Toys Influence Sexism

The thing about children is that they eventually effect many outcomes in the future. They are the little kids who will grow up and decide on the important movements – like gender equality. And like the issue of children's genderized toys, this topic is also important on the issue of sexism. As I mentioned children's toys are mostly genderized by their characteristics of color, toy type (portrays expected roles), and their advertising influences to the "appropriate" gender. These characteristics can then also be found in adult products like clothes, objects, and matured advertising. It seems like we do not grow out of our desired products. So these characteristics that go on throughout our lives are connected to issues on sexism because they are what people use to assume our sexual identities.

As children who do not yet acknowledge gender issues, the toys they play with are the products that become part of their identity and that part of their identity is what some adults use to assume their sexuality. Children who play with any toys they like, no matter what characteristics they have, experience sexism at a very young age. The most common sexist remark children face are usually boys who play or have pink girly products are judged on being or eventually becoming gay. While girls have more of a flexibility that allows them to play with boy toys without being judged.

How awful is it to see children who just want to be themselves enjoying what they like, being picked on without really understand what they have done wrong. It is not only as children, this issue of sexist bullying is usually more harmful in adult years as some people can become more rude and violent about sexism. The issue of children's toys being genderized is what leads to sexism and if we begin to prevent it with gender neutrality at a young age, we can develop a generation that will acknowledge feminism and gender equality. Children would not have to worry or face sexist bullying and would grow up understanding equality to form movements and change.

Short Reversed Roles Create Great Impacts

I decided to read another article in Sex Roles journal, Jennifer J. Pike and Nancy A. Jennings' "The Effects of Commercials on Children's Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use". It is another study that focuses on the effects of gendered toy commercials on children's toy preference and their gender labeling on toys.

For the study, 62 children in 1st and 2nd grade elementary school (28 boys and 34 girls) participated and were randomly assigned to be in three groups. One group would watch two toy commercials of boys playing with boy genderized toys (traditional condition), the second group would watch the same commercial but the boys would be replaced by girls (nontraditional condition), the third group would watch a non-toy commercial [SunnyD commercial] with both girls and boys (control condition). Pike and Jennings hypothesized that (1) the children in the nontraditional condition would more likely label the toys for both boys and girls and that (2) girls in the nontraditional condition would more likely respond differently saying that the target audience of the commercial were both boys and girls.

After the children watched the commercials, they were asked individually to categorized the toys from the commercials, two other similar toys, one toy truck, and one doll for either "boys", "girls", or "both boys and girls". The study proved that hypothesis (1) was supported with children in the nontraditional condition group were more likely to label the toys as both for boys and girls. The children in this group labeled one of the toys in the commercials 36.9% more to be for both genders.

On the other hand, Pike and Jennings' hypothesis (2) was not supported as they thought more girls than boys would label the toys as for both genders. It actually came out that more boys labeled the toys for both genders in the nontraditional group. In the nontraditional group 91% of the boys labeled one of the toys from the commercial for both genders while in the traditional group only 33% of the girls labeled the same toy for both genders.

The article concludes with the limitations of the study such as the editing in replacing the boys in the commercials with girls, and also time was limited for watching the commercials and interacting with the children afterwards. The short toy advertising commercials greatly impacts children and their views on gender that lead to their views on gender equality.

The Effects of Commercials on Children's Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use

Pike and Jennings' research article is a great source to place under my blog's topic since it specifically touches on the effects of genderized commercials and toys. I agree with the method they use to show the children the toy commercials and it helped to use a non-toy commercial as a control group to see children's perspectives without any recent influence. I also thought that both of the hypotheses, especially that girls would be more willingly to label toys for both genders, so I was surprised when it was actually boys that placed toys for both genders. It is a great finding since young boys are usually the ones who are discouraged to relate to girly toys so it is great to see a larger change in their gender toy role perspectives.

This article has made its valid research but this article is some years older than the first Sex Roles article I read, they may not wanted to spend as much time analyzing the limitations of the experiment. Such as I realized they could have mentioned with more participants they could have had more accurate results. I am sure there are other limitations such as the uneven ratio of boys and girls in the study.

Besides the lack of mentioning some limitations, why would the study focus on boy toy commercials instead of girl commercials and replace the girls with boys?

• As I mentioned how young boys are discouraged to relate with girly toys, this would most likely be why the study focused on boys' toy commercials. Girls have more of a flexibility to play with both boy and girl toys, whereas boys are influenced to only play with manly boy toys. Therefore as most girl toys are pink and more obvious to be girly, the boys in this study would have less of an impact to change their perspectives on girly toys being for both genders.

Why did they only present the children with one girl toy, the doll, because depending on the dolls appearance, wouldn't it be obvious for children to label it as a girl toy?

• It is weird that the 5 other toys were for boys and the one doll for girls. Other types of girl toys could have given different results. For instance Lego Friends, the Lego toy produced to appeal to girls, can have boys relate them to both genders since many Lego toys are for boys yet this specific one is for girls.
• The study probably just wanted to see if children knowing that dolls are for girls  would change their views and decide that boys can also play with dolls after seeing the nontraditional commercial.

All three of the articles I have posted are connected with different approaches on my topic of genderized toys. I would say my first website source is on changes made from realizing gender based toy commercials are negative, the second source is on what characteristics make toys genderized, and this source is on how these genderized toys effect children's gender identity perspectives. I enjoyed this article more because it explains that there is a positive impact on children and their socialization with toys if we change the way we advertise to the children. Thus by advertising to children in a gender neutral way, with both genders playing with any type of toy, it would benefit children's experience and learning with gender equality and sharing gender roles so there will not be anymore gender stereotypes.

References:
Pike, Jennifer J., and Nancy A. Jennings. "The Effects of Commercials on Children?s Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use." Sex Roles 52.1-2 (2005): 83-91. Deepblue.lib.umich.edu. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.