How children react to gender stereotyping - an experiment in Gujarat

Children were asked how boys and girls cry, sit, laugh, stand, walk and dance

Boys don’t cry. Sit like a lady. Barbie for girls and Lego for boys. These are seemingly innocuous adages that generations of people have grown up with. But is it really that innocent or well-meaning?

It is not just that girls are supposed to wear pink; they should also play with toy vacuum cleaners and learn to relate to fluffy, cuddly animals. Boys, on the other hand, are supposed to wear blue and have rugged adventures.

Most people never learn to question these inflexible binaries and end up replicating them in every aspect of their lives. When a little girl is being