Would anyone like to join in an effort to convince retailers to stop categorizing toys by gender?

[OneHandWavingFree]

Following on from this thread and similar ones, a few of us are interested in discussing ways to send a message to retailers that it is not acceptable to designate 'boys' and 'girls' toy aisles which reinforce the message that science and adventure are "boys stuff", while girls should be primarily occupied with looking 'sexy' or practicing for domestic drudgery.

The first steps might be to draft a letter and identify a few retailers to target for an email campaign. Other ideas of how to get the message across are very welcome too, though.

Would anyone like to join in?

I think campaigns is for official MN campaigns only, it does say threads about other campaigns will be moved.

Ah yes, you are quite right, Trisha. We'd better not start thread there.

Bloody hell - all this social networking is exhausting!

Right - have posted some updates (exciting one being that Dr Laura Nelson is talking on BBC World S tomorrow at 7.50), done lots of commenting, liking, tweeting, finding some lovely people to tweet and follow, (including Peggy Orensteing ad Dr Nelson and others that liked the Swedish toy catalogue). All in all, had a great evening and feel quite heart-warmed that there is such a lot of similar sentiment out there....

But now I must be off to my comfy bed. My bum is sore and my is gone.

Ooh - stats at FB = 286, Twitter = 75. Going up, not down!

Well done CC! Are you all tweeted out?

Indeed I am ashes!

Yes well done CC. I really should get to bed now too. Think I accidentally patronised someone on the fb group

Survey update:

Stores - 19 surveys done - still needed: Hamleys, John Lewis, boots, HoF, mothercare, Smyths, wilkinsons

Online - 21 surveys done - still needed: Tesco, Hamleys, entertainer, wilkinsons.

Brilliant work - if we can get all/almost all done at least once by Saturday evening I will try to do a first cut of the ranking.

Thanks all surveyers

Yay! 300 likes on the facebook page now! We're averaging 100 a day, brilliant!

all round

Just posted a new photo album on the Facebook page. Check it out, but check your blood pressure first! (And remind yourself that we're doing something about it).

Himalaya I will have 4 or 5 surveys for you, today I concentrated on pictures but will do surveys over the weekend. 40 surveys is great!

Instead of going straight to the ranking, can we have some discussion (and debate if necessary) on the thread about how the ranking will be determined? The collaboration on the drafting of the survey worked really well, I think we should take the same approach to deciding how it's weighted.

We all might have differing opinions on points values for things like signs, colour coding, etc., or might want to come up with ratios by which to rank retailers (what's the ratio of makeup sets to science toys when you search for 'girls' on a store's website? etc.).

Ah, mystery solved!

OHWF, did you tweet the pictures also? If not, I think our automatic Facebook-Twitter link did.

The only thing is it didn't also tweet your comments, so it means the twitter account tweeted a load of picture links with no description in quick succession, which is not great twitter-etiquette.

If it was the automatic thing, I'll have a look at the settings on it tomorrow if I can and see if we can prevent that in future (or if anyone else has a burning desire to do it, go for it!)

OHWF - yes I agree, but I think I need to have a go at building it first - see what it looks like, figure out options - then you will have something more concrete to comment on.

I will put the spreadsheet on google docs or something so folks can see the raw data and the first iteration of the rating - then we can all muck around with weightings etc...

It won't be cut and dried. Ok?

Night night.

No, I didn't tweet them! Yikes sorry about that, aufaniae - didn't realise that it was that automatic.

Surely as some things are better suited to one type of social networking, and some to the other, we shouldn't have everything automatically going from one to the other?

Great, Himalaya - yes, being able to look at the raw data would be great. I think different things might jump out to different people.

We can have a look at the settings, I imagine we can change it.
(Or if not I net there will be another service out there which works the way we want it to).

I just saw the tweet from the woman at the Indie wanting someone to email her- Excellent!

Brilliant isn't it :) OHWF / Himalaya are in contact with her. Hopefully there should be something on the campaign in the independent on Sunday this weekend! (fingers crossed!)

Wow that's fab, well done everyone

Wow that's amazing! :)

We don't know exactly what it is she'd like from us yet. Could be just a quote on acrelated topic maybe. Hopefully it's all about this campaign! (would be great!) we'll find out today ...

Either way, great we're getting media interest already, very exciting! Well done everyone (poss a little early for !? )

Wow this is amazing! I feel bad i half suggested some kind of campaigm on anotjet thread then onrhand started this and tho i have commented i have mainly beem dealing with puking children so havent dond much other than sharing links on fn.

Am shopping today so shall go find the surveyd so i cam bookmark them on my phone for when out.

Flipping brilliant

Reckon BBC Breakfast and Woman's Hour might be interested in us too. Do we follow at the mo?