Designing Gendered Toys

We have analysed the gender scripts of the toys of three Dutch companies and distinguished gender specific from gender stereotypical scripts. We developed a method for rating games on these two dimensions. Gender stereotypical games play an important part in the gendering of children. In order to explore to whatextent this might also be the case for gender specific scripts, we interviewed eight girls (9-13 years old) about their play behaviour in relation to masculine connoted games. On the one hand, these girls felt free to play with such games, but on the other hand, they also spent time and effort justifying their choices, showing thattheir freedom to play with gender specific games with a masculine connotation was limited to some extent. Therefore, it is important that companies develop gender neutral, gender equal or gender bending games. In this respect, our analysis of the games developed by the three companies revealed considerable differences between the companies. We explored potential reasons for these differences in themarkets (educational or retail trade) addressed by these companies, the user representation techniques they had used, and the (feminist) values that the directors of these companies held. We expect that interventions in the design process aimed at the user representation techniques used by the companies and the feminist values of the designers could be most effective in creating less gender specific and stereotypical games.