It's 2014 women can be anything, do anything. They can be astronauts, engineers, entrepreneurs, round the world sailors, prime ministers, the list goes on and on. Just one of the aspects of a woman's life (if you are one of the lucky ones) is the ability to give birth to a child, and to help send that child off into the world, a couple of decades later, to hopefully make the world a much better place.
So why, oh why, do toy companies, and the people who buy them, in effect, pigeon hole girls solely into the mother role.
I worked in Toys'R'Us for a while and the girl's aisles are predominantly pink and pastel coloured, full of prams, dolls and homemaking equipment such as a mini replica of a Dyson or a plastic kitchen set up, but look a couple of aisles down to the boy's aisles, and you will see strong colours (yes even the word 'strong' that describes the colours is a powerful word) such as blue, red and black, and the toys aimed at them are tool benches, action toys such as Scalectrix or robots and building toys such as Lego or Meccano (admittedly Lego do have a range of 'Girl's Lego' but have a look at what kinds of things they are and you'll find Cinderella's Romantic Castle or a Play House, and what is the dominant colour, oh yes PINK!) .So, even by the age of 3, if you look at the equality issue through their toys, girls don't stand much chance of breaking out of the 'little woman' pink and passive mould. That said, I don't think there is actually anything inherently wrong with the toys themselves, as long as they are not made exclusively for one sex. Wouldn't it be nice to see little boys pushing a pram and learning about caring skills whilst he's looking after his little doll, or little girls wearing tool belts whilst building a Meccano skyscraper.
If we, as a society want true equality, which is currently a nice theory but not exactly working in reality, then we have to start in the earliest years. We need to stop limiting choices to both sexes. I have a friend who told me he thought his three year old grandson was a bit 'strange', and he preceded to give me a look to go with that statement that left no doubt what kind of 'strange' that was, just because he liked to play with his sister's dolls!
If we let little boys play with dolls and toy vacuum cleaners, and let little girls play with hammers (plastic to begin with) and build scalectrix tracks more often, we may develop a future world where boys and girls turn into caring fully rounded individuals with a curiosity for life and no limitations on what they should become.
(I love that this Design & Drill Centre on http://www.brightminds.co.uk/design-and-drill-centre/p133 shows a little girl having fun with a 'building' toy, and there isn't even a hint of pink.)
If you go away from this with anything, let it be that 'All toys are unisex', and, when you next find yourself in a toy shop, think about picking a non-gender specific toy or one that flies in the face of conventionality, after all you may not have grown up in an equal world, but wouldn't you like to grow old in one.
Hear hear!! Luckily my parents used to let me play in the garden (and garage) with a hammer and nails at about age 8! Real ones, much to my great aunt's horror. Our daughter likes to don shorts and trainers and run up and down the street with her friends, she came home the other day and in passing said that she doesn't mind being called a Tomboy. It's not something we've ever said, so my question is where are the other kids getting it from? Hmmmmm. Alas, we can't dictate our kids' friends, we can only be supportive of our kids.
ReplyDeleteSo you bang your drum hun, because more people need to start thinking about the consequences of following the crowd and saying flippant things. Like you've said, it shapes the future world.