Boys, Girls, and Toys - Oh My!

          Open a toy catalog or walk into a Toys R Us and you will find that toys are segregated by gender to an extreme degree.  There are boys' toy displays and separate aisles for girls.  The result is pressure placed on children to conform to preconceived, stereotypic roles by sex.  Look at the image below as an example.  

 

          Playing with toys is a powerful method for children to explore, grow, and experience different ways of being.  As a result, children's interests should not be limited by their gender.  If girls are presented predominately with dolls and housekeeping toys while boys play with action heroes, weapons, and adventure toys, it reinforces traditional stereotypes.  In particular, girls are influenced to believe that their role is one of nurturing and caretaking while men are freer to experience competition and dominance.  In this way notions of how people see their roles in society are acquired in childhood because differentiated play leads girls and boys to develop different skills.  As a result, girls are prepared for domestic chores and cooperation, but are not encouraged through their play to learn the rules of how to compete and win – a definite drawback in the corporate world where they will need to understand when and how to be assertive.  Conversely, while boys are readied to explore technical fields (e.g., science and engineering) through science kits and chemistry sets, they are discouraged from playing with toys that reflect domestic life.  Later, this hinders men (and frustrates women) from participating in household responsibilities – especially in dual-income households where sharing chores is a necessity.  In contrast, these skills promote men to follow career paths in science, engineering, math, and science, where women hold a particularly low level of representation. Overall, it can restrict women’s educational pursuits and career aspirations into more nurturing paths, such as nursing and teaching, not into risk-taking positions, such as hedge fund manager, or those that require being forceful and confident, such as Chief Executive Officer.
          I spoke to my parents to get a perspective about how toy marketing has changed.  In the 1950s and 60s, [when they were kids] advertising showed girls and boys playing with a wide range of toys.  They remember Fisher-Price toys, like the airport, Ferris wheel, and play phone, packaged in only one version.  That is far different from today’s toys, like LEGOS Friends, which are packaged in dollhouse-style play sets.  In the past, toys were positioned in the store by type: a doll aisle, a bicycle aisle, or arts & crafts; but not today.  Now, toy stores have “girls” displays and “boys” displays – and the same product may even be packaged in pink or blue.  This practice is called, product segmentation, and it is purely based in profit-seeking.  Companies can sell more versions of the same item when they narrow the demographics.  The LEGO Company tripled its sales in 2012, the year they introduced LEGOS Friends for girls – with a beauty salon and doll house in the kit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDmb_f3E2c). This is the crux of Riley’s complaint (in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OrMT8Wv9mI) that “The companies who make these [toys] try to trick girls into buying pink instead of stuff boys want to buy.”

          Gender segregation in toy marketing incites an unnecessary split in children’s play and reinforces antiquated stereotypes.  We should not limit children’s options before they are even old enough to know they even had any.