Understanding Preferences for Gender-Congruent Clothing in Children’s Wear: An Abstract

Abstract

The clothes we wear have considerable power over how others perceive us (e.g., Forsythe 1990) and these perceptions are often internalized. Yet, despite knowing this, the children’s clothing market is incredibly gendered, offering female children shirts with stereotypical feminine images and words such as “kind” and “sweet”, while young boys can choose from stereotypical masculine options that often say things like “tough” and “strong.” Yet, at the same time retailers are offering gendered children’s products, society has also begun to shift their opinions on gender norms and their importance. For example, in a 2017 study conducted by the international marketing firm Havas, researchers surveyed 12,000 people across 32 countries and found that the majority of adults (61% women and 46% men) believe children should be raised in a gender-neutral manner, while less (39% of women and 54% of men) preferred to see girls and boys raised with gender-specific products such as toys and clothing. With these two conflicting trends, the question becomes whether consumers are ready to rid the industry of children’s gendered products. We argue that children would benefit from wearing clothing that includes gender-congruent and gender-incongruent depictions and test whether consumers are willing to buy both options. The goals of our studies are (1) examine whether there is a difference in product offerings to children on the basis of gender, (2) assess whether parents have a preference for gender-congruent clothing for their children, (3) explain why they may have this preference, and (4) identify ways to decrease this preference and increase purchase intentions of gender-incongruent options. Our results indicate that retailers offer more gender-congruent than gender-incongruent options and this may be driven by parental preferences for gender-congruent clothing. Furthermore, perceptions of fit can explain a preference for congruency, which is moderated by implicit bias. Finally, by improving perceptions of fit, retailers can decrease congruency preferences.