Pink Girls & Blue Boys: The fundamental Toy Story behind every gendered society

Have you ever seen a girl truck driver as a toy or a boy cooking in a kitchen set? Most of us haven’t. With the gender norms so deeply ingrained in everything around us, it is difficult to provide children with a gender-neutral environment in their fundamental years of growth. Earlier this month, acknowledging its mammoth role in furthering these gender stereotypes, Lego toys commissioned a global product survey which showed that the toys manufactured by Lego are highly gendered and the gender bias in their toys is prohibiting growth in children by limiting their productivity and career choices. 

The survey revealed that Lego toys are perpetuating differences in attitudes to play with different objects, thereby restricting/ limiting their choices in the future. Another major highlight of the survey conducted by Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media on Lego toys was that girls were more open to the idea of playing with toys considered for boys, however, the boys on the other hand were restrictive to the concept of playing with the toys associated with girls. 

Gendered toys can limit your child’s growth & career choices

The observation further reflected that boys are being held back from making choices related to feminine traits; they are either bullied, harassed, or ashamed for playing with toys that are not ‘masculine enough’. For instance, a boy child is often not given a kitchen set to play with or a doll to play with, because he is taught that it is not meant for him, he is meant to play with something more ‘manly’, and this reinforces restrictions associated with gender placed in the society. 

The inhibition to play with the doll’s makeup or to nurture or caress the doll during childhood roots for these boys not being involved in household activities or active parenting in their adulthood. By restricting our boys from playing with makeup or a dancing Barbie, we are restricting their creativity, and as much as it may be to his liking, he may not want to make a career in dancing or cooking since he is made to feel ashamed for doing so in his early years. Similarly, girls may not pick up architecture or engineering, or body-building, even if they like it, because they are being constantly fed the idea that they are supposed to play with Barbies and kitchen sets.

Parents’ Role in providing children an ungendered environment

Speaking on the same, Professor Pooja Srivastava, who specialises in Early Childhood Care and Development, explained that parents have a bigger responsibility to provide kids with an ungendered environment. She said, “Parents make a mistake in picking up toys for children, it is critical for children to play with every toy so that they can widen their understanding of different emotions, different roles by delineating them with gender norms. Every toy is made for every child, she emphasised. Parents should make sure that they introduce cars as well as dolls to their children irrespective of them being a male or a female.”

Professor Pooja further asserts that “ it's important to have conversations around gender and different norms with the child. A child will perceive what he/ she will see around him, so it's equally important for both the parents to be involved in household activities, the child should see that equal respect is paid for cooking as it is given to driving. Parents should provide opportunities to children to interact with all the things around them so that the child receives a holistic growth picking up both masculine and feminine traits.”

With the segregation of toys in stores based on sex (WWE characters, pilots, etc in the blue zone- for boys and barbie set in the pink zone- for girls), along with the products/ publications and advertisements related to kids on the same line, the concept of co-relating biological sex with gender identity is amplified.

“Moreover, it is also very important to make children unlearn at an early stage that masculinity is more desirable and femininity is bad because in later years this ideology can reinforce gender disparity in a child’s attitude, making a way for gender-based violence,” Dr Pooja added.

Role of toy companies

Many organizations, including Lego, are working towards bringing about the change. While Lego has vowed to end gender disparity in its toys by 2022, another organisation, Mattel, launched a line of gender-inclusive dolls for kids in September 2019. These dolls were gender non-conforming and they didn’t identify as either a boy or a girl. They can be dressed in a range of hair and clothing styles and come with a choice of wardrobe options. Other toy manufacturers and brands related to kids should pay significant importance to it and should not contribute to widening gender disparities.

In 2012, in the UK a campaign called Let Toys Be Toys was launched, ‘asking the toy and publishing industries to stop limiting children’s interests by promoting some toys and books as only suitable for girls, and others only for boys and over the years they have roped in several publishing agencies and toy companies to make significant changes.

The initial years of development provide children with an opportunity to grasp and understand the world around them, and from the very beginning, they are served with gender biases unconsciously through the medium of toys and other products. If we want to build an ungendered world, we need to improvise from the start. We may need to inculcate these little things in our lives, to make bigger changes.

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