The date: Sometime near the end of the 80s
The venue: A conference room at a posh hotel. Present are representatives of a toy company and the press, the latter represented mostly by a more or less equal number of male and female junior reporters in their early 20s. I am one of them.
The event: The launch of a new toy, following on the success of some bestsellers such as Rubik’s Cube. (This is the era where you’re lucky to have anything more sophisticated than monochrome Hangman and Tic Tac Toe on your computer – and, at some newspapers, you’re lucky to even have a computer.) Each reporter is handed a toy, which consists of six movable rings on a small platform and an elongated metal loop threaded through them. The aim is to untangle the loop from the rings, and then to restore it to its position – all in as short a time as possible. Before we’re given the go-ahead start, we furtively assess the opposition, and silently, but unanimously decide the bookish-looking lad from the opposition daily is the hot favourite.
The drama unfolds: As metal clicks against metal, a rank outsider, in the form of a glamorous young brunette with huge, shocking pink earrings, surges ahead. A broken nail distracts her just long enough for me to almost catch up, but she triumphantly raises the freed loop just before I untangle mine from the last ring. The blonde next to me is third, close on my heels. By the time the first guy limps in, in fifth place, the pre-competition favourite is still staring sadly at ring #3, which won’t budge, and almost all the women have solved the puzzle.
“We’ve noticed that women tend to do better than men at this,” the company representative tells us.
We look up, waiting for an explanation. After all, it is conventional knowledge that men are better at playing chess because of their spatial and logical skills, and that superior abstract reasoning ensures that almost all Rubik Cube whizzkids are male.
“We believe that is because women are used to knitting,” the representative says.
In the awkward silence that ensues, it is clear that the project has just sunk beneath the waves. The guys look a bit miffed that they’d wasted time on a girly toy, the gals look seriously miffed at having their triumph compared to some old-fashioned thing their grannies do.
“Isn’t it possible that it is the other way round?” I break the silence. “That women are more likely than men to take up knitting because they have this ability?”
“Hmm,” he concedes, “Could be. Never thought of it that way.”
The toy never made it onto the market, and I never did discover what the skill involved is called (or, for that matter, whether it has ever been studied).
I felt sorry for the guy. He seemed liked a nice fellow to whom it had not occurred that he was prejudiced, and who was obviously surprised to be judged to be so.
That is one of the problems with eradicating prejudice (not only sexism, of course): What appears to be fair judgement to some, may be perceived as frankly offensive to those on the receiving end. Hidden prejudices may influence both the nature of and allocation of funds to scientific research – as may the fear of being seen as prejudiced. (I plan another thread on the latter subject, but I have to allocate some time to earning a living...
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(Although I devoted most of this post to hidden sexism, feel free to discuss other forms of hidden prejudice, such as racism, xenophobia and homophobia, etc. as well.)
