Mon, April 12 to Mon, April, 19 Gender Marketing

 

Vaccine Information for those 16 plus

Rochester Riverside Convention Center. 123 E. Main St., Rochester

Wednesday: 1 p.m. – 7 p.m.

Thursday: Noon – 7 p.m.

Friday: Noon- 7 p.m.

Saturday: Noon – 6 p.m.

https://www.monroecounty.gov/healthcalls/vac/form/rrccallnyselig9dmcj76d

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Farmer Boys is offering free burgers for a year to those who get a tattoo with the restaurant chain's name.

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First grade of the fourth quarter.....almost there! DUE TODAY for potential full credit. After midnight, your maximum grade is a 75.

First take a look at the follow advertisements, noting how marketing has evolved. 


Assignment: One watch this video on gender marketing (7:30)
the world in pink and blue

                               TWO: watch this Barbie commercial Moschino Barbie

                             THREE: Read the article from "The Atlantic     Monthly"

                  FOUR: Read the Pink Tax article

                 FIVE: respond to the following:  From what you have read and watched, discuss to what extent advertising is a reflection of a society or can it possibly impact social change? Do you note any parallels with other social media platforms?You must incorporate information from both the videos and the two articles into your response. 

                use an MLA heading
                size 12, Times New Roman font
                double spacing
                minimum 300 words

                include internal citations to note your evidence
                

Cite as follows within the response: (Pink and Blue), (Moshino), (Health Line). 

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Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were 50 Years Ago

Even at times when discrimination was much more common, catalogs contained more neutral appeals than advertisements today.

When it comes to buying gifts for children, everything is color-coded: Rigid boundaries segregate brawny blue action figures from pretty pink princesses, and most assume that this is how it’s always been. But in fact, the princess role that’s ubiquitous in girls’ toys today was exceedingly rare prior to the 1990s—and the marketing of toys is more gendered now than even 50 years ago, when gender discrimination and sexism were the norm.

In my research on toy advertisements, I found that even when gendered marketing was most pronounced in the 20th century, roughly half of toys were still being advertised in a gender-neutral manner. This is a stark difference from what we see today, as businesses categorize toys in a way that more narrowly forces kids into boxes. For example, a recent study by sociologists Carol Auster and Claire Mansbach found that all toys sold on the Disney Store’s website were explicitly categorized as being “for boys” or “for girls”—there was no “for boys and girls” option, even though a handful of toys could be found on both lists.  

That is not to say that toys of the past weren’t deeply infused with gender stereotypes. Toys for girls from the 1920s to the 1960s focused heavily on domesticity and nurturing. For example, a 1925 Sears ad for a toy broom-and-mop set proclaimed: “Mothers! Here is a real practical toy for little girls. Every little girl likes to play house, to sweep, and to do mother’s work for her":

An ad from a 1925 Sears catalog (Sears)

Such toys were clearly designed to prepare young girls to a life of homemaking, and domestic tasks were portrayed as innately enjoyable for women. Ads like this were still common, though less prevalent, into the 1960s—a budding housewife would have felt right at home with the toys to “delight the little homemaker” in the 1965 Sears Wishbook:

An ad from the 1965 Sears Wishbook (Sears)

While girls’ toys focused on domesticity, toys for boys from the '20s through the '60s emphasized preparation for working in the industrial economy. For example, a 1925 Sears ad for an Erector Set stated, “Every boy likes to tinker around and try to build things. With an Erector Set he can satisfy this inclination and gain mental development without apparent effort. … He will learn the fundamentals of engineering”:

An ad from a 1925 Sears catalog (Sears)

However, gender-coded toy advertisements like these declined markedly in the early 1970s. By then, there were many more women in the labor force and, after the Baby Boom, marriage and fertility rates had dropped. In the wake of those demographic shifts and at the height of feminism's second-wave, playing upon gender stereotypes to sell toys had become a risky strategy. In the Sears catalog ads from 1975, less than 2 percent of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls. More importantly, there were many ads in the ‘70s that actively challenged gender stereotypes—boys were shown playing with domestic toys and girls were shown building and enacting stereotypically masculine roles such as doctor, carpenter, and scientist:

 In the 1970s, Sears catalogues had a higher proportion of gender-neutral advertisements. (Sears)

Although gender inequality in the adult world continued to diminish between the 1970s and 1990s, the de-gendering trend in toys was short-lived. In 1984, the deregulation of children’s television programming suddenly freed toy companies to create program-length advertisements for their products, and gender became an increasingly important differentiator of these shows and the toys advertised alongside them. During the 1980s, gender-neutral advertising receded, and by 1995, gendered toys made up roughly half of the Sears catalog’s offerings—the same proportion as during the interwar years.

However, late-century marketing relied less on explicit sexism and more on implicit gender cues, such as color, and new fantasy-based gender roles like the beautiful princess or the muscle-bound action hero. These roles were still built upon regressive gender stereotypes—they portrayed a powerful, skill-oriented masculinity and a passive, relational femininity—that were obscured with bright new packaging. In essence, the "little homemaker" of the 1950s had become the "little princess" we see today.

It doesn’t have to be this way. While gender is what’s traditionally used to sort target markets, the toy industry (which is largely run by men) could categorize its customers in a number of other ways—in terms of age and interest, for example. (This could arguably broaden the consumer base.) However, the reliance on gender categorization comes from the top: I found no evidence that the trends of the past 40 years are the result of consumer demand. That said, the late-20th-century increase in the percentage of Americans who believe in gender differences suggests that the public wasn’t exactly rejecting gendered toys, either.

While the second-wave feminist movement challenged the tenets of gender difference, the social policies to create a level playing field were never realized and a cultural backlash towards feminism began to gain momentum in the 1980s. In this context, the model outlined in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus—which implied that women gravitated toward certain roles not because of oppression but because of some innate preference—took hold. This new tale of gender difference, which emphasizes freedom and choice, has been woven deeply into the fabric of contemporary childhood. The reformulated story does not fundamentally challenge gender stereotypes; it merely repackages them to make them more palatable in a “post-feminist” era. Girls can be anything—as long as it’s passive and beauty-focused.

Many who embrace the new status quo in toys claim that gender-neutrality would be synonymous with taking away choice, in essence forcing children to become androgynous automatons who can only play with boring tan objects.  However, as the bright palette and diverse themes found among toys from the ‘70s demonstrates, decoupling them from gender actually widens the range of options available. It opens up the possibility that children can explore and develop their diverse interests and skills, unconstrained by the dictates of gender stereotypes. And ultimately, isn’t that what we want for them?

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Pink Tax: The Real Cost of Gender-Based Pricing

If you shop at any online retailer or brick-and-mortar store, you’ll get a crash course in advertising based on gender.

“Masculine” products come in black or navy blue packaging with boutique brand names like Bull Dog, Vikings Blade, and Rugged and Dapper. If the products have a fragrance, it’s a muskier scent.

Meanwhile, “female” products are hard to miss: an explosion of pink and light purple, with an added dose of glitter. If scented, the fragrances are fruity and floral, like sweet pea and violet, apple blossom, and raspberry rain — whatever that is.

While scent and color are perhaps the most obvious difference between products traditionally aimed at men and women, there’s another, subtler difference: the price tag. And it’s costing those who buy products aimed at women significantly more.

The ‘pink tax’

Gender-based pricing, also known as “pink tax,” is an upcharge on products traditionally intended for women which have only cosmetic differences from comparable products traditionally intended for men.

In other words, it’s not actually a tax.

It’s an “income-generating scenario for private companies who found a way to make their product look either more directed to or more appropriate for the population and saw that as a moneymaker,” explains Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, a lawyer, vice president for the Brennan School of Justice at NYU School of Law, and co-founder of Period Equity.

“I think the motivations around the pink tax come more explicitly from a classic capitalist stance: If you can make money off of it, you should,” she continues.

Yet pink tax is not a new phenomenon. Over the past 20 years, California, Connecticut, Florida, and South Dakota have released reports on gender pricing in their states. In 2010, Consumer Reports highlighted the matter nationally with a study that found, at the time, women paid as much as 50 percent more than men did for similar products.

The issue was delineated more finely in 2015 when the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs released a report about price disparities for 794 comparable products from 91 brands sold throughout the city.

The report examined five different industries, such as personal care products or senior/home healthcare products. These encompassed 35 product categories, such as bodywash or shampoo. In every single of those five industries, consumer goods marketed to women and girls cost more. The same was the case in all but five of the 35 product categories.

Researchers looked at 106 products in the toys and accessories category and found that, on average, those intended for girls were priced 7 percent higher.

The most egregious upcharges, however, were among personal care products.

For example, a five-pack of Schick Hydro cartridges in purple packaging cost $18.49, while the same count of Schick Hydro refills in blue packaging cost $14.99.

Again, other than their packaging color, the products look exactly the same.

NYC’s report found women faced an average price difference of 13 percent for personal care products among the 122 products compared in the study. And the authors aptly noted that these items, such as shaving gel and deodorant, are the ones purchased most frequently compared with other categories — meaning that the costs add up over time. While this is unfair for all those shopping for these products, that 13 percent price increase hits women and girls who come from lower income households even harder.

Legislative attempts, however, could correct the pink tax. In 1995, then-Assemblywoman Jackie Speier successfully passed a bill that forbade gender pricing of services, such as haircuts.

Now as a Congresswoman, Rep. Speier (D-CA) is going national: She reintroduced the Pink Tax Repeal Act this year to specifically address products subject to the pink tax. (An earlier version of the bill introduced in 2016 failed to make it out of committee). If the new bill passes, it would allow state attorneys general “to take civil action on consumers wronged by discriminatory practices.” In other words, they can go directly after businesses that charge men and women different prices.

The ‘tampon tax’

The pink tax isn’t the only upcharge that affects women. There’s also the “tampon tax,” which refers to the sales tax applied to feminine hygiene items such as pads, liners, tampons, and cups.

Currently, 36 states still apply sales tax to these necessary menstrual items, according to data from Weiss-Wolf’s organization Period Equity. The sales tax on these products vary and are based on the state’s tax code.

So what? You might wonder. Everyone pays sales tax. It seems fair that tampons and pads have a sales tax, too.

Not quite, said Weiss-Wolf. States establish their own tax exemptions, and in her book Periods Gone Public: Taking A Stand for Menstrual Equity, she elaborates on some very not-so-necessary exemptions some states have.

“I went through every tax code in every state that didn’t exempt menstrual products to see what they did exempt, and the list is ridiculous,” Weiss-Wolf tells Healthline. The tax-exempt items, listed both in Weiss-Wolf’s book and ones Healthline tracked down, range from marshmallows in Florida to cooking wine in California. Maine is snowmobiles, and it’s barbecue sunflower seeds in Indiana and gun club memberships in Wisconsin.

If barbecue sunflower seeds are tax-exempt, argues Weiss-Wolf, then feminine hygiene products should be, too.

The tampon tax is often incorrectly referred to as a luxury tax, Weiss-Wolf explains. Rather, it’s an ordinary sales tax applied to all goods — but since only people who menstruate use feminine hygiene products, the tax disproportionately affects us.

Just like the upcharge on personal care items geared for women, the small amounts of sales tax we shell out every month to manage Aunt Flo adds up over a lifetime, and this adversely affects women from low-income households.

“This issue has real resonance for people,” Weiss-Wolf tells Healthline. “I think partly because the experience of menstruation is so universal for anybody who’s experienced it, as is the understanding that being able to manage it is so essential to one’s ability to participate fully in daily life and have a dignified existence.”

“This issue has real resonance for people,” Weiss-Wolf tells Healthline. “I think partly because the experience of menstruation is so universal for anybody who’s experienced it, as is the understanding that being able to manage it is so essential to one’s ability to participate fully in daily life and have a dignified existence.”

Both men and women of all political stripes understand that the “economics of menstruation,” as Weiss-Wolf calls it, is involuntary. Her group Period Equity took this issue nationwide in 2015 by partnering with Cosmopolitan magazine on a Change.org petition to “axe the tampon tax.” But sales tax must be addressed by advocates state by state.

And there’s a long way to go.

Five states — Alaska, Delaware, New Hampshire, Montana, and Oregon — don’t have a sales tax to begin with, so pads and tampons aren’t taxed there. Meanwhile, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had previously legislated on their own to remove sales tax from these items, according to Periods Gone Public.

Since 2015, thanks to increased advocacy around period equity, 24 states have introduced bills to exempt pads and tampons from sales tax. However, only Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, and New York have been successful in making these sanitary necessities tax-exempt so far. That said, Arizona, Nebraska, and Virginia introduced tampon tax bills in their legislatures in 2018.

So, why has it taken this long to even have this conversation?

“The most realistic scenario is that most of our legislators don’t menstruate, so they weren’t really thinking about it in any sort of constructive way,” says Weiss-Wolf.