Baking for girls, sports for boys: Richmond Hill renames summer camps after outrage

Richmond Hill has renamed two gendered children’s summer camps — “girlz rock” with baking and mani-pedis and “boyz rule” with sports and skateboarding — after an outburst of criticism online from parents.

The town changed them Thursday and the camps for children aged 9 to 14 are now called “extreme sports” and “kidz rock.” The brochures went out this week, sparking outrage.

Mother Susie Berg, who has a transgender son, said she was surprised when she saw camp names tied to gender stereotypes.

“To say if you’re a girl you bake and cook, if you’re a boy you don’t bake and cook? Everybody needs to eat, everybody needs to learn to bake and cook,” she told Global News.

“Their gender has no bearing on their interests.”

Richmond Hill spokeswoman Meeta Gandhi said they received more than 120 posts on social media within an hour of the brochure’s publishing — what she called the first such criticism of the long-running camps.

“It was never intended to have any other meaning or any other broader intent,” she said of the naming.

She said the content of the popular programs will remain the same, and that they’ve always been open to both genders.

“We are now being far more gender neutral in our language.”

Nidhi Bansal, senior gender equality advisor with advocacy group Plan Canada, said stereotyping at young ages can shape what girls do as adults.

“Just this morning my daughter was asking to register for her summer camp, and imagine she asked me to register for chess and soccer,” she said.

“And just think if I had to tell her ‘honey, sorry but that’s not available to you’ — what would that do to her and the potential she has as a future soccer player?”