Gender in Toy Sections
Imagine if you will, walking into the toy section and noticing several different aisles. In one, you find toys are all in different shades of brown and have farm-worker-themed play sets and a “Housekeeper” or in another aisle you see toys packaged in dark blacks and browns, which include the “Inner City” building set or a “Little Rapper” dress-up kit. If toys were marketed solely according to racial or ethnic stereotypes, people would be fuming, and rightfully so. Yet every day, customers come across toy departments that are extremely segregated, not by race, but by gender. There are blue aisles filled with toys related to hostility, action and construction, while on the other hand pink aisles are where toys revolve …show more content…
What I found surprising is that over the last generation, the gender segregation and stereotyping of toys has grown to unparalleled levels. Now while we’ve made great improvements toward gender equity over the past 50 years, the domain of toys has not come nearly as far. The gendered marketing of toys has become so bad that it looks like we’re still in the 1950’s. In fact, finding a toy that is not marketed either overtly or subtly by gender has become incredibly difficult to find. There are several reasons why gender-based marketing has become so widespread. Toy makers know that by separating the market into smaller demographic groups, they can sell more versions of the same toy to more people. Nostalgia also plays a part, parents and grandparents often give toys that they remember from their own childhood. This kind of marketing taps deeply into beliefs about gender that still operate in our culture. Numerous parents argue that their sons and daughters like differing things. This is especially true when regarding boys, parents will tend to stick with more gender-typed toys for boys, either because of their own desire for gender conformity or that they understand that the social costs for boys who go astray and go into the “pink” zone, are particularly high in a homophobic …show more content…
In most families’ now a day, domestic household tasks are shared more equally than ever before. Also, over 70% of mothers are in the work force. So in a period of increasingly diverse family structures, these ideas push us back toward a more unequal past. Where boy’s toys are for the little adventurer ready to meet danger and prove his worth, and girl’s toys are for taking care of what needs to be done around the house from domestic duties to child
Imagine if you will, walking into the toy section and noticing several different aisles. In one, you find toys are all in different shades of brown and have farm-worker-themed play sets and a “Housekeeper” or in another aisle you see toys packaged in dark blacks and browns, which include the “Inner City” building set or a “Little Rapper” dress-up kit. If toys were marketed solely according to racial or ethnic stereotypes, people would be fuming, and rightfully so. Yet every day, customers come across toy departments that are extremely segregated, not by race, but by gender. There are blue aisles filled with toys related to hostility, action and construction, while on the other hand pink aisles are where toys revolve …show more content…
What I found surprising is that over the last generation, the gender segregation and stereotyping of toys has grown to unparalleled levels. Now while we’ve made great improvements toward gender equity over the past 50 years, the domain of toys has not come nearly as far. The gendered marketing of toys has become so bad that it looks like we’re still in the 1950’s. In fact, finding a toy that is not marketed either overtly or subtly by gender has become incredibly difficult to find. There are several reasons why gender-based marketing has become so widespread. Toy makers know that by separating the market into smaller demographic groups, they can sell more versions of the same toy to more people. Nostalgia also plays a part, parents and grandparents often give toys that they remember from their own childhood. This kind of marketing taps deeply into beliefs about gender that still operate in our culture. Numerous parents argue that their sons and daughters like differing things. This is especially true when regarding boys, parents will tend to stick with more gender-typed toys for boys, either because of their own desire for gender conformity or that they understand that the social costs for boys who go astray and go into the “pink” zone, are particularly high in a homophobic …show more content…
In most families’ now a day, domestic household tasks are shared more equally than ever before. Also, over 70% of mothers are in the work force. So in a period of increasingly diverse family structures, these ideas push us back toward a more unequal past. Where boy’s toys are for the little adventurer ready to meet danger and prove his worth, and girl’s toys are for taking care of what needs to be done around the house from domestic duties to child