Gender, toys and learning

Abstract

In spite of continuing patterning of curriculum subject preference and choice by gender, there has been little recent attention to the argument developed in the 1970s that children play with different toys according to their gender, and that these provide girls and boys with (different) curriculum‐related skills. The article describes a small‐scale empirical study that asked parents of 3–5 year old children to identify their child’s favourite toys and viewing material, and analysed responses according to children’s gender. The most frequently identified toys and viewing materials were subjected to content and discourse analysis, with the intention of identifying both educative aspects of content, and the gender discourses reflected. The article explores conceptual issues around categorisations of ‘education’ within toys and entertainment resources, positing the notion of ‘didactic information’ to delineate between overtly educational content and other social discourses. Analysis reveals toy preferences to be highly gendered, with boys’ toys and resources concentrated on technology and action, and girls’ on care and stereotypically feminine interests. Didactic information, and aspects developing construction and literacy skills, were identified in the selected toys and resources for boys, and were lacking in those for girls. All the toys and resources could be read as implicated in ‘gendering’: the various gender discourses, and other discourses around aspects of social identity reflected in the toys and resources are identified and analysed. The analysis presented suggests the value of reinvigorated attention to children’s toys and entertainment resources in terms both of the education they afford, and their role in the production of social identities.

Notes

1. This substantial gender gap at literacy exists for all social groups irrespective of social class and ethnicity, although social class remains the greatest predictor of educational achievement: even at literacy, middle‐class boys still outperform working‐class girls (Francis & Skelton, 2005).

2. And sometimes, to the possibilities of agency within these discursive constraints, see e.g. Butler, 1997; Davies, 2006).

3. Especially given the rise of what Buckingham and Scanlon (2003) refer to as ‘edutainment’: out‐of‐school materials specifically geared to supporting children’s education. It was notable that no such toys/materials are chosen as favourites in my study.

4. See e.g. debates engaged by Fish (e.g. 1987) and Eco (1990).

5. It is intriguing to note that in these cases, the girl concerned is from a gay‐parent family with two ‘mums’, and the boy is autistic. To consider that these factors may have facilitated ‘non‐traditional choices’ for different reasons—a family environment that challenges traditional gender‐sexuality constructions, and an autistic understanding of the world, respectively—can be no more than speculation, but interesting nonetheless.

6. Such narrative contradictions pertain to ‘race’ and social class as well as gender: working‐class people are often presented as clowning stereotypes, but also show more wisdom, and sometimes lecture the middle‐class Bankses. Soot‐blackened sweeps are branded ‘Hottentots’ by the Admiral, and set up against Mr Banks’ various smug claims to English colonial superiority. Yet, in spite of narratives that ‘trouble’ the established order, the conclusion of Mary Poppins supports and reasserts the dominant norm: the restoration of the wealthy White bourgeois family as the established ideal works to close down more radical readings (Kenschaft, 1999).

7. The male Red Ranger is twice depicted as ‘caring’ too in this anthology, as he goes to the aid of a crying child, but his response is jovially pragmatic rather than emotional—‘Hey, it can’t be all that bad: maybe I can help?’ (PRLRTRP1&2). Hence Red Ranger Carter’s words represent a discourse of ‘protection of the vulnerable’ without disrupting the construction of his masculinity.