Gender stereotyping of children's toys: a comparison of parents and nonparents

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  Jan, 1999  by C. Estelle Campenni

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RESULTS

The gender appropriateness rating for each toy was computed and the list was rank ordered from lowest to highest in order to identify the toys most appropriate for girls (lowest scores), most appropriate for boys (highest scores), and those identified as gender neutral (scores centering about 5). Ratings of the toys were highly correlated across groups defined by sample and sex (i.e., mothers, fathers, female nonparents, male nonparents) with correlations ranging from 0.95 to 0.98. The strong agreement across groups supports selection of toys for each of the toy categories (feminine, masculine, neutral) based on the overall ratings of toys. Summary data for each toy are presented in Table I.

[TABULAR DATA 1 NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

The toys most appropriate for girls included items pertaining to domestic tasks, such as housecleaning (e.g., vacuum cleaner, kitchen center) and child rearing (e.g., cradle, stroller, doll house), and beauty enhancement items (e.g., makeup kit, jewelry items). Action figures specifically depicting females and female characters from popular films were also included in this category. Toys rated as most appropriate for boys included sports gear, male action figures, vehicles, building items, plastic bugs, and attire for traditionally male occupations. In identifying the neutral toys, it is interesting to note that two toys, educational books and bicycle, were identified as gender-neutral (rating of "5") by all participants. No other toys were unanimously rated by nonparents as gender-neutral although parents unanimously identified 31 other toys as gender-neutral. Toys rated as neutral by all parents also included audio cassettes, balloons, board games, bubbles, camera, checkers, computer, easel, etch-a-sketch, finger paints, globe, kaleidoscope, keyboard, kite, koosh toy, magna-doodle, magnetic letters, piano, picture books, puzzles, rattle, riding toys, ring toss, roller skates, sled, stacking rings, telephone, trampoline, tricycle, tub toys, and watch.

The results of individual independent t tests performed on the ratings of parents versus nonparent ratings are included in Table I. Differences were found on 89 of the 206 toys using a .05 level of significance. In all instances, nonparent ratings were more gender stereotyped than parents. For feminine toys (ratings less than 5), nonparent ratings were consistently lower than parent ratings while masculine toys (ratings greater than 5) were consistently rated higher by nonparents than parents.

In order to assess ratings of feminine, masculine, and neutral toys specifically to determine if differences exist for these broad toy categories, a composite toy rating was computed for each category (feminine, masculine, neutral) by taking the average of the toys identified as belonging to each category. Similar to a procedure adopted by Fisher-Thompson (1990), three scores were computed based on the average of the 30 most feminine toys (lowest overall ratings in Table I, makeup kit through vacuum cleaner), 30 most masculine toys (highest overall ratings, football gear through creepy crawlers) and 32 most neutral toys (ratings center around 5, Kermit the frog through hunchback doll). The number of neutral toys was slightly larger due to the number of equal ratings of toys at 4.98 and 5.02. Thus, a feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral toy score was computed for each participant. The composite score was then recoded to range from 1 to 5 which represented a range from gender-stereotyped to gender-neutral thus ignoring the dimensions of female versus male appropriateness. In the recode process, a score of 6 was recoded to 4, 7 was recoded to 3, 8 was recoded to 2 and 9 was recoded to 1. The purpose of the recoding process was to create a score which could be used to determine if gender-appropriateness differed based on toy type and if the degree of gender-appropriateness ratings varied based on sample (parents vs. nonparents) and sex of participant.