PARENTS are accused today of starting a massive brain drain - by giving little girls dolls to play with.
For the girls grow up conditioned in "stereotyped female roles" and their talent for top jobs is wasted, says the education magazine Where.
Boys are given construction toys to encourage "masculine" scientific and technical interests. But girls are expected to adopt traditional home-making skills.
"Many of them are conditioned to think that their future lives will not require intellectual development," says Where's report by psychologist Charlotte Gray. Britain's "most tragic brain drain" may be this loss of intelligent girls' talent, she points out.
At school, the process carries on through teachers' attitudes and the choice of subjects offered to girls. Parents and teachers "actually teach more to boys than girls," the article complains.
Girls take fewer A-level exams than boys, and far more boys go on to university. Where quotes studies in America which show that girls conceal their abilities for fear of being thought unattractive to boys.
