Gender-specific toys and store displays are shaping kids’ career choices

Toy manufacturers should stop making pink toys for girls and blue for boys, while stores also need to change their gender-specific displays claims an Australian academic.

Toys should be non-gendered in a bid to stop girls wanting traditional jobs like teaching and nursing, an Australian researcher says.

Girls and boys as young as seven are opting for gender-specific careers, with girls choosing job based on care and love and boys choosing jobs based on money and power, a new study shows.

Australian Catholic University Associate Professor Laura Scholes and Dr Sarah McDonald from the University of South Australia surveyed 332 year three students from 14 Australian schools.

They found the top occupations for boys included professional sports, STEM related jobs and policing or defence. Girls wanted to be teachers, vets or to work in the arts.

Girls and boys as young as seven are opting for gender-specific careers. Picture: Supplied

Associate Professor Scholes said gender stereotypes informing such choices began in early childhood.

“Bright pink ‘toys for girls’ and blue ‘toys for boys’ are sold on store shelves around the world,” she said in The Conversation.

“In the boys’ section you’ll find science, construction and warfare toys — perhaps a motorised robot, or a telescope. In the girls’ lane you’ll get toys related to cleaning, prams, dolls, kitchens, makeup, jewellery and crafts.

“This flows into lower numbers of girls taking STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at school. In turn, this means fewer women are going on to work in the sciences,” she said.

Her comments come as women make up only 28 per cent of the STEM workforce, with the biggest gap in the highest-paid jobs of computer science and engineering.

California has passed the first law requiring retailers to display toys in gender-neutral ways.

In Australia some brands such as Mattel and Hasbro are no longer targeting boys or girls with their toys. Retailers such as Target and Kmart already have gender-neutral kids’ toy aisles.

Originally published as Gender-specific toys and store displays are shaping kids’ career choices