That's one hell of a science fair project! Imagine the presentation title:

Girls are more into toys than boys are.

This is a genuinely really cool science fair experiment. Too many science fairs encourage students to have grand, showy results that ultimately are just reproductions of existing experiments.

IMO science fairs should produce new data and new ideas, even if the methodology and rigor is lacking. It's the process that counts, not the results.

Meanwhile, first place was a three way tie between 3 boys that all made a vinegar and baking soda volcano.

Teacher: the young girls are getting uppity ideas Principle: Remove all the colored chalk from the classrooms!

Women aren't genetically more empathetic than men; the way power has been traditionally distributed since civilisation began, it has always been the burden of women to understand men. —Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A hopeful history

Reminded me of this excerpt from a somewhat optimisitic but delightful read about how the transition from hunter-gatherer nomadic/"the commons" to agricultural/private property created numerous cascading effects — one of which was how women went from active equal members (yes, even hunting) to being secondary members and essentially property. Women, even to this day, have the onus to understand men/others while men have historically had the expectation to not understand women or others.

edit: repetitive grammar

Did a volcano win?

As a kid I was incredibly artsy and wanted to experiment with jewelry making and beading and all sorts of other fun types of arts I hadn't yet tried out. I remember being just kinda upset that the packaging and branding for the jewelry making kits and beading and sewing and knitting stuff made it very clear this was a GIRL thing and as not a girl who wanted to try it, I felt a little gross and innappropriate doing this GIRL stuff even though I thought it was kinda cool. I do wonder if I would've gone more into jewelry making or sewing if it hadn't been presented to me in such a heavily gendered fashion

I also remember little pre-school me being very excited because my best friend was going to bring a "boy barbie" that I could play with then being confused by the ken doll she brought because i thought it would be a Barbie for boys, not just a Barbie that is a boy. Later she got in an argument with another girl because the girl was playing with the Barbie and she wanted to play with the Barbie but the only one available was the Ken doll but she can't play with the Ken doll because that's a boy and she's not a boy! And I was just very confused because why does she have to play with the girl barbie? What's wrong with playing with the boy barbie? So i went back to playing with the kitchen set at that point and kept pretending to cook stuff and put away groceries.

Point is, kids don't give a crap about gender norms until they're told to care about them. Both my kids love toy cars and pretending to cook with their toy kitchen, and often I see them tucking in cars to sleep and doll fight clubs because we don't bother to tell them which toys are for little girls or boys and just let them play with whatever they feel like playing with

And as a child trying to hide femininity, I picked that one up fast.

I don't ever remember my school having a science fair. (From the UK).

Not once. I've seen enough on TV shows to get the idea but......... yeah. We have a very different approach to education. No science fairs, and I am pretty sure no job fairs either? We occasionally had people come in to talk to us (Fire Brigade, two Soldiers, two nurses) but I think that was more about the teachers just wanting a morning off from teaching than thinking we should do a specific job. And no "bring your parent to school" day or "what does your parent do" day.

The UK is very different to the US I am guessing?