gender roles in a nutshell

Since quite a while already I have been planning to write a blog post about gender issues and why I think it might be that we are heading towards a "matriarchy" (heading, mind you, and really rather slowly) - all totally speculative and hypothetical of course. This would fit rather nicely with the Zeitgeist: It seems it is (regrettably) becoming fashionable again to attribute socioeconomic gender differences to (hypothetical) biological differences - and to say so publicly (see Dr Isis' nice take on a recent high-profile case). Accordingly there's lots of discussion about gender issues in the blogosphere.

Last week however reality caught up with my comfortable theoretical stance. Within three days my two oldest children managed to demonstrate to me in a nutshell what the discussion is about.

First my older son (2 1/2 years) decided one morning that he wanted to wear a skirt that day. As such this wouldn't be something to write home about - if he wants to wear a skirt, so be it. However the thing occurred on a week day, so the kids had to go to nursery. Our kids' nursery is really nice (and definitely much nicer than the one they had been to before) but the women (yes, it's only women...) in my son's group are not exactly the brightest and most open-minded people on the planet. Also, my son is easily embarassed and is having sort of a hard time at the moment anyways... So, in the end we actually managed to talk him out of it without (hopefully) making it too obvious... But I'm not proud of it.

Then, a couple of days later, I had this slightly surreal conversation with my daughter (4 1/2):

she - You know, I don't like it that there are girls...
me (baffled, because she tried to literally translate the English expression into German and I wasn't sure what she meant) - Huh? What do you mean?
she - Because boys are best!
me - What? But that's total nonsense!
she - And I only like penises.

I'm not sure how serious this is/she was. It is absolutely possible that she was channeling a book or a movie (which she must have read/seen at nursery...) or some other kid at the nursery. Still, it has me slightly worried.

There we have it, the problems of gender roles neatly presented by my two pre-school-age children. Boys have to follow stereotypes. Girls think they are worth less. Apart from throwing my hands up in dismay, I don't know what to do...