RE: The Social Birds & the Bees: The socialization of gender, a toy store ethnography
It is sufficient to enter toys shop or clothes shops and investigates what we have for boys and girls (paying a particular attention to the colors)
I always find it fascinating how clear the marketing is and yet hardly anyone bats an eye to it! Gender equality certainly needs to extend to all aspects of which gender encompasses, toys and clothes included. Little girls like to get muddy and little boys like to bake cupcakes!
There is a biological definition of sex which has been confused with gender. Gender is psychological and a social construct. The reason that it is detrimental is because the binary classification of gender creates specific requirements to be either or which not everyone fits which creates complete outsiders, alienating entire groups of people.
Marketing... what can we do about it, except ignoring those shops and not entering. I wish more people would do it... then maybe something could change, as money is always a good trigger for this kind of things.
I must say... that I agree with your last comment. I mixed genders and sexes. But for my defense, this is miles away from my zone of comfort (physics :p ). Thanks for bringing me back to reality!