California's New Gender-Neutral Toy Law Revives a 50-Year Feminist Fight

California’s New Gender-Neutral Toy Law Revives a 50-Year Feminist Fight
12/20/2023 by Rob Goldberg
The impetus for a landmark California law is straight out of 1970s toy campaigns against gender-based marketing—like Ms. magazine’s “Toys for Free Children.”



Ms. magazine, December 1973.

Fifty years ago, the December issue of Ms. magazine featured a no-holds-barred toy buying guide by the magazine’s firebrand co-founder and editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin, titled “Toys for Free Children.” Year-end articles on toy buying were a mainstay of women’s magazines, but none had ever suggested that what mothers bought (or boycotted) at Toys ‘R’ Us could be a feminist act. The times had changed. But the toy industry hadn’t. As usual, Pogrebin was not going to take notice and do nothing. “Why not use consumer power,” she wrote, “to reform the Neanderthals?” As Pogrebin reported, every kind of toy—from train sets, to board games, to kitchen toys—were marketed exclusively to either boys or girls. Belittling or sexualizing images of women were ubiquitous. And when it came to science and educational toys, only boys populated the packages and the advertising. The feminine mystique was still alive and well in Toyland.




Each December, editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin created a holiday gift guide filled with toys that are “nonracist and nonsexist in the way [they are] packaged, conceived, and planned for play” and are “respectful of a child’s intellect, self-esteem, and creativity.” This is the list from 1976.
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Pogrebin’s blistering critique of the toy business gave voice and a national profile to a grassroots toy movement that had taken the industry by storm earlier that year. 1973 was the moment when members of NOW not only formed a subcommittee on toys, but also, at the organization’s annual meeting, founded a new industry watchdog group called the Public Action Coalition on Toys. The coalition would soon give out awards to companies that met their standards for socially progressive playthings—and become a major thorn in the side of the toy business leaders.This was also the time NOW chapters across the country began visiting toy stores to tally the extent of stereotyping in toys. Protests and petition campaigns ensued, with leaflets carrying slogans like, “A good toy is good for a girl or a boy.” Equal play had joined equal pay on the feminist agenda.




Ms. magazine, March 1974 (featuring Marlo Thomas).

Leaders at Ms. and NOW were also joined by the Women’s Action Alliance, which had just launched the Non-Sexist Child Development Project, under the direction of Barbara Sprung. Dissatisfied with the representational toys available for young children, Sprung initiated a longstanding partnership with the Milton Bradley Company to manufacture the first expressly non-sexist, racially diverse, and ability-inclusive early childhood toys in industry history. The toys, which first appeared in 1974, were Sprung’s designs. How did the toy business respond? A few major toy companies seemed to be listening to their critics—although it’s hard to know which ones harbored genuine sympathy for the movement’s ideals and which simply hoped to capitalize on women’s liberation chic. Purveyors of popular TV toys like Kenner and Ideal invested a ton of money to develop all-new action-oriented fashion dolls with less typically female names, like Dusty and Derry, that tried to take the Barbie template in more expressly feminist directions.

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In 1972, Letty Cottin Pogrebin worked with Marlo Thomas to release Free to Be… You and Me. (Free To Be Foundation)

On Jan. 1, 2024, California will officially begin enforcing Assembly Bill 1084, a landmark bill in the movement for a more inclusive toy culture. Reinforcing the traditional gender binary through toys, for the first time in history, will be a civil offense. The bill opens by invoking a 1959 California civil rights law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against consumers of a protected class. In this case, it’s gender identity. Under the law, big-box stores like Walmart can still have aisles labeled for boys or for girls, but those who choose to do so will also be required to create a gender-neutral toy section on the same floor. Those who violate the law will be subject to a fine. The impetus for the legislation—co-sponsored by current California Assemblymember Evan Low and former Assemblymember Cristina Garcia—is straight out of the 1970s toy campaigns. As the law states, the conventional gendered approach to toy selling “incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.”
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If we as parents and consumers can’t influence the toy world, what hope can we have to change the real one?

https://msmagazine.com/2023/12/20/california-gender-neutral-toys-for-free-children/