Yeah this is the part I don't see the clear logic in. I mean how much of a persons preferences are biological vs taught/environmental behaviour. I would accept the results straight up if it's all because of biological reasons but to me it's not that clear. Imagine if we brought up women to be amazon warriors, of course they would have different preferences compared to women today no? You often pick a career after what you are good at already.
People who believe this is solely cultural pressure should try having children.
While, sure, you can raise children to be much more willing to challenge gender norms, and you can raise them to not hide or be ashamed of where their personal preferences violate cultural gender norms, every parent I've known that have strongly believed it was all cultural have ended up changing their mind after they've tried their hardest to give their kids gender neutral toys and clothes, or a mix of "boys" and "girls" stuff, and found their kids even at toddler stage gravitate to "typical" boys/girls stuff.
I think it's great they give their kids the choice and don't judge if they pick stuff that doesn't "conform", and I personally find it very annoying how e.g. clothes stores often draw hard lines between boys and girls stuff even when there's not even a half-plausible reason (no, a minecraft t-shirt for a prepubescent child is not gender specific in any way), but at the same time I also personally saw my son express a very strong preference for or against certain things related to gender identity from he was very little, and if we'd tried to push him to ignore that preference we'd be just as bad as parents who push for conformity.
I have no doubt that this is exactly what happens, but I don't think it shows what you intend it to show. Kids pick up the culture around them, and if they are exposed to television or other children, they are going to pick up what they see.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but I don't think it proves anything innate in gender either.
Another part of the problem is our language, and the way we think about it. We have a tendency to say "girls prefer this, and boys prefer that" as a short hand for "on average, girls prefer this and boys prefer that". Those two statements are not the same thing at all. Averages don't say anything about how any individual person thinks. This shortcut of language seems to be a big blind spot in people.
They've shown some strong gender preferences even for babies, though. I find it hard to believe the "well maybe those babies have already had the patriarchy shoved down their throats" crowd.
You'll see these kind of preferences long before kids have been exposed to much more than their parents, and even if their parents try to hard to avoid it.
Right, and you can even see how some standards are more arbitrary than others. For example, our son loved pink until around when he was 3 or 4, he started hearing from the daycare he went to that pink was for girls.
