To think that the ELC should realise that some nurses are male. And some doctors are female. And some men dance ballet. And some women engage in piracy on the high seas. Etc.

[missedith01]

"For the little princess in the family we have great feminine outfits like Butterfly Fairy, Sleeping Beauty, Ballerina and Nurse?s uniform. Why not add a medical case for that extra touch of authenticity.

The boys are catered for too, with great Doctor, Policeman & Fireman uniforms, not to mention fantastic Pirate and Knight costumes. All these can be combined with a range of accessories so your child will really look the part."

www.elc.co.uk/children%27s-dressing-up-outfits/5540,default,sc.html

'So Long' - my DD is 9 months and have just got back from a shopping trip with her where 2 people came up and said 'ooh, isn't he lovely' - presumably because she was wearing a blue and green striped top and beige shorts. I just said 'yes, she is' - they looked a bit . I was also wearing blue and jeans but no one seemed to think that was odd! I always went to ELC with my son (now 22years old) as it was really ahead of its time then. Was so shocked when I went back in with DD this year - I turned round and went straight back out again!

I've been wracking my brains trying to think of any gender-stereotype toys from when I was a child (I was always a bit of a neutral-gender child - "tomboy" in those days - so much so that my mum painted me with trousers on in her mural of the family as rabbits (my dad had trousers and my mum and two sisters had skirts - it was the only thing that marked gender and it made me look like a boy, so i got my mum to paint my trousers into a skirt - you could always see the trouser line underneath!)

sorry for diversion...

we had a PINK car!

okay, so the pink car was originally RED and lived outside in the sun 365 days of the year....

Thanks for the reply Zingy. I'll look out for any new happyland stuff when the Autumn/Winter catalogue comes out and see if there's any improvement.

Ive just had a look in the new catalogue and the only new happyland thing in there is a red London bus, it says it comes with a driver, conductor and two passengers, i confused as to which one is the driver though, I can see a female conductor, a school boy and an older lady, there seems to be another girl/lady that appears to be wearing a HiVis jacket thingy, she could be the driver but she seems very young... but maybe im just being ageist. Or im getting old myself... you know you're getting old when bus drivers and police officers are getting younger, even childrens toy ones!!
Not many new happyland things but lots of price reductions!

I read most of the comments, but the last time I was in hospital I don't seem to remember that the doctors, either male or female, wore different 'uniforms' they both wear the white coats etc. Firemen/women wear the same things, police officers are the same - see what's going on here? Just buy the stuff the kids want and they will make it up as they go along.

I was in ELC yesterday, and I didn't see the pink globe - for gods sake what is the world coming to? I will deffo not be buying one of those - to be honest I dont go there very often, as I do not think they are as good value as they used to be.

Have just had a reply to my email and they said they have removed the stereotypical comments and thanks for pointing it out. Looking on the website they have been true to their word! Well done ELC.

(Apologies if I am repeating what others have already found out!)

yawn............

Agree with previous poster that trying to get Lego suitable for girls is a bloody nightmare.

Obviously basic Lego is fine - but why no kits to build something half decent? The Belville stuff offers next to no construction value whatsoever, and everything else is monsters, Ben 10 and aliens unless you look online and then it's often hard to get and expensive. Some items on ebay go for more than they do on the Lego website - especially girly minifigures which I've seen go for £7 each plus postage.

I have just bought DD a house building kit for her birthday which is a nice compromise but not cheap at £40 inc postage.

Blimey - have been wanting to rant about crapness of Lego for girls all week - feel thoroughly destressed now!!!

On the whole doctor nurse thing. As a 4 year old I believed that men were doctors and women were nurses but I genuinely didn't know that a nurse was anything other than a female doctor. In my little 4 year old mind, doctors were to nurses what waiters were to waitresses. I never realised they actually did different jobs!

I think a lot of the girls must be nurses thing is down to job confusion rather than any gender stereotyping

Here's the email I sent them after a distictly lacklustre first attempt at a reply from them. They never replied to this one, sent over a year ago! I emailed a copy to pinkstinks too who were interested as they'd had a similar response.

"Dear Claire

Thanks for your reply, however it has the feeling of a standard reply (I presume you've had a few letters and emails along these lines) and it's unsatisfactory as it doesn't actually address the points clarified in my second email. Please can you read it again - I have cut and pasted it in bold text below - and respond directly to me on these points, in particular on your overall ethos and marketing strategy, which appears to use gendered colours to 'point' people to different parts of the shop or website depending on who they are purchasing for, and to use text which clearly defines who products are aimed at.

I'd also like to refer you again to the science museum online shop
www.sciencemuseumshop.co.uk/browse/price/20-up-to-39.99.html?showAll=true&gclid=CJ2wiKf RwZ4CFZQA4wodN0QlqA
for an example of how these things can be done really well, and to encourage your company to think hard about returning to the values which made you so successful and popular in the '80s.

"Firstly I would like to clarify that although the use of colour is important, it's not only this that sends the gender messages I was referring to. Please have a look, for example, at your 'dressing up' pages on the website. "Every little girl loves dressing up" - do boys not enjoy dressing up? Clearly they do, as shown on your website, but they all better only want to dress up as stereotypes from the 20th Century. See below quoted directly from your website:

"For the little princess in the family we have great feminine outfits like Butterfly Fairy, Sleeping Beauty, Ballerina and Nurse?s uniform. Why not add a medical case for that extra touch of authenticity.

The boys are catered for too, with great Doctor, Policeman & Fireman uniforms, not to mention fantastic Pirate and Knight costumes. All these can be combined with a range of accessories so your child will really look the part. "

I hadn't noticed this wording until now, I was just going to provide you a link to show your boy models in firefighter outfits and girl models in fairy costumes, but having read this copy I'm actually shocked. Here's the page: www.elc.co.uk/toys/dressing-up-roleplay/dressing-up-outfits/?filter=filter&category=604

As I say, I do appreciate your response but I think it goes further than the products you order, though that's important too. I think your marketing department is probably where the review needs to take place - or maybe it goes deeper even than that?

I look forward to hearing from you again, and would appreciate it if you can also let me know what kind of timescales are involved in these reviews so I can see whether and how things are changing."

Feel free to plagarise!!

oops sorry hocuspontas just seen your last post! Fantastic stuff, well done for that.

Let's hope they now review their marketing policy as a whole.

have checked the site, hooray.
sadly they still have a 'search by gender' sidebar, sigh...

Have now received this also:

Dear Missedith01,

Following our previous response to your email regarding the content on our website regarding dressing up and role play outfits, we would like to add the following:

We apologise for the inappropriate wording that was placed on dressing up product page, it is certainly not our intention to promote stereotyping and we fully appreciate this does not represent our brand values. At Early Learning Centre we pride ourselves on offering a huge range of toys and in an assortment of colours for customers to choose from and our photography throughout our website and catalogue features boys ironing, girls playing with space aliens, boys playing with dolls, boys cooking and pushing buggies, girls building and playing with remote control insects.

As a direct result of your feedback we immediately removed the text concerned from the website regarding the dressing up outfits and would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are extremely sorry for any disappointment or upset caused.

I hope this information is of help and I have gone some way to restoring your faith in the Early Learning Centre.

Kind regards

Adrian Moss
Early Learning Centre
Internet Customer Services

OP- bleurgh. This kind of thing makes me very cross. As do the all pink toys for girls. Was very gratified to overhear my 12 year old telling the baby a few months ago that when she was older she could play with lego "rather than all that stupid pink stuff", and that that way she'd be clever at science. She goes to a girls' school where they seem to be doing something right!

Plus3 I think the issue with 'women's jobs' v 'men's jobs' is also an issue of misunderstanding the actual nature of professions like nursing, and this is underlined by costumes of nurses wearing caps and hats that emphasise the personal care(and thus more 'female') side of the job instead of the 21st century 'medical' side (nurse practitioners, GP practise nurses, etc. being responsible for prescribing medication and managing care of patients with minimal input from medics).

As a teacher myself, it also grates everytime when the first thing the vast majority of people ask when they find out I'm a teacher is "Primary?". No, it's secondary actually - two X chromosomes do not preclude you from dealing with male pupils who tower over you (and who had damn well better have their homework with them), and more than 50% of secondary staff are female now.

It also ties into the popular perception that teaching younger children is a 'softer' option. Though why people think this is the case when it's primary teachers who teach kids to read and count, as well as cover everything else in the curriculum, I've no idea...

The word 'everytime' should not be there!

emoticon

great news that ELC have changed the wording on the page.
It goes to show that things can be changed if people complain.

ZingyDogsBody, I think ELC should give you a prize for doing additional PR work for them over and above your day job :-)
I work for Vodafone - we celebrate when employees go the extra mile for customers - nice things like all-expenses paid weekend in London

I always get the boys ELC version for my daughter - ie I recently bought the blue ELC cash register not the pink one.

ELC and all shops out there take heed - many parents dont want all this pink for a girl and blue for a boy nonsense - PLEASE STOP IT NOW!! It's making me nauseous!!

They've changed the wording on the page but they've still separated the toys & costumes by gender! We haven't won anything yet.

My SIL just had a little girl. Everyone bought her presents, of course. I bought her a blanket, in cream, with a brown teddy on. She rang me to say thank you and how wonderful it was that I had chosen cream instead of the pink that she was being flooded with. Every other person had bought pink, so, what, 30-40 people who sent presents to one child bought pink clothing/bears/toys out of all the colour choices. Sounds like consumers voting with their purses to me.

Yes the shops should do their bit but they are businesses there to make money and the person in the street buys pink for their girl then the shops will sell it. Expecting anything else is naive. Sure, make the shops aware but you need to work harder than that and target everybody, not just the ELC. Just sending emails to ELC who are providing what the customer wants, regardless of whether you like it or not is not going to make it all go away.

I wrote to Mothercare to complain about the male doctor, female nurse etc etc dressing up and also suggested that the blue/pink clothing and toy divide was over the top.

They replied that the costumes could be worn by either sex. I had pointed out in my letter that it would be lovely for girls to have regular role models in catalogues and on boxes, so that a girl who does want the doctor outfit does not see only a boy on the box. So I guess I got a 'stock' reply eh!

They said that the blue/pink was not an issue they were interested in addressing.

I also wrote to Lion in the Sun (baby UV suits for the beach) to say "lovely products, won't be buying because of the blue/pink" and they replied that their unisex lines had not sold.

Such a pity, but I wonder how long ago that was? I do suspect that some of these shops have not changed their consumer stance or renewed their maret research for some time...

I work in a nursery and we have all types of costumes. However the boys and girls actually try and fight with each other over the disney princess costumes.

The boys love these dresses for some reason and they cause more arguments than anything in the nursery! I dont think it bothers kids what gender thinks are made for.