Pink

Pink is a colour stereotypically associated with girls, and often used to feminise geek products/events/campaigns/etc or to (supposedly) make them attractive to women.

Origin of "pink is for girls" stereotype

Pink is associated with girls (especially young girls) in western culture. This is a relatively new thing, and has increased rapidly in the later 20th and early 21st centuries; earlier, pink was considered a colour for boys.

Some people claim that women's attraction to the colour pink can be explained by Evolutionary psychology (eg. "prehistoric women were gatherers and are attracted to pink/red tones to help them spot ripe berries in the forest".) This is bullshit; if it were true, the association of pink=girl would not be so new.

"Pinkification"

Pinkification is when a company or organisation makes their promotional material pink to attract women.

Examples:

• Della computers
• Double Union feminist hackerspace
• way too many women in tech groups
• Slashdot "pink pony" april fools joke (satirical, but typical of the pattern)

Criticism

• Assuming all women like pink is Gender essentialism
• Pink is mostly associated with young girls, and so serves as a form of Infantilisation
• Pink products are often dumbed down, or advertised in dumbed-down ways

Reading:

• How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

Support

• Using the colour pink increases women's visibility
• Women's preferences and interests are often stigmatised; sometimes people intentionally use pink to reclaim it.
• Many individual women like the colour pink. This is an individual choice, and should not be conflated with mass pinkification. (However, see Choice for thoughts on the context within which we make individual choices.)

See also

• Sexist advertising
• Promotion to women