The gendered marketing of children’s toys: An integrative review and de-gendering agenda

Abstract

Gendered marketing – the division of the marketplace into restrictive binary gender categories – is particularly pronounced in children’s markets. In recent years, this practice has attracted increasing public and policy attention due to concerns about its potential to entrench gendered inequities from a young age. Yet, scholarship has largely overlooked how gendered marketing socialises children into binary gendered categories. To address this, we present an integrative review of the gendered marketing of children’s toys. We synthesise the fragmented interdisciplinary literature on the topic to develop a framework that illustrates how gendered marketing to children operates, in turn conceiving how marketing acts as a key agent of gender socialisation. Specifically, we identify four gendered marketing tools and their underlying tactics that (re)produce limited and harmful gender categorisations in the marketplace. To redress this, we present an agenda for de-gendering marketing to children to take action against gender injustices in markets.