There is no "War on Barbie": Toys, Gender Inequality and Domestic Violence

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Last week  marked White Ribbon Day in Australia, a focal point for the male led campaign to end violence against women. On the same day, a Senate inquiry into the relationship between children’s toys and entertainment and the gender stereotypes that contribute to domestic violence was announced.

Predictably, the inquiry was instantly deemed “a war on Barbie”. It was also an opportunity to label the Greens, who initiated the inquiry, as kooky for linking Tonka trucks with Australia’s family violence crisis.

Both the federal government and the opposition were eager to uncouple themselves from any suggestion that they might begin policing toy boxes. A spokesperson for Labor leader Bill Shorten remarked that any notion of “a clear link between toys and domestic violence is absurd”.

Last year, the Greens supported the No Gender December campaign, which encourages families to be open-minded when choosing toys to place under the Christmas tree. The campaign highlights how toys are marketed in ways that segregate play along gender lines.  Most toy shops erect an invisible Berlin Wall that largely keeps girls in the pink, sparkly zone and boys in the sector of camouflage-toned action.

Sam Humphreys: It's a Matter of Trust project

The suggestion that children’s toys, books, or films might have any connection with the beliefs children internalise about gender and the kinds of adults they become rankles many people. We commonly take exception at the idea that anything that formed part of our beloved childhood could be anything other than innocent and delightful.

It is time that adults “grow up” and stop ridiculing the idea that the cultural products we make for children are influential and can have both positive and negative impacts.

Parents tend to accept that young children might be swayed by advertising for junk food, depictions of smoking, alcohol or drug use as desirable, or TV or movies that are infused with swearing. Children are consistently absorbing cultural cues about how to behave and act. As a result, parents might restrict their children’s exposure to things they see as harmful, or at least help children negotiate what is socially acceptable and healthy for their own wellbeing.

When it comes to the negative influences of gender stereotyping in moulding how girls and boys feel that they can act as kids and as adults, we inexplicably change tack. These are only innocent or trivial toys or cartoons. And children won’t be thinking about adult concepts like the gender pay gap or domestic violence in any case.

The Reducing Violence Against Women and Their Children report, released this month,  demonstrates that young people have already formed views about gender relations and violence. It shows that when presented with hypothetical scenarios, boys as young as ten years old think that female victims of domestic violence are at fault; girls tend to blame themselves. Why would children already blame women for domestic violence if they were not absorbing ideas from the cultural around them?

Individual toys do not transmit troubling beliefs about violence directly, but the gendering of toys is a reflector of, and a contributor to, the gender inequality that produces domestic violence.

Critics of the inquiry propose that Barbie and other traditional toys marketed for boys or girls have been available for decades, as if to suggest that popular practices cannot possibly be wrong. They also ignore the coexistence of gender inequality with these and other superficially innocuous traditions throughout this period.

There is no social engineering in the suggestion that we should examine how the marketing of toys and children’s entertainment might bolster gender inequality. No one is proposing restricting the interests or freedom of children to choose. Rather, we must remove the limitations on children that are deployed through gendered marketing.

Toys that are categorised for girls are often related to domestic chores, fashion or babies, mirroring the ongoing expectation of women’s disproportionate contribution to housework and childcare. While boys’ toys involve construction, adventure, or warfare. Gender inequality is entrenched in the way that toys that are marketed for girls are unacceptable for boys or else they will be mocked because what is feminine is unimportant, frivolous and incompatible with being a “real” boy or man.

The gendered marketing of toys is not the direct reason why one in six Australian women has experienced domestic violence. Yet we cannot expect that “raising awareness” and simply telling men to respect women and monitor each other will make any meaningful difference to the long history of violence against women. It is time we looked seriously at where gendered inequality originates and is cemented to understand how we might shift the power imbalance at the core of violence against women.  

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

The Australian Senate is currently conducting an Inquiry into the sexualisation of children "in the contemporary media environment". Environment seems to be one of those tiresome weasel words. Why not just "contemporary media"?

Beyond any controversial exploration of why we fail to recognise the sexuality of adolescents (and even slightly younger children), it's first interesting to see that the term children has been used. The second term of reference for the inquiry is to:

"review the evidence on the short- and long-term effects of viewing or buying sexualising and objectifying images and products and their influence on cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality, attitudes and beliefs."

Surely we would be hard-pressed to find that many sexualising and objectifying images of boys or men in the popular media. What we're really looking at in the main is the premature sexualisation of girls and the prolific use of images of girls and women in the media and resultant effects on both girls and boys.

The Corporate Paedophilia report produced by the Australia Institute in late 2006 has informed much of the debate on this issue. The three sources of sexualisation defined is this report are: images of children dressed and posed in adult clothing; media targeted at children which advertises products and promotes sexual behaviours; and material intended for adults but accessible to children. Professor Catherine Lumby and Dr Kath Albury's submission very convincingly dispels conservative fears regarding the second point.

Most magazines targeted at children, Lumby and Albury argue, are inherently non-sexual, contrary to the Corporate Paedophilia report, which reads sexualisation into everything from girls gazing downward in photographs to being shown holding "adult looking handbags". Much like the controversy over Bill Henson's photographs, not every naked girl or clothed girl reclining on a couch is intended to excite the viewer sexually.

Where things become stickier, however, is with magazines intended for teenagers, such as Dolly and Girlfriend but which are read by younger girls. Newspaper reports suggest that so-called "tweens" are set to be discouraged from reading these magazines: warning stickers will advise that the content is only suitable for over fifteens. I'd be interested to know how other women recall their own teen magazine reading experiences. From my recollection, magazines such as Dolly were key reading material from around the age of 11 to 15.

Beyond that, there was a process of graduation to Cosmopolitan and other women's magazines as ponderings about whether to use pads or tampons--a favourite topic in Dolly--became irrelevant to girls who had been menstruating for five years. I was blessed with my period at the age of ten. I wanted to read about what was happening to me and the other girls around me, not be directed toward a magazine about Barbie or other "tween" magazines. As much as people like to emphasise their nature as children, many ten and eleven year old girls' bodies are technically ready to bear their own children. Why argue they are too young to read about what this means for them?

The function of magazines like Dolly is to satisfy the curiosity of girls confronting puberty and the initial pressure or desire to perform sexual activities. Do we really want such magazines to go the way of formal school sex education? It's a world of cliches: too little too late; closing the gate after the horse has bolted; I could go on. Information, no matter how informally presented, never sexualised those who weren't already sexual.

A Senator was concerned that these magazines cover topics such as whether oral sex can be performed when a girl wears braces. Let us all close our minds and pretend that no teens of braces-wearing age kiss, engage in oral sex or actually have intercourse. Many girls are already engaging in sex by the age of fifteen. If we prevent them from any exposure to information concerning sex (intended for a girl readership) prior to this, are we "protecting" them or rendering them ignorant and even more vulnerable.

Girls who are ready to know will seek these magazines out, while those who are not ready are likely to continue playing with dolls. We need to allow the choice for those girls who are emotionally and developmentally ready to read accessible information about sex without allowing adult prudery about teenage sexuality to intrude.