Toys without gender: the approach that is adding adherents in the commercial industry

(CNN) - Irina González found the perfect Christmas gift: a toy car with violet wheels and a pink basket.She was delighted to buy it, for her 20 -month -old son.

"I really try to incorporate all the colors of the rainbow in my son's toys and especially in his wardrobe," he said."I want my son to understand that clothes are only clothes and toys are just toys and that these things have no sex."

She hopes that he learns that nothing is out of his limits and that he has nothing wrong with he likes a toy or a garment that has been marketed as "for girls."

Not long ago, this may have seemed a radical approach to upbringing children, not to mention Christmas purchases.But rejecting hypergenery marketing of children's material worlds is increasingly common and not just parents or groups.Some in the toy industry and the business world have joined.

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The toys industry becomes neutral

In 2015, Target stopped labeling some toys and other products such as articles for girls and boys, moving away from gender signaling.In 2017, the Toy Association replaced the categories of "boy" and "girl" with new ones, such as the action figure of the year or wrist of the year (although action figures are usually dolls for children).

The decision, said Kristin Morency Goldman, spokesman for Toy Association, "was to reflect the current market and the purchase habits of parents and the reality of the world in which we live."

This year's winning toys included the teddy of the year and the Steam toy of the year.Marketed that way, any child could be interested in them.

“Las empresas de juguetes han dejado de clasificar sus juguetes por género, e incluso los minoristas en línea y los minoristas tradicionales no están organizando sus juguetes tanto por género”, dijo Goldman. “Afortunadamente, muchos de los límites basados ​​en el género que se impusieron a los niños en generaciones

The smallest companies are launching without gender messages.Be-me sells tutús, crowns and nail polish for all children, and Ten Little does not add gender to clothes or toys.

This can soon become the norm, and even the law.In October, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, promulgated the bill of the assembly 1084, which forces large retailers to have neutral toys sections regarding the gender by 2024 (does not prohibit the sections of traditional toys for children andgirls).

Meanwhile, this year Lego announced a new investigation and a new campaign, "Ready for Girls", together with the Geena Davis Institute on gender in the media.The campaign encourages girls to play with all Lego products, to "counteract generalized stereotypes about girls who discourage them from playing with Stem -centered toys."

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Stereotypes stay in place

This is a massive change in a short period of time, but the genre of children's toys is actually a recent phenomenon.

"The toys of the early twentieth century were not an important good and many families made their own toys," said Elizabeth Sweet, an assistant professor of Sociology at the State University of San José."Gender was not such a primary categorization factor."The dolls, she said, were a popular baby gift for both boys and girls.

The genre of children's clothing and toys seriously began just over 100 years ago, in an effort to teach children from an early age how to perform their right gender roles.The toys went from being marketed by age to explicitly treat the preferences and the future of boys: broom games for girls and construction games for boys.

This gender message retreated to some extent during the US feminist movement of the 1970s, Sweet said.She found that less than 2% of the Sears Catalog toys of 1975 had explicit gender markers.

But the 1980s saw the deregulation of television for children, which allowed a new toys marketing level, said Rebecca Hains, a media and communications professor at Salem State University in Massachusetts.This was followed by the rise of "female power" in the 1990s, and marketing specialists again imposed gender on toys.

The toys problem

If you are buying gifts that have gender markers, said Hains, it is easy to overcome them.If you have bought a gift for a boy with just photos of girls in the package, "simply take it off and place it under the tree," he said.The action, like a fire truck."We can play princesses and make the princess turn off the fire," she said.

Why do that?

When marketing specialists and parents differentiate the genre of toys, not only reinforce stereotypes, but also promote different skill sets."Everything that was marketed towards girls was about being pretty," said Hains.Girls toys often promote communication and goodness skills, while for boys, emphasis is action and assertiveness.

Lego's gender research found that girls had six times more likely than boys to imagine that scientists and athletes were men than women.The parents of both sexes had four times more likely to encourage boys to play with computer games or sports, and five times more likely to encourage girls to dance and disguise themselves.

"Children are experiencing with ideas about their own interests and skills and maybe even future roles," said Hains."It is problematic when the options are limited and it is said that all this range of things is only for girls and this range of things is only for boys."

In the way

Changes in the way toys are marketed can help change consumer behavior, but cultural norms are difficult to overcome."I think it's difficult for children," said Lauren Apfel, mother of four children and executive editor of Motherwell magazine."They always find it more difficult to hug the most feminine clothes, the most feminine toys, unlike the girl who plays with the blocks that nobody thinks twice."

In fact, Lego discovered that "71% of boys compared to 42% of girls say they are worried that they make fun of them if they play with a toy typically associated with the other genre."

Apfel's decision has been to buy dolls for children, own and others, such as Christmas and Birthday gifts to promote a kind of “gender opening” and present the message that all toys are for everyone.