For millennia, societies have made children, those members of humanity who belong to the new generations, clear about their gender from the earliest years of life. This, among other things, is done through play styles and toys .

For example, until the middle of the 20th century most toys indicated on their boxes for which gender the product was suitable, something that changed with the arrival of second and third wave feminisms between the 1970s and 1990s. Today, however, toys are still heavily gendered. It is natural to associate action figures with boys and cooking games with girls , for example.

But… does this make the toys sexist? Could it be that the existence of this role distinction makes inequality appear? There are currently good reasons to think that sexist toys do exist, and that they are especially preyed upon by girls .

Sexist Toys and the Gender Burden

The type of toys children use does not follow a causal differentiation. In the vast majority of cases, these games are a reflection of gender stereotypes . For example, girls are given games that deal with the care of babies, the importance of aesthetics and personal image, or housework, while boys are given action figures and games that deal with imaginary situations that, if they were real, would be scary, violent or disgusting.
Now… Is this because there is a genetic predisposition to attract certain games and not others, or is it all due to the effect of culture, what society teaches us during childhood?

From what we have seen, there is evidence that some of these preferences for stereotypically gendered toys are due to biological factors, not cultural ones. For example, it has been shown that children between the ages of one and two, a time when they are not yet socializing in groups, already prefer toys that are associated with their gender. Furthermore, in cases of some diseases that alter the hormone levels of girls, making them more “masculine”, their preferences for toys also turn more towards the masculine.

However, these differences between boys and girls need not be very deep .

The influence of the environment

It should be borne in mind that most experiments exploring the reaction of children to toys that do not correspond to their gender work with specific toys with specific properties. In these situations, the effects of hormonal differences, which are wide, may seem very specific, falsely reinforcing too rigid gender roles.

For example, just because children prefer to play with action figures doesn’t mean that they are attracted to that category of entertainment we call “action figures” , but that there is something about those objects that they find interesting. The possibility of fantasizing about risky situations is one of them.

But violent situations (those we usually associate with action figures) are not the only ones in which risks are taken and danger is felt. In fact, it is perfectly possible that many of them are not associated with masculinity.

On the other hand, it has been seen that men are generally slightly better than women in tasks involving spatial processing , and this is also noticeable in the use of toys. Boys tend to prefer more elaborate puzzles to those played by girls, and these toys have to do with cognitive skills related to spatial thinking.

However, it has also been seen that parents encourage their children more when they play this kind of game, and less when they play it as children. It may seem unimportant, but if this social asymmetry happens at such a young age, it can leave a mark on people’s mental development .

We see then, that although there seems to be hormonal differences that influence the preference for toys depending on the sex to which one belongs, this is interpreted as if it were the gender load of these games, and not the situations to which they give rise, which make them tend to entertain themselves with some things and they do it with others.

Girls are disadvantaged

How does this affect girls? Basically, it reinforces strongly entrenched gender roles that put women at a disadvantage. For example, many of the better paid professions are closely related to spatial reasoning, and if children are encouraged to play more with toys that promote this skill, they will have an advantage in filling engineering positions .

On the other hand, if we assume that because children have a predilection for action figures, women should be assigned to the “safe” environment of the domestic, their existence will be more like that of a pet than a person with the capacity to be independent.

In short, the effect that sexist toys have on girls is the power to pigeonhole them in roles that have been created by society and that are given a priori: it is enough to coincide with certain characteristics related to this type of role, for it to be assumed that the entire personality of that girl (future woman) can be summarized by “the feminine” . The consequence of this is, in short, more sexism and more possibilities for more girls to be pigeonholed into this lifestyle.