We are knee-deep in the holiday season, that wonderful time of year where we are inundated with all kinds of ads covering a wide array of products and services.
One type of product you will see advertised a lot in November and December is toys. If you have children, you might be sifting through the catalogs and leaflets to figure out what to get your little boy or girl, assuming they are the only child in America who doesn't know what toys they want for the holidays. One thing you may not have noticed, or paid any attention to, is the way toys are marketed.
Buzzfeed.com posted a photo gallery titled: "16 Ways the Toy Industry is Stuck in the Stone Age." It points out the discrepancy in boys and girls toys--in price, quality and type. Toys made for girls are almost universally pink in color and tend to simulate activities of stereotypical "woman's work," a.k.a. domestic chores.
Stores are selling toys which allow girls to pretend they are doing such exciting things as cooking, cleaning, sewing or ironing. Meanwhile, the boys' toys encourage partaking in drab, ho-hum tasks like science, medieval castle management and car racing.
Beyond just the stereotypes these toys propagate, a look at the gallery shows that there are some science-themed toys marketed to both boys and girls: computers, microscopes and telescopes. However, the ones geared toward girls (which are, of course, pink) are cheaper, the computers don't perform as many functions and the microscopes don't magnify as much as their male-targeted counterparts.
Your choice for a girl-themed toy is either one that simulates chores or is of inferior quality compared to it's non-pink renditions. Is this kind of market segmentation perpetuating gender stereotypes? You'd be hard pressed to make a case that it's not.
FletcherPR is a national communications firm that specializes in reaching women through the power of media. Headquartered in Knoxville, TN with staff in Nashville & Los Angeles, we are a full-service agency providing strategic public relations, social media and marketing communications services to our clients throughout the U.S.
