scientist?

I think this assessment is onto something — although my experience is that there are fewer acceptable ways to be a girl regardless of whether one is outwardly interested in and good at science. Still, it’s worth asking if the rejection of gendered science kits might function (whether intended to do so or not) as another kind of gender policing, insisting that girls who pursue science must foreswear femininity entirely.

Another response, which I take to be less a defense of gendered science kits and more an examination of the assumption built into negative reactions to them, comes from Lauren at teenskepchick:

I kind of felt like there has been a bit of pink-slagging going on.

Now, I’m not averse to pink. At one stage in my childhood I used to bemoan the colour and anything my parents chose out for me that happened to be pink. I didn’t want to be like those girls. With their pink and their cattiness and their girliness. Internalized misogyny is about valuing “masculinity” and male-ness over “femininity and female-ness, and that is exactly what I did with my dislike of pink. I got over that (for the most part) long ago, and now I’m more than happy to wear pink or stick pink things on my walls or (as my avatar would have you believe) in my hair (and if the blasted colour held well, it might still be in my hair). Which is cool! I like pink. It probably isn’t my favourite colour, but I like it and I see nothing wrong with anybody (of any gender identity) embracing the colour pink.

Except, apparently, when it came to physics. If there was any pink anywhere near my science, it could GTFO as far as I was concerned. I had become used to being incredibly outnumbered in my classes, and getting the reaction “Oh, but that’s a boy subject” when I told people what my majors were. I don’t even understand why people think that is a socially acceptable thing to say, but it happens more often than you’d think. I was tired of second-guessing my wardrobe choices for some classes, and I was tired of coming across stories about T-shirts with messages that implied girls suck at maths.

Enter the Science Babe, aka Deborah Berebichez. When I first started coming across some of her work in my journeys across the intertubes, I wasn’t a fan. The opposite. It was physics and it was pink and it was high heels and it was very gossip-y and I hated it. I’ve lately come to realise, though, that that’s okay! If that is what it takes to get more girls interested in physics, then that is awesome. Same deal with the pink science kits. The problem (well, one of them) is with how they are marketed to reinforce set gender roles, that girls need to be girly and boys… boy-y. The problem is not that pink and femininity and all of that are bad.

There are a bunch of related issues intertwined here.

There seems to be a strong societal presumption that science (and math, and related subject matter) are “naturally” of interest to boys (and men), but not to girls (and women).

There seems to be another strong societal presumption that girls are “naturally” inclined toward femininity — where femininity is described in a pretty narrow way connected to pink stuff, pretty clothes, interpersonal relationships, and the like — and boys are “naturally” inclined toward masculinity that is defined in similarly narrow terms.

Then there’s the presumption that science and math are more compatible with those masculine characteristics than with feminine ones.

Finally, there’s at least a tacit assumption that feminine characteristics and pursuits compatible with them are not as valuable as masculine characteristics and pursuits compatible with them — that the things that are linked to femininity are less than. (This is the internalized misogyny Lauren describes in her post.)

And these intertwined assumptions set up what can feel like a minefield for girls trying to negotiate the twin challenges of figuring out what pursuits interest them and of figuring out who they want to be.

On the one hand, a girl may be totally non-plussed by social pressure to be a certain kind of girl, compliant with a stereotypical version of femininity. But if this girl who resists the pressure to be “feminine” also decides she’s into science, maybe this runs the risk of reinforcing the assumption that science is not compatible with femininity — sure, here’s a girl who wants to do science, but she’s not actually a girly girl.

Indeed, if the girls one knows who are into science are uniformly those who depart from society’s picture of femininity, it may seem to the girls just working out whether to explore science that there is a forced choice between being feminine and pursuing science. And, if they’re OK with the bundle of qualities that is part of societally sanctioned femininity, they may conclude that they’re better off opting out of science (a conclusion peer-pressure may support).

Worse, the grown-ups mentoring girls, including the ones teaching them math and science, may believe that there is a forced choice between science and femininity. Among other things, they may pre-emptively decide that girly girls are not part of their target audience.

And, falling in line with society’s judgments, the girls who pursue science may assume that the girls who hew closer to the “feminine” stereotypes are less interested in or able to do science. This attitude may leave the girly girls who actually pursue science feeling rather isolated even from other girls in science.

All of this strikes me as a pretty raw deal.

In a perfect world, a pink microscope would be just as valid a choice as a blue one (assuming both have the same magnifying power). But in the world we currently inhabit, the pressure on girls to fit the stereotype of femininity is enormous, and comes from multiple sources, including (but not limited to) family members, peers, and school.

A well-meaning attempt to suggest to girls that science can be compatible with the stereotype of femininity can end up being yet another reminder that you need to conform to that stereotype. Otherwise, why the heck would every science kit in the girls’ section come in a pink box?

And lest we forget, Krystal D’Costa reminds us that boys face a parallel pressure to avoid anything that might be officially recognized as feminine:

[G]irls have the option not to choose pink, but do boys ever have the option to choose pink? Will the little boy curious about scents be isolated by his siblings and extended family if they learn what science kit he wants? Because it comes in a pink box?

To get to the point where a pink microscope does not act as yet another tool to police gendered expectation on girls (and boys) — and when women who reject pink microscopes are not used to police gendered expectations on scientists (as not girly) either — we need to figure out how to change the societal presumption that femininity and masculinity have anything at all to do with inclination towards, or ability in, science. We need to recognize opting into, or out of, femininity or masculinity as a completely separate issue from opting into, or out of, math and science. And, decisions with respect to math and science need to be seen as counting neither for nor against your opting into or out of a particular package of gendered characteristics.

After all, as far as I can tell, whether one is interested in math and science, or displays an ability for them, is an empirical question. Why not drop the gendered assumptions about who will be “naturally” suited to them and see what happens?

It would also be great if we could let kids find out who they are and how they want to be without locking them into a rigid, binary choice. If there was no pressure to be a particular kind of boy or a particular kind of girl — if the full range of options was open to everyone — I suspect it might be easier not to judge one set of options as inherently less than.

Again, I think it’s an empirical question — so let’s roll up our sleeves and create the conditions where we can actually find out.

In response to my post about science kits for girls, a reader wrote to me:

I would be really interested to see an exploration of the kits for boys from the same company. They also appeal to stereotypes that are damaging by offering only destruction, gags, and grossouts as the appeal of learning about science.

As requested, here we go!

If the selection of science kits for girls was inescapably pink, the boys’ ones have to be blue. Otherwise, how would the adults doing the shopping know that they were on the right page to find appropriately gendered gifts for the kids on their shopping lists? Surely, these adults must be utterly baffled by a webpage layout like this one:

How do you tell which are the girls’ kits and which are the boys’ ones? What’s the big idea of making kits sortable by subject-matter categories, or price, or appropriate age range? There are just too many possibilities here for interesting the gift-recipient in science!

Although maybe that’s a feature, not a bug.

Anyway, back to the WILD! Science boys’ offerings. In contrast to the girls’ offerings, which included 13 different kits, there are only six kits targeted specifically to boys. It’s unclear what the thinking is behind this disparity. Perhaps it’s that science is a harder sell for girls, requiring a greater variety of kits to grab their interest, while boys are more “naturally” inclined toward scientific pursuits and thus need less of a prodding from a kit. Maybe it’s that girls are more acquisitive of consumer goods (especially those packaged in pink boxes), thus supporting a larger stable of girls’ kits than boys’ kits.

Or possibly it’s that boys’ interest in science are so narrow that these six kits include the only plausible points of entry.

(Recall, though, that the 13 girls’ kits included enough overlap — multiple kits on crystal growth, fragrances, and soap-making — that they don’t really constitute 13 possible points of entry to their interest in science.)

One of the boys’ kits is Weird Slime Science. Its product description is nearly identical to that of the corresponding girls’ kit, Beautiful Blob Slime. One difference is that the description of the girls’ kit emphasizes the safety of the chemicals used. Does this suggest that adults worry more about (or care more about) the safety of girls than of boys? Is implied danger a selling point of science where boys (but not girls) are concerned? Either way, the big difference between the two kits seems to be that one comes in a blue box and the other comes in a pink box.

The boys also get a soap-making kit, although theirs is described as “Practical Joke Soap”. In addition to making the soap, they get to “[e]xplore … multiple stage embedding and the art of welding with soap to create realistic and gruesome soap objects like brains and eyeballs.” The girls’ soap-making kits offer no such practical instruction on practical joking.

Let’s pause for a moment to examine an assumption that seems to be built into the gendering of these soap-making kits: that girls are interested in what is pretty and fragrant (and exfoliating) while boys are interested in the gruesome (or in the hilariously shocked reactions of people who come upon these gruesome soap specimens). Some girls may prefer the pretty and the fragrant, but other girls may prefer realistically gross stuff. (I am a parent to at least one such girl.) Some boys may enjoy the gross-out, but other boys don’t. And, science kits that police these gender stereotypes run the risk of alienating boys from science, too. If you’re a boy that doesn’t like gruesome stuff, this kind of kit will not encourage you to like science. As well, it may lead to the uneasy feeling that you’re not living up to societal expectations of masculinity.

That’s a pretty rotten gift to give a kid.

This is not to say that these heavily-gendered science kits are the only source a kid has about these expectations. When I was little, I was so fascinated by creepy crawlies that I routinely picked up any earthworm I could get my hands on. Despite some pretty consciously egalitarian parenting, my younger brother was (I am told) of the view that if a girl could pick up a worm, a boy should be able to do it too. (Maybe he got this message from kids at preschool, or other relatives, or TV.) However, he was so grossed out by actually doing so that he squeezed the life out of each of the poor worms he picked up.

In other words, gender stereotypes don’t just hurt boys and girls — they also hurt earthworms!

Other boys’ offerings include a Hyperlauncher Rocket Ball Factory (with which to make superballs and explore F=ma), Spooky Ice Planet (which seems to involve crystal growth, but it’s pretty hard to tell from the product description), Perils of the Deep (ditto), and a kit called Wild Physics and Cool Chemistry. As it happens, this last kit combines the boys’ Hyperlauncher Rocket Ball kit and Weird Slime kit, which is probably why it appears in the boys’ offerings. It’s pretty striking, though, that none of the girls’ kits is identified as a Physics and/or Chemistry kit. Is it more important that boys recognize these activities as connected to well-defined science subjects in school? Why exactly should that be? And, how is this consistent with the lack of clear descriptions as to what scientific principles boys might learn from “Spooky Ice Planet” or “Perils of the Deep”?

More generally, note that the boys’ kits seem to assume that boys are interested in: stuff that’s spooky or gross, stuff that bounces, and (maybe) stuff that’s dangerous. Unlike the product descriptions for the girls’ kits, none of the product descriptions for the boys’ kits pitch these activities as ways to make gifts for family and friends, which suggests that boys are assumed to be more self-centered and less giving.

Again, these are gendered stereotypes that will only fit some boys, while ignoring the complexities of most actual boys. To the extent that these kits send subtle and not-so-subtle messages to boys about how they ought to be, they police masculinity in a way that is bound to be limiting to boys and the men they grow up to be.

And, it’s not obvious that using these gender stereotypes is a good way to get boys interested in science.

We want kids to explore science and get excited about learning (and doing) it. Given that kids learn so much through play, rather than just by trying to sit still at a desk and to pay attention to a teacher who may or may not convey enthusiasm about science, you’d think that science kits marketed as “play” would be a good thing.

Why, then, am I skeptical about the value of science kits for girls?

Packaging “science for girls” this way is likely to teach girls as much about societal expectations as about science.

There is, without a doubt, a lot of interesting chemistry involved in making soap, perfume, and make-up. However, defining that chemistry as of interest to girls — especially pre-teen girls — conveys a message that girls are (or should be) naturally interested in grooming and cosmetics. This, in turn, conveys a message that girls ought to be exfoliating and toning and moisturizing, mastering the smoky eye and the shiny lip, and discovering a signature scent.

Here, I see two messages being sent to girls by gendered science kits.

One is that science is not so cool in itself that a girl would appreciate it if it came in a box that wasn’t pink. Instead, science is presented as cool because it can be shown to be compatible with acceptable femininity, crammed into one of the narrow boxes that contain it.

Bath bombs, after all, do not actually explode on contact with bath water.

The other, more subtle, message is that cramming oneself into the narrow box of acceptable femininity is important. This box puts constraints on acceptable appearance (at least neat, if not pretty, fluffy, and glittery), and smell (like a flower rather than a young human), and behavior (interested in making stuff, especially as gifts for others, rather than in blowing stuff up or taking stuff apart to see how it works).

In tandem, the messages conveyed by these kits seem to be saying: you can like science without transgressing the boundaries of acceptable femininity — but those boundaries are very important, and you would do well to learn where they are and stay within them. Maybe they will convince some girls that science is cool, but if they also convince those girls that they have to perform femininity in such a narrow way, is this a net win?

Here, I think it’s worth thinking in the longer term. Will buying into societal expectations about the right way to be a girl help girls succeed in science education and careers? Consider that “the right way to be a girl” has tended to be skewed against showing oneself to be good at math and science in middle school and high school. Consider as well that “the right way to be a woman” has tended to be loaded up with expectations about having and raising children, making meals, and keeping a beautiful house — duties that rather cut into one’s time in the lab or the field, if one wants to pursue a scientific career.

Plus, the phenomenon of stereotype threat suggests that girls and women recognize that society sees being female and being good at math or science as in opposition. To the extent that policing acceptable femininity strengthens this perception, whether on the individual level or the societal level, maybe we’re better off not feeding this pretty pink beast.

These kits won’t make girls who know that gendered expectations are a raw deal love science.

Amazingly, some of us weren’t pretty pink princesses when we were girls.

If we didn’t already know science was fun, packing it into a pink box and reassuring us of how feminine it could be would turn us off.

If we did already know science was fun, packing it into a pink box and reassuring us of how feminine it could be would insult us. Why would you think you’d need to give science this particular spin to make us want to do it? Why wouldn’t you give us the really good science kits — the ones they boys were getting as gifts?

Here, the folks marketing science kits for girls are making the assumption that all girls are the same. Assuming that young females are a monolithic group — especially one whose interests you perceive to be so narrow — means you are bound to alienate the girls who don’t fit your stereotype. And if it’s simply a matter of not getting their money because they aren’t buying your product, that’s one thing. However, if in the process of persuading a girl that your science kit is not for her you are also persuading her that science is not for her, that’s a harm it would be good to address.

Even girls who perform acceptable femininity without breaking a sweat may prefer a non-gendered science kit.

I have a confession to make: My youngest child, currently ten years old, is a pretty pink princess. She will wear make-up whenever she can get away with it, and embraces skirts and heels and pantyhose.

However, she would be insulted to get a “science for girls” kit rather than one with more intellectual heft. For at least a couple years, one of her favorite “toys” has been a big set of Snap Circuits, which come in a box that is blissfully ungendered. And, she does plenty of chemistry with us at home, regardless of the fact that to date exactly none of it has been aimed at creating cosmetics.

A pretty pink princess has facets.

Tying a girl’s interest in science to acceptable femininity may be a bad strategy if she outgrows acceptable femininity.

I reckon there are some girls whose pretty-pink-princess adherence to the norms of acceptable femininity is so strong that a “science for girls” kit might seem like the only way to get them to even give science a chance. And, in the process of getting groomed, perfumed, and made-up with the things they make with such a kit, they may build their understanding of some scientific principles.

However, if you’ve gotten such a girl to see science as of instrumental value (in achieving a particular sort of femininity), what happens to her interest in science if she decides that achieving that sort of femininity isn’t worth the time or effort? Can we count on that interest in science being robust?

My hunch is that tying science to a broader range of features of our world and of our everyday lives — features which are not necessarily of interest to just one gender — would be a better strategy for cultivating a robust interest in science.

Then again, I’m not trying to market thirteen different girls’ science kits this holiday shopping season, so what do I know?