Simona Staub
The Gender Marketing of toys affects which adult roles children are familiar with and which they perceive as normal. It also determines with which toys they play longer and what skills they learn while playing. Often this further effects the career choices.
Figure 1: One of many examples for Gender marketing (source: www.pinkstinks.de)
The effect of Gender Marketing on the choice of toys
Gender Marketing in general is a strategy that targets a company’s audience according to their gender. This marketing strategy only considers the binary gender, meaning only two genders are addressed: male and female. An example for the Gender Marketing is that books intended for girls are often about princesses while books for boys are about adventures. Thanks to Gender Marketing companies can often increase their profits. When companies are criticized for their Gender Marketing, they argue that they increase the gross domestic product through higher sales and therefore do something good for society. What they do not mention are the negative effects of the gendered toys. This type of marketing encourages parents to buy toys which are “gender appropriate” for their child. This can later influence the child’s purchase decisions as well, which can restrict children in the process of discovering what they are capable of and hinder the development of their personality and their talents (cf. Schnerring & Verlan, 2022).
In the Baby-X-study from 1980 they wanted to find out whether the expected gender of an infant influences the toy choice of people who should interact with them. In this study the subjects interacted with one of two boys or a girl, all of which were between 3 and 11 months old. The subjects who interacted with the infants were 60 college undergraduates of the Hunter College from the City University of New York. Before they met the infants, they were told they are going to play with a baby, a boy or a girl. Telling the subjects, they will be playing with a baby was explicitly chosen to be gender neutral, while the other two are certainly not. The subjects were proposed tree toys to choose from: a football, a doll and a teething ring. Again, the football and the doll were examples of gendered toys while the teething ring was gender neutral. The study showed that if the expected gender is given, the resulting toy choice is highly sex stereotyped. Furthermore, the subject’s sex, age or race is not statistically significant. There are a lot of studies like this one. Another example would be the original Baby-X-study where the subjects always interacted with a girl, but were lied to about her gender (cf. Sidorowicz & Lunney, 1980). There are further studies conducted by the BBC in 2017 as well as by WDR-Quarks-Sendung in 2018. They all came to the conclusion that the gender the baby was introduced with matters for the toy choices (Schnerring & Verlan, 2018).
The effect of gendered toys on early childhood education
Children learn a lot for their intellectual and social development by playing. This is especially relevant in preschool, where a lot of the learning is related to playing. Toys which including learning experiences about self-regulation, problem-solving, creative expression and social interactions are particularly good for the development of the children who play with them (cf. Trawick-Smith et al., 2015). As it was shown that children play longer with “gender appropriate” toys (Sidorowicz & Lunney, 1980) and it is known that the play preferences become skills which intern often lead to professions, society already builds a gender gap in the early childhood education (Schnerring & Verlan, 2022). The play preferences become skills because the longer children play with toys, the better they get at these tasks (Sidorowicz & Lunney, 1980). A study by the University of Texas showed that even the arbitrary division of a preschool class into two groups has an impact on the interests and the behaviour of the members of the different groups (Schnerring & Verlan, 2022). So, you can imagine that the categorization into two sexes by society has a much greater influence on children, because they are not only divided into two different groups at school, but rather they are continuously divided into two gender groups (male and female).
Toys show children which jobs are considered typical for women/men. As an example, girls often get toys which have something to do with taking care of something or someone like for instance a doll. On the other hand, boys often get toys regarding craftsmanship such as a workbench or tools (cf. Schnerring & Verlan, 2022). This is a part of how children learn about stereotypical adult roles (Frasher et al., 1980) and how their understanding of normality develops. They learn which characteristics are thought of as typical for female, like being nice, or male, like being brave. As they get an understanding of what is normal for the society they live in, things which are untypical become an exception. So, for instance a boy who plays with a doll is quickly considered atypical and in the worst case is excluded by his social environment. Because of this, children often stop playing with “non gender appropriate” toys. This intern further confirms the gender roles (cf. Schnerring & Verlan, 2022). The gender-specific toys are also a means of ensuring that each child conforms to their biological gender identity which was assigned to them at birth (Ramdaeni et al., 2020). This way society denies boys and girls valuable social and cognitive experiences that would be good for their later development (Frasher et al., 1980).
This gender issue is often overlooked in early childhood education. One reason for this could be that in biological determinism the differences between the sexes are considered natural, which is why they aren’t seen as a problem. Another reason could be that people often don’t realize that they further encourage children to play with gender stereotypical toys. Parents who do not encourage “gender appropriate” toys are afraid that their children will be excluded by other children. These societal discourses are also why the binary gender construction prevails (cf. Ramdaeni et al., 2020).
What could be done?
First, people need to understand that we unconsciously reinforce the gender-based stereotypes of children. This happens, among other things, by giving them toys typical for their gender. When the aforementioned awareness is present, we can start to work on recognizing when we are reinforcing stereotypical behaviour. Further, we can also work on consciously encouraging gender-atypical behaviour. To do this, we could start by showing them other adult roles than the ones they are used to. This way they can choose the roles that best fit their personality (cf. Frasher et al., 1980) . So, everyone should know that equality and personal freedom start in the early childhood (Schnerring & Verlan, 2022) and by encouraging children to play with “gender appropriate” toys we limit their dreams for the future to stereotypes (Frasher et al., 1980).
In institutions for children, like in preschool or day care centres, the staff should be trained to recognise if they treat children according to stereotypes or reinforce them in their stereotypical ideas. They should also try to encourage parents to give their children non-gender specific toys. This can be achieved, upon further methods, by telling the parents that the preschool/day care staff will be carefully checking that other children won’t think that playing with “gender non-appropriate” toys is abnormal and that their child won’t be excluded (cf. Abril et al., 2008). At the same time teachers should also try to better understand parents with traditional approaches to gender roles, such that they can carefully try to make these parents aware that there have been legal and societal changes in a more personal way. They can also show them the negative impact that stereotypes can have on their children (cf. Frasher et al., 1980).
In my eyes it would be great if toys weren’t assigned to one gender, or rather, if there wasn’t a specific version of the same toy one for girls and another for boys. There is no reason to do this because toys themselves never have a gender. In this context, I would also appreciate it if Gender Marketing for children was more regulated as it has many harmful side-effects which can restrict children in their development. Limiting Gender Marketing would also make it a little easier for society to get away from the view that people can be thrown into two different roles solely based on their gender. In this way, children would be less likely to be forced into a stereotypical role that may not suit them at all.
References
Abril, P., Cremers, M., Duncan, N., Golubevaite, L., Krabel, J., Lilaite, A., Bredesen Nordfjell, O., Raudonyte, J., & Romero, A. (2008). Gender Loops; Praxisbuch für eine geschlechtergerechte und -bewusste Pädagogik in Kindertageseinrichtungen. Jens Krabel, Michael Cremers.
Frasher, R. S., Nurss, J. R., & Brogan, D. R. (1980). Children’s Toy Preferences Revisited: Implications for Early Childhood Education. In 26 Child Care Quarterly (Vol. 9, Issue 1).
Ramdaeni, S., Adriany, V., & Yulindrasari, H. (2020). Gender and Toys in Early Childhood Education.
Schnerring, A., & Verlan, S. (2018, April 12). Baby X Experimente. https://rosa-hellblau-falle.de/2018/04/baby-x-experimente/ . date of access: 24.03.2022
Schnerring, A., & Verlan, S. (2022). Puppenmuttis und wilde Piraten. https://www.klischee-frei.de/de/klischeefrei_100051.php . date of access: 24.03.2022
Sidorowicz, L. S., & Lunney, G. S. (1980). Baby X Revisited. In Sex Roles (Vol. 6, Issue 1).
Trawick-Smith, J., Wolff, J., Koschel, M., & Vallarelli, J. (2015). Effects of Toys on the Play Quality of Preschool Children: Influence of Gender, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status. Early Childhood Education Journal, 43(4), 249–256. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-014-0644-7