A princess costume and a toy vacuum cleaner for girls, a castle and a remote-control car for boys… We might be tempted to think that the choice of such stereotyped toys is a thing of the past. That is not the case. An increasingly striking sexualisation can be seen in education and in all areas of social life. These differentiated attitudes are not systematically seen as forms of inequality. They are justified by a belief in essential « natural » distinctions between men and women. An ensemble of psychologising discourses, norms and symbols stems from this, which has multidimensional consequences on the roles individuals are assigned.

Although the notion of gender was promoted by sociologists to shed light on relations of domination, invoking it at every opportunity – from the feminisation of language to political parity – establishes the idea that men and women are still, above all, and in every way prototypes of their sex group rather than unique individuals