Saturday 17 June 2017

Gender colouring

"I haven't bought anything for the baby yet because I don't know if it's a boy or a girl so I don't know what colour clothes to get."

Why not?
All colours are unisex.

89% of toys aimed at girls are pink.
31% of toys aimed at boys had a STEM focus.

Children learn through play, so restricting the choices of both girls and boys isn't helpful.
On the other hand, forcing children to play with toys traditionally for the opposite sex if they don't want to isn't helpful either.

However, due to publicity on this issue, this is getting much better.

Let Toys Be Toys is a campaign "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." The campaign sent mystery shoppers around the UK to look for 'Girls toys' and 'Boys toys' signs. They only found two, both in Tesco, who have said that they no longer use these signs. 

21% of shops online still use gender to sort toys, although this is a 70% since 2012.
This is still a massive pink/blue divide in toy stores.

The Early learning Centre was the only retailer showing images of boys with dolls in their catalogue but sorted toys by gender online. 
So toys pictured with boys disappear when the ‘boys’ filter is used.
One step forward, then one step back.

Just let children be how they want to be.


Have a beautiful day x 



References:
https://www.livescience.com/22037-pink-girls-blue-boys.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/girls-aisle-sexist-toys-clothes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-38250674
http://lettoysbetoys.org.uk/
http://lettoysbetoys.org.uk/girls-and-boys-toy-labels-on-the-way-out-survey-results/#more-6863
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/barbies-for-girls-cars-for-boys-let-toys-be-toys-and-get-them-gender-neutral-presents-this-christmas-9011155.html

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