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[Helgoland]

You're assuming girls are equally likely to buy a lego-type product.

[palsch]

You're assuming girls are equally likely to buy a lego-type product.

It's more assuming that more girls would buy it if they weren't driven away by the deliberately male-oriented marketing.

Which is the case that Anita made in her video.

[Helgoland]

I may be reading his post wrong (or be missing context), but as far as I can tell he's arguing 'There's as many girls as boys -> you can sell as many units of this product to girls as to boys', which is obviously incorrect for, let's say, hair ties.

[misko27]

Mmm. Companies can be weird about their demographics: Nickelodeon's war on their non-kid demographic continues unabated. But none of us are in marketing and thus have some certain difficulty in understanding their motivations; I tend to assume that every angle for making money is either being exploited or being explored for future exploitation, making our questioning of their methods silly. We can look at some numbers though: there's the fact that Lego's stereotypically "Girl" line, Friends, has been very successful for them, tripling that year the number of girls who buy their toys; according to Wikipedia, the success prompted Mega-Blocks to introduce their own line.

Would Lego suddenly sell more to girls if they didn't advertise to boys? I admit to wanting to smack anyone who says "Companies put prejudice over cash", so we'll leave that out as an explanation. It's a quite theoretical assumption, so I don't know whether I can speak to it honestly. What would gender-neutral ads look like? Put more girls in? That seems simplistic. Have they worked before? My look-back says no. Haven't seen much evidence so far though.

I can see the insistence on that point though; If you want change it has to come through some medium, and your options are the government (which requires political will), the market (which may or may not help), or social shifts (which are reeeaaaly slow, requires a lot of nagging, and isn't guaranteed to work). Since there is zero political will on this, losing "Just let the market do it's thing and let the gender-neutral toys run free!" as an option leaves only the unpredictable, slow process of socio-cultural shifts. And honestly no one likes resorting to "We shall overcome! Some-daaaaaay".

[Rolan7]

Yeah, I guess I don't have hard evidence for that. I would like to point out that there's a lot of marketing now that wouldn't work at all 40 years ago because of the social change that's happened since then. Look at all the gay-inclusive ads nowadays, for example.

I don't watch TV, is this actually a thing now?  I hope so, but I remember a huge fuss being made a couple years ago when Mcdonald's had a (french-only) ad where a gay teenager was using a McDonald's to come out to his father, or something.

Though ideally the homosexuality wouldn't be a major feature of the advertisement...

Also, does Anita argue that the non-gender-segregated Lego commercials sold more Legos? Or just that they're better because they're not sexist?

I think the point is that the earlier gender-neutral advertising worked - and they even had that ad in the linked article, which uses rejection of gender stereotypes as a draw (much as the McDonald's ad used homosexuality as a draw, but both were tasteful).  Would it work today?  I don't know, but I doubt it - because a lot of money and a lot of experts are focused entirely on increasing profits.  Like misko27 says, they aren't pursuing a campaign of sexism here.  They just think it's the best way to sell Legos.

Which is one reason raising the issue actually helps...  If people are more aware of systemic sexism, they'll react less well to gender-specific ads.  I believe that the well-paid professionals who do market research for these ads will recognize such.

[palsch]

We can look at some numbers though: there's the fact that Lego's stereotypically "Girl" line, Friends, has been very successful for them, tripling that year the number of girls who buy their toys; according to Wikipedia, the success prompted Mega-Blocks to introduce their own line.

One question here, who is doing the buying?

That is, is the demand coming from girls who want gender specific Lego, or is it coming from parents/relatives/others who want to buy gender appropriate toys for the girls?

One thing that crops up time and time again is that girls seem to develop heavily gendered attitudes at a certain age. Before that age stuff like expected gender roles and aptitudes don't seem to matter nearly as much. This is a simple example, but it's just as true of attitudes towards STEM fields (and I'd tie Lego into this) as in this study (.pdf). Such attitudes are purely imposed upon them until such a time as they are internalised.

Lego seem to have chosen a path that sells two heavily gendered tracks, conforming to and reinforcing current gender assumptions. I don't doubt that this works great when the people buying the Legos are parents and other adults who have strong views on what are suitable (or desirable) toys for girls or boys. It might even be the most profitable approach given these trends.

That doesn't mean it's the best approach for our society or a desirable thing for the girls being sidelined into the pink/pastel women's ghetto of beauty shops.


Actually, one of Anita's other points is interesting. She notes that Lego have sidelined one of their more creation oriented lines in favour of the gendered story/character based splits. That alone seems fairly indicative of the whole thing.

[Reelya]

I think the point is that the earlier gender-neutral advertising worked

I question that. It worked so well they spent the best part of 40 years trying to fix the problem. They've been researching initiatives to bring in female customers since the 1970's, from about the same time as those ads. If the ads were the solution why the research?

So, there's no direct evidence that it worked. People don't overhaul things that just worked by themselves. The only reason we focus on the "boys" stuff like Lego Space is because those succeeded in the marketplace, they had concurrent lines like Duplo and Fabuland which were gender-neutral but failed in the market. They promoted Fabuland for over 10 years, but it never sold, and it wasn't because they were deliberately undermining it or anything, they poured money into the marketing for that, as well as the line that succeeded.

So, it's the benefit of hindsight where we only focus on the successful Lego ranges and note that they were marketed to boys - they marketed all kinds of stuff, but only a few lines really sold. So, it's disingenious to show TV ads for the successful lines and ignore the ads for the unsuccessful lines, implying they ONLY ever made Space Lego and Lego Technix, which were marketed to boys for good reasons - that's the core demographic who like shit like that.

But, there's also the idea that the Lego ranges like Lego Space are too "boy stuff". So make it less "boy stuff", but if you make it too "girl stuff" we'll also crucify you. What's the solution: make all the blocks the same size and grey perhaps, and don't attach stories to them? Then, everyone will be happy because they appeal to nobody.

BTW there apparently is Lego Disney Princesses, so there are movie tie-ins aimed at girls as well as things like Star Wars, Indiana Jones etc. If you get pissed at that, maybe you can point me at some ideas for better pro-girl Lego movie/game tie-ins?

[Rolepgeek]

*sigh*

My point, by this point, is that there shouldn't be separate 'boy stuff' and 'girl stuff'. Toys for boys and toys for girls should not be something we pound into children's heads simply because that's what's been done and what companies like(since they can manipulate your desires and tastes by the ads aimed at you as you age, thus causing you to buy their stuff...ads are annoying as an adult, and incredibly disturbing when watched by children, as it shapes their minds).

[Helgoland]

But there's demand for what is de facto boy and girl stuff, even if it's not advertised as such* - now you're asking companies to give up profits for no good reason, really.

*This is crucial, because you're right in those cases where gender clichés were formed by advertising; this is, however, not always the case.

[Rolepgeek]

There is, occasionally. How do we tell the difference between what's being imprinted onto kids by advertising, what's being imprinted onto kids by their parents and society, and what's apparently intrinsic to one gender or another as to what they like(I would have put it in quotes but I felt that might be rude)?

Besides, a business is not there to make profits by providing a service. Sure, that's what plenty of people start them for; I do not like or agree with those people. Not the purpose of a business. Greed should not be the primary motivating factor in any given endeavour. A business is there to provide a service, and making profit allows them to continue doing so.

Corporate executives do not need five yachts or some bullshit.

[Rolan7]

Corporations do exist entirely to maximize profit, hopefully in the long-term.  The publicly traded ones, at least.  I think it might actually be illegal for executives in such a company to put morality over their stockholder's interests. 

They aren't good or evil.  More like smart, patient vampires with a vested interest in the well being of their customers.  The real problems arise when someone short-sighted grabs the reigns and starts selling off the company's future for profit today.  A lot of corporate biology is designed to *prevent* that, but it still happens a lot...

But that's all aside.  I agree it's tough to tell how much of gender stereotypes are the result of imprinting.  I like to think gender is almost entirely a cultural construct.  In support of that is the fact that human cultures agree on very little when it comes to gender.  There's a worldwide tendency for patriarchy, but there's a lot of historical evidence for non-patriarchal societies as well.  And most civilized societies today are moving closer and closer to gender equality, which suggests that it's a natural state for humanity.

[Rolepgeek]

Personally, I don't think gender equality is a natural state for humanity. I think that the natural state is patriarchy; that's the problem. If you observe the behaviour of the chimpanzees in the wild, for example, whom I believe are our closest evolutionary relatives if I remember correctly, they're also very patriarchal in their social interactions. But natural is not the same as good, which seems surprising to many people. Most civilized societies move closer to equality because that is the end-step state for sentient, sapient beings with a vested interest in social interactions, and a society in which brain matters more than brawn.

I don't think corporations are evil, I just think that that's not what a business should or is for.

That said, there are a lot of evil corporations, it's just that they tend to be pragmatic evil.

[Neonivek]

I like to picture Corporations as monsters or at least monstrous hungry hippos. Left unchecked they will gobble you up and require due diligence.

[Reelya]

> Personally, I don't think gender equality is a natural state for humanity. I think that the natural state is
> patriarchy; that's the problem.

Well yeah, that's a good point. Because many of the arguments seem to be just break down patriarchy and things will "naturally" just turn out ok. My view is that what is desirable isn't always what, to use a physics term is the "low energy state" that things will gravitate towards.

Another way to state it is nature doesn't share our value systems, it just "is": so we actually have to work hard to build the positive things we want, they're not going to magically materialize because we "broke down the system, man".

I know way too many hippie types who have this ultra-optimistic back to nature thing, like that would fix every problem in the world. For example, one woman I know was going on about how industrial society is to blame for all the problems, and we should all go back to a farming lifestyle to fix the problems. So dumb, she's a feminist, urban young woman with a career in the arts, yet she has no idea how much modern life has made things generally easier for someone like her, and advocates going back to what is effectively the most patriarchal system in existence - subsistence farm life.

[MrWiggles]

Whats the working definition of  patriarchy here? Is it the tumblr use, or is it more literal academia use?