Project:
Gender-stereotyped toys

How toys are labelled and displayed is designed to affect consumers’ buying choices. Many people feel uncomfortable buying a boy an arts and crafts kit in a pink box, or a girl a toy that has been advertised only to boys. Other buyers may not notice that science kits and construction toys are missing from the ‘pink section’ of the shop or website, or that boys are largely absent from the pages advertising dolls in a toy catalogue.

The stereotypes we see in toy marketing form part of a route to the inequalities prevalent in adult life. By early primary-school age, studies suggest children already tend to have absorbed ideas about the jobs that men and women do. These stereotypical notions can then be very hard to shift and can, for instance, feed into the low numbers of girls taking STEM subjects and men entering professions such as childcare. Such ideas can also play a role in bullying.

Source: https://www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/why-it-matters/

1. INTRODUCTION

In this project we will carry out a set of activities that focus on raising awareness of how the way toys are advertised can impact on young boys and girls and their future.

In this introduction activity, we talked with students about the differences between sex and gender and how the ideas that we associate with a male or a female are just a social construct that widely varies among different cultures.

Estimated activity time: 10 minutes

2. SORT OUT THE TOYS BELOW

The purpose of this activity is to evidence how common it is for people to classify toys in different categories: boys' toys and girls' toys.

The activity is done as follows:

1. In turns, each student picks a card that depicts a toy.

2. The student shows the card to the rest of the class and reads out loud the name of the toy.

3. The student decides if the depicted toy is a boys' toy, a girls' toy or a girls and boys' toy and puts the card in the corresponding column.

4. Once all the toys are classified, there is a debate wether any of the toy is in the wrong column.

The conclusion of this debate is that there are no boys' and girls' toys and the arguments that you can give for a classification are only based on cultural beliefs.

3. BIASED ADVERTISEMENTS

In this activity students are shown 6 advertisements, which are full with gender-stereotypes. On each advertisement they can see different people (boys and girls) playing with different toys.

After watching the advertisements, students give their opinions and point out the elements of the ads that lead to stereotypes (colours, type of actions, people...).

4. GENDER-STEREOTYPED TOYS IN CATALOGUES

Using the knowledge of the prior activities, students are given a toys' catalogue and asked to do the following activity:

1. In groups of 4, students pick a toy of the catalogue, which is gender-stereotyped.

2. Each group is given a worksheet where they need to answer the following questions:

   1. What is the toy?

   2. What can you learn playing with it?

   3. What is the predominant colour?

   4. Who appears in the advertisement?

   5. Who do you think will buy this toy?

   6. Why do you think this is a gender-stereotyped toy?

Toys chosen by the groups and their worksheet

5. GIRL TOYS VS BOY TOYS: THE EXPERIMENT

The last activity is intended to conclude the concepts learnt and conclusion reached throughout the project.

The video, produced by BBC, shows an expermient where babies (boys and girls) are given different toys and clothes in order to prove that many of these aspects are based on cultural beliefs.

This video is very interesting and leads to a lot of reach discussions.