Nowadays, many toys are designed, packaged, and advertised and segregated to extreme ends of the gender-binary. Girls’ toys are pink and feminine; boys’ toys are blue and masculine. However, it wasn’t always like this.
Sociologist Dr. Elizabeth Sweet (2011), who wrote her PhD dissertation on the origins of gendered toys, notes that “in the 1905 [Sears] catalogue, no toys were expressly marketed to either gender, and only a handful (roughly 15 percent) bore more subtle gender messages” and that only around mid-century the toys, specifically dolls, were marketed towards girls, while also “clear gender distinctions had emerged in terms of occupational roles, as is clear in a 1945 ad for ‘Doctor and Nurse’ kits.” As such, gendered toys—and the marketing of them towards one specific gender—are a phenomenon of the last 100 years.
In the 21st Century, however, the fight for gender-equality has once again gained traction, through the #MeToo movement in 2006 (Burke, 2020) and the fight for more equal gender diversity in leadership roles (Hood, 2023), just to name a few. Why, then, does it feel like the gendering of toys has only become more insistent?
The reason might lie in what Sweet (2011) refers to as an “ideological backlash” to the rising social and political power of women. With greater equality in society, clear distinctions between femininity and masculinity become more pronounced as people clinging to traditional aspects of gender roles aim to reaffirm these parts of our culture.
Burke, T. (2020, July 16). Get To Know Us | History & Inception. Me Too. Movement. https://metoomvmt.org/get-to-know-us/history-inception/
Hood, R. (2023, March 7). The number of women hired into leadership is increasing, but by less than 1% a year. Economic Graph; LinkedIn.com. https://economicgraph.linkedin.com/blog/the-number-of-women-hired-into-leadership-is-increasing-but-by-less-than-one-percent-a-year
Sweet, E. (2011, October 7). The “Gendering” of Our Kids’ Toys, and What We Can Do About It. New Dream. https://newdream.org/blog/2011-10-gendering-of-kids-toys
Boy’s Doctor kit and Girl’s Nurse kit. (2013). [Online image]. In The Musings Of A Digital Humanist. https://alanabeeblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/2532.jpg