The future of play: why it’s time to let toys be toys

While a study shows how girls are more confident in all types of play, boys remain hemmed in by gender bias - we are so focused on liberating girls from the Barbie world that we forget some boys would like access to this world

Princess Leia: a strong pop-cultural symbol, and an arguable gender non-conformist

Want to influence your kid’s future career? Let them loose in a toy shop. There they will discover, depending on whether they are a boy or a girl, which toys are ‘for’ them, and therefore what they ‘should’ be interested in. Adventure for boys, nurture for girls.

Thanks to explicit labelling, heavy use of the colours, pink and blue, and entire departments given over to toys marketed gender-specifically, kids are being fed a strong message: this toy is for you; that toy is not for you. Princesses versus astronauts, steering kids towards false and narrowed narratives. Even gender-neutral toys – scooters, for example – are marketed separately to boys and girls; the ‘boy’ scooter decorated with a dinosaur, the ‘girl’ scooter with a unicorn.