Gender-neutral toys for kindergarten children

Toy design can promote negative gender stereotypes and create inconsistency in children's play practices. This is the opinion of PhD student Mairi-Claire MacDonald, who is currently researching that topic at Design School Kolding.

- Studies show that children's play behaviour - especially play with gender-specific designs - directly affects the way children learn about social norms and behaviour in a given society, she says. It is unclear how toy designers today evaluate how individual designs are played with by children. The project does not argue that there is anything wrong with designing gender-specific toys, but wants to focus on the gap that also exists between a given design and how children actually play with it in practice.

That is why Mairi-Claire MacDonald, as part of her research, has developed the tool 'PoP (Polarities of Play)', which aims to help toy designers map the potential significance of a design for the play experience itself. The tool can also be used for post-reflection.