The Effects Of Gender Typing On The Toy Industry

Toys play an important role in childhood development as children learn roles and skills from playing. As a result, the toys children are subjected to have an affect on which roles, interests, and skills are learned and practiced. Through Lego’s product Duplo, I will demonstrate the influence particular gendered toys have on children and their performance of traditional gender roles. Gender, which is a learned performance, is something society has been taught from a very early age and toy advertising has played a significant role in reinforcing the performance. One tradition that is reinforced and naturalized by society is the ideology of a male dominated society, representing strong characteristics of heterosexuality and masculinity; also known as hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, using Ideological Criticism, I will analyze how through the branding and design of Lego’s Duplo toys, children have been constructed to do gender differently, ultimately perpetuating and reinforcing hegemonic masculinity.

The authors use toys as an example for gender specifying children as male or females. They did a study to see what kind of toys that toddlers had at home. They found that girls had more toys for parties, wedding, cooking, and motherhood. And boys had toys that helped them with automotive skills and building skills. They express how parents do this to show children what they want them to do when they get older. Parents buy children toys to set their gender types early so kids know what gender type they have at an early age.

Claire with help from sociologist Elizabeth Sweet, they attempt to go back in time trying to find the cause of all this. Before the 1960s, girl toys mainly focused on homemaking and boy toys were centered on the industrial economy. This research shows that all this changed significantly with the rise of feminist movements in the 1970s. The change did not last long as in the 1990s, and gendered toys came back with a bang! With action heroes and princess in the market.

The sexualization in children’s toys does not stop at the commercials for them that are aired on TV. Around the 1980’s, products for children suddenly saw a stark divide in gender. The gender difference in toys is characterized by often harmful gender roles. Toys for boys are usually based on being macho, tough, and violent, while girl’s toys tend to focus on appearance, being pretty and attractive to boys. These toys are often highly structured, limiting creativity and are centered around adult themes. According to Levin and Kilbourne, when we give children these toys, “We’re letting the sexualized media and popular culture, not ourselves, control the lessons children will learn” (44). When a culture that treats sexuality in such harmful ways controls children’s experiences, it creates an artificial and harmful identity in young girls that focuses on sexiness, and an identity in boys that values violence and devalues kindness and nurturing.

Gender norms today have become a big part of our society as they are present in our every day life from advertisements, clothes, to the way we are supposed to act, and even in toys. In order to appeal to a certain customer, advertisements use many gender norms that apply to customers. One of the most impactful gender norms that I find to be is in the kid’s toys because I believe that it’s teaching these kids about how to act. Kids ranging from very early ages know what types of toys they should play with and what toys they aren’t supposed to play with. For example, little boys would play with cars and action figures while on the other hand girls would play with dolls and a tea party set. Many of the toys for girls have been shaped to show them that are supposed to be more friendly and kind. These toys have made it so that there are certain way’s little girls should act and also what things they should like.

In the blog post Gender Bias in the Toy Aisles, the author discusses the issue of big-box stores’ gender gap in the toys they market to children, and the difficulty she encounters when trying to find toys for her sons that do not enforce gender bias. Her main point emphasizes the gender gap by pointing to the stylistic choices made by toy companies – girls’ toys are laden with pink and incite feelings of innocence, while boys’ toys are highly ruggedized, typically bearing camouflage or other male stereotypes such as flames. Finally, the author expresses her wish for the toy companies to stop enforcing gender biases to better equip children for their future. The author’s statement on the bias of toys is clearly well-supported.

She backs up that statement by providing the static fact that in 1975, “less than 2% of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls.” She dives deeper into how gender stereotypes and ‘gender norms’ are prevalent in present day society by explaining how marketing plays an influence on society, especially the children. According to the BBC documentary The Men Who Made Us Spend, children now are being targeted as mini consumers and that the average British child sees 10,000 adverts a year! Kessel also claims that advertisements on children’s channels are the “most explicitly gendered thing you’ve ever seen’ and that in the advertisements involving girls, the girls are seen “in a whirl of pink and high-pitched voices” whereas the advertisements involving boys, the boys are seen “[in a whirl of] blue with a backdrop of angry guitar music.” By evaluating how marketing influences children to gender stereotype, she was able to strengthen her argument.

Toys play a major role in socializing young kinds into “appropriate” gender roles. The first obvious characteristic that separates toys for boys and toys for girls,

Making toys that are for all genders is something that many stores and toy companies are still trying to adapt to. Many toy manufacturers are promoting gender-biased toys.Merchandisers still do not understand that it’s not just girls who want a female character as a toy. There should be more toy companies that should try to make toys that are not specific to one gender because not every girl wants a barbie for a toy and not every boy wants a car as a toy to play with. More toy manufacturers should not promote gender-biased toys and make toys for every gender because many kids have different interests. In the article “Asleep at the switch? “Force Awakens” heroine missing from toy line” explores the idea that the new movie of “Star

Gender socialization often begins early once parents are shown the sex of their child; from then on, baby showers are planned according to gender “appropriate” colors, which are often pink for girls and blue for boys. Even differences in how children are spoke to can be picked up easily in Western cultures. Girls are called pretty and sweet, whereas boys are handsome and strong. Ultimately, the way children learn to identify with their gender culture is in part due to not only family and friends, media, schools, and religion, but also from the toys that may inexplicitly advertise gender expectations. Gender-typed toys may be bought for children as a way for parents to encourage and reinforce gender-appropriate behaviors. However, recent debates have engulfed toy manufacturers and major retailers, which has brought about changes in toy design and marketing in an effort to make reflect more realistic and gender neutral options.

Stroll through the toy aisle in any store. Adjust your eyes to the colors, patterns, and themes associated with the products available in the “girl” and “boy” departments. These stereotypical

As children being to grow both mentally and physically around the age of three, the sense of who they are in relation to their gender becomes more prominent. By this time in development, children are starting to play with toys that are typically associated with their gender. The question is, do children start playing with gender specific toys because of the market’s influence or do children play with gender specific toys ultimately because those are the toys that match them most personality wise? By observing firsthand the distinction of toys by gender, I was able to reflect on the following: the reason why gender stereotypes are involved in the market, how stereotyping impacted my own development as well as other children, and how I might use what I learned from this observation with my own children in the future. On my journey through the toy aisles of Wal-Mart, I noticed that the items

Throughout history, we have seen that gender classifications, on gender roles have resulted in gender stereotypes. Despite that children were not initially classified by their gender, but by their age. Such as in the late nineteenth-century gender classification only existed for men, and women. Whereas in the early twentieth century, occurring social progression caused a demand for gender associations towards the identity of children. Gender stereotypes on children created a gender coalition with colors such as pink, and blue. The social personification on pink and blue established a pseudo-perception in children’s perspective on genders. In fact, the media also advertised classified gender toys for children to form expected gender stereotypes.

Walk into a toy store, and you are likely to see toys specifically designed and marketed for boys or girls. With pink and blue color coding, and princess and superhero designs, marketers seem to be using more gender messaging to sell their toys than in earlier times they would have gender neutral toys like science kits and kitchen sets showing boys and girls playing together.

Perhaps one of the more interesting things in our binarily gendered society is the separation encouraged in activities between boys and girls. Stereotypes and wrongfully made associations are made between males and females, and these seem to be pervasive in how certain products are marketed towards people. For example, toy cars and guns are typically advertised for boys. This is because boys are usually thought of to be “tough,” meaning they apparently have an innate urge to get dirty and cause violence. On the other hand, girls are encouraged to play with dolls and try on clothing or cosmetics; this is due to societal expectations that girls are quieter than boys and should stay away from potentially dangerous activities, for the sake they may hurt themselves or that projection of masculine traits would be frowned upon.