Eleanor O’Mahony ¦ Contributing Writer
Something happened in the mid-90s – the gendering of products in order to break consumers down into smaller, more easily targeted groups became a widespread habit worldwide, and an odd phenomena of needlessly gendered products began to appear in our marketplaces. We are exposed to product gendering from a very young age, and with consumer culture taking over society, it is impossible to escape these perpetuated ideas of gender norms. While there are some products which are specifically only used by one gender for biological reasons, like tampons, there are other completely neutral items which are being marketed for men and women separately. With social media sites storing and selling all of our data, targeted advertising is becoming more prominent and this drives companies to even further segregate the market for more effective selling.
Does it start from this young age and the divide in our toy stores? Do we actually want or need gender specific toothpaste, one marketed to us by Shakira, the other by a tennis champion?
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The process is called ‘market segmentation’ and it breaks down a wider group into smaller ones with more particular needs and priorities. Gender is a very obvious split. However, when it comes to things like toothpaste, tablets and pens, do we really have a different set of needs and wants? Whether we do or not is not important, as companies will try to convince you that we do. They will proceed to package the product using colour schemes of pink, lilac and a very ‘feminine’ green for women, and ‘macho’ and ‘manly’ greys, navies and blacks for men. They will even go as far as rounding out the edges on women’s products and packaging.
Kinder has recently faced criticism regarding its famous Kinder Surprise Eggs. Once gender neutral, they have made a move to split the eggs into male and female targeted items. The girls’ eggs packaging features pink a pink wrapper. The surprise inside is also targeted at girls, being a little Barbie toy or something similar. The boys’ version features the colour blue in the packaging, and they find toys like racecars or superheroes. It is sad to think that a company like Kinder, which markets itself as a family friendly entity and which, for many people, provokes nostalgia for their own childhood, made this switch. Have we not made any progress at all? Do we really need to gender the throwaway toys that our children receive in chocolate eggs in order to capitalise on a gender split?
In sales, a phenomenon of ‘gender contamination’ exists. This basically means that when women buy a certain product, men stop wanting it. What does this say about gender norms in our society
This issue of product gendering is, by no means, exclusive to children’s products. BIC, the mainstream stationery company, launched a range of ‘Pens for Her’ a while ago, and have been ridiculed for their choice. The pens were featured in a satirical way on the popular talk show ‘Ellen’ and since then, there has been a spate of angry, satirical Amazon reviews for the product. These pens were marketed as more comfortable and prettier than the average pen. They are, of course, designed with a beautiful palette of soft, pastel colours which are ‘obviously’ more ‘suitable’ for women.
In sales, a phenomenon of ‘gender contamination’ exists. This basically means that when women buy a certain product, men stop wanting it. What does this say about gender norms in our society? That masculinity is sacred and can be undermined by women doing something like simply buying a set of DIY tools? God forbid someone may live alone, have a disabled partner who cannot help around the house, or simply be interested in handiwork? Perhaps this is the root of why there are less numbers of women in science, and men make jokes about not going into the kitchen to help outside, clearly not seeing their presence there as a simply courtesy of helping out to anyone who they live with, be they male, female or anything in between.
This brings up another important point – although we are all becoming increasingly aware of gender as a spectrum, all of these products are targeted in a black and white manner. Or rather, blue and pink. It perpetuates gender as a binary, rather than something which is fluid or non-existent, to some people. It reinforces the false ideal that there are two genders in the world, and that they can be easily differentiated by something as simple as the colours blue and pink.
I think the most saddening thing about the gendering of products is that this sales technique actually works! They would not persist with it if it did not. This brings up the question of where our ideas of gender norms come from. Does it start from this young age and the divide in our toy stores? Do we actually want or need gender specific toothpaste, one marketed to us by Shakira, the other by a tennis champion? Is product genderisation a part of the cause of our societal norms, or just a symptom of the wider social misconception that gender is something so fragile and fleeting that it can be defined with things as basic as a single colour?
