What The “Boys Alone, Girls Alone” Social Experiment Shows Us About Femininity
Channel 4 Cutting Edge, a TV series in the U.K., conducted an experiment: leave one house of 10 boys and one house of 10 girls alone for the week. Compare results. Though the original experiment was conducted back in 2017, it’s been going viral in recent weeks.
The boys drew on the walls and broke furniture. The girls made a chore chart. Most recent commentary on the experiment suggests that the difference between the two houses comes from social conditioning, not innate differences between the sexes. Impact’s coverage asked, “Why do we socialize girls to be more responsible than boys? Why are we still hesitant to elect women to positions of power?” Does this mean that the differences between the two houses can be totally explained away by social pressure?