Oh please. Women knit, they crochet. These are hobbies that are useful to life to be sure, but it’s not all just making something useful. Some men knit and crochet too, but those are considered girls hobbies. Personally, I sew. My daughter has a full set of Disney costumes from her time period. But they are considered GIRLS occupations. So that’s useful stuff. How about cross-stitch, or needle point. Hobbies, pure and simple. You don’t make a quilt just because you need a blanket. You make it because it’s fun, entertaining, um, hobby work. Socialization and all that. How sexist do you want this thread to get?
When I was growing up, the girls I knew hobbies included reading, art of many kinds, tennis, netball, horse-riding (I lived in the country), and music of different sorts (band, choir, etc). None of those seem any different to what the boys did, which was largely similar, but included computers, ball sports, and motorbikes.
I also grew up with girls who were good at maths, science, and other academic subjects that I’ve been since told are not what girls are good at, so maybe my upbringing was an outlier.
If a girl told me she was into “netball”, I would have wondered what I was in store for at the end of the evening. Thanks for making me look it up. (USA)
I do remember and know that I and many other girls were not really allowed to make a hobby into something all-consuming. It was ok if a boy spent all of his time making model airplanes, for example, but I was constantly nudged and pushed out of my comfort zone, and so were many other girls. We weren’t really allowed to be antisocial, even if we wanted to. My mom constantly dragged me away from the things I really liked to do to go out and be part of the community.
I clearly remember having a male friend whom I was better at chess than. But as the years went by and he was allowed to spend all of his time playing chess, and I was forced to have a multitude of hobbies, he got much, much better.
I don’t entirely resent this; I may not be extraordinary at any one thing, but the social skills I garnered are way more useful, but it is another data point. No way would I ever have been allowed to focus on just one thing to the detriment of everything else.
This is part of it, I’m sure. Boys were allowed (tolerated, encouraged?) to pursue some interest which they might have anything between mild interest to obsession. If a girl was interested in “guy” things, everything from peer social pressure to parental pressure to physical shortcomings (in sports) conspired against such interests. Certainly parents worried about everything from their girl appearing to “manly”, to it being “unhealthy” for a lone girl to spend a lot of time with mainly teenage boys in an unsupervised environment. As adults, traditionally the male was the breadwinner and could dictate spending money on his hobby, disappearing into his man-cave to work on his car/model railroad/woodwork (all bought with “his” money) while the woman was left to manage the house and kids.
Then again, obsession with unusual topics appears to be more a male characteristic. Is this the same gender bias mentioned by earlier posts? The pinnacle of this characteristic is Asperger’s, a heavily male-dominated diagnosis. However, an article I read once about this said that Asperger’s was seriously underdiagnosed in girls precisely because women did not experience the characteristic obsession with obscure topics; the accompanying symptoms, social awkwardness and lack of empathy or desire for socialization were often simply ascribed to shyness and teen awkwardness.
There’s also the theory/process of X-inactivation ( X-inactivation - Wikipedia ). Since women express certain characteristics as a mix of one or other X-chromosome (a “mosaic”), while males only have one, males tend to the extremes while women are more clustered around the mean in terms of certain inherited characteristics. If one considers strong interests in hobbies as a form of brain malfunction, that explains the male dominance in that regard.
well, if you want studies, I did a search and this is what popped up but I can’t access the full text and I’m not sure what to make of the comments about gender differences in the abstract:
Aust Occup Ther J. 2012 Jun;59(3):197-208. doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1630.2012.01013.x.
Prospective study of the participation patterns of Grade 6 and Year 8 students in Victoria, Australia in activities outside of school.
McMullan S1, Chin R, Froude E, Imms C.
Author information
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Positive participation outcomes are deemed the ultimate goal of health care and specifically of occupational therapy. Knowledge of the typical participation patterns of children in Australia will provide essential information to support our understanding of participation and the goal of maximising children’s engagement.
AIMS:
This study investigated the participation of Grade 6 and Year 8 Victorian students in activities outside school and explored differences between genders and between students in different year levels. Secondarily, we began to establish Australian normative data on the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment and Preferences for Activities of Children.
METHODS:
This cross sectional survey methods study recruited students from a random selection of public schools. Participation was measured using the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment and Preferences for Activities of Children questionnaires.
RESULTS:
Participants included 84 (37 female, 47 male) students in Grade 6 (n = 43) and Year 8 (n = 41). Differences between year levels were only evident for participation in Recreational and Active Physical activities. Grade 6 students did more activities, more intensely than Year 8 students, but with no difference in enjoyment. The mean number of Recreational activities done by Grade 6 students was 8.5 (95%CI: 7.9-9.1) compared to Year 8 students 6.9 (95%CI: 6.1-7.7; P = 0.001). Gender differences were evident in the participation patterns within Social, Skill-Based and Self-Improvement activities.
CONCLUSION:
The findings suggested that gender was a more important influence on participation patterns than a 2-year age gap, with participation patterns being relatively stable between Grade 6 and Year 8.
© 2012 The Authors Australian Occupational Therapy Journal © 2012 Occupational Therapy Australia.