Gender bias at 5 years old

[Diane Monaco]

At 08:09 AM 4/11/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Reporting in the current issue of the journal Sex
>Roles, University of Washington researcher Betty
>Repacholi said these gender-based preferences are
>considerably more fixed among boys than they are in
>girls. Even when some of the children in the study
>were exposed to an intervention, boys were far more
>resistant to change their gender-based choices.
>
>"Girls become more flexible as they get older, but
>boys mostly pick masculine instruments. They just
>cannot pick a feminine instrument.....

  .....Both studies used eight instruments that adults in the
>United States, England and Australia had previously
>classified by gender -- flute, violin, clarinet and
>cello as feminine and drums, saxophone, trumpet and
>trombone as masculine.

Can we then guess that Itzhack Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jean-Luc Ponty, Yehudi 
Menuin, Sir James Galway, and Jean-Pierre Rampal were quite secure in their 
gender?  My children all play the violin and the boys have no problem 
flaunting it.  In fact the school orchestra is filled with violinists who 
are boys, albeit, I've heard through the grapevine...oh, as the children 
say...the school band director is mean.  But still I can't help but think 
we are failing with the boys.  As Gloria Steinem has said on numerous 
occasions -- we've spent the past 30 years proving girls can do what boys 
can do, the next revolution is to prove that boys can do what girls can do 
-- or something like that.

Diane