Really, Oxfam? Pink phones? Was there no other way to achieve such a laudable goal?
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But, if they weren’t pink, then someone might think the people were given phones for, ya know, just being human or something. And that would be weird.
I know, right??
The thing is, I get that some interventions are more successful when aimed at women. That’s been true of micro-lending schemes, too. But there’s surely something… distasteful about achieving it by wholeheartedly adopting unhelpful stereotypes.
from http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/blog/2012/03/pink-telephones-in-cambodia
And the pink colour? This came about after Nanda mentioned a project where she’d bought bicycles for the women to enable them to travel more easily. She had made them pink, so that the men in the village would not use them. This sounded like a fantastic idea and we decided to make the phones pink as well.
That sucks that they basically have to reinforce an anti-feminine sense of masculinity just so men won’t steal the phones.
Maybe the European Commission had the same idea http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/how-not-to-encourage-girls-to-do-science/ – make science girly, pretend it’s all about make-up, and women will have the labs to themselves!
This goes against some (only *some*) of the tenor in discussions about pink, but here it is. I genuinely yearn for the day when pink is no longer used as a gender indicator, just so I can wear the colour without feeling conflicted. Not, incidentally, the horrible, trashy shades of pink typically used as gender markers, but the classier, more serious and sophisticated shades. I like those, not, needless to say, because of any gender connotation, rabid feminist as I am, but because of their warm seriousness. And they really flatter my complexion.