I seem to have stirred up a bit of a fuss in the local paper, The Argus. On Saturday, I was looking through the newspaper (not the Argus) and a catalogue for Halfords fell out, advertising mostly kids bikes. My daughter is about due for a new bike, so I looked at it with some interest. My heart sank though, on realising how they were marketing the bikes.
As a parent of a girl, I have constantly been confronted with the casual lazy assumptions that people make about what girls should like and what boys should like. You’d have to be blind to not have noticed how things for girls are predominantly pink, and involve themes like fairies, princesses and making yourself look beautiful. Boys stuff is more … well, its difficult to categorise it simply, but I suppose the thing is that boys stuff is more varied, often about real world things (like dinosaurs as opposed to imaginary fairies) or activity based themes. This early years pigeonholing affects boys as much as it does girls – I focus on girls because I have a daughter. I think the message that society already gives to children is that they have a choice to make about their future, and that choice must be limited by their gender. A look in any children’s toy catalogue shows the girls toys (if not overtly pink and about fairies) push them towards roles like nursing (see first comment below), cooking and other domestic activities, while boys have the police or firefighters outfits. None of these roles in the real world is the exclusive domain of one gender. It hampers the child’s capacity for self determination when society to start to build such arbitrary constraints around them from such a young age.
I wrote the letter below to Halfords, and to their credit I got a fairly positive reply (follows my letter below). They responded by saying that they get some good feedback from parents about their bike range, but that I raise some interesting points and they would ask marketing to look at the way they categorise bikes. I think this is as much as I could have hoped for, and being quite pleased with that reaction I tweeted about it. It was these tweets that attracted the attention of the Argus.
Two things for now – I’ll write at greater length about the issues of gender stereotyping and pigeonholing by marketeers in another post soon. First of all, I want to make it clear that I am grateful to Halfords for, at least so far, approaching my complaint in a positive light, and with an apparent willingness to take on board my comments. In that context, the headline of the article, that I ‘Slammed’ Halfords is really unhelpful, not to mention inaccurate. Secondly, I am particularly annoyed that the issue has been made into a party political one – I was writing in a personal capacity as an ordinary member of the public, not as a representative of the Green Party, and that was clear to the Argus before they published it, so to go to opposition Councillors was inappropriate, and completely changes the tone and significance of the story that they could have written.
Anyway, here’s first my email to Halfords, then after that, their reply to me. And finally to reiterate, I am happy with the way Halfords have responded to this situation so far.
“Dear Sir/Madam
I want to register a complaint about the insert that fell out of today’s Guardian newspaper, a catalogue under the banner ‘Unwrap a world of gifts’.
My daughter is all set to get her next bike, and we’re looking around at the moment, but due to the nature of your marketing I will not be coming to Halfords for that purchase.
To be specific, I am appalled, and incensed, at the way the bikes for children are presented as being Girls or Boys based on nothing other than your preconceptions of what it is appropriate for children of any particular gender to have. In doing so, you perpetuate the stereotyping and pigeonholing of gender roles in society which typically are to the detriment of women, who are often treated as not being as serious or capable as men at performing a particular role, and as one particularly stark manifestation of that prejudice, women get paid less than men on the workplace despite often performing equivalent roles.
It may seem like I am overstating the case with that example, but as the father of a daughter, I am acutely conscious of the disadvantages she faces as she grows up due to the prejudices that are illustrated in your marketing materials, and I make an active choice not to employ the services, or make purchases in any setting where such prejudice is demonstrated.
To use an example from this catalogue, that caused me to feel particularly indignant, as an illustration of the short-comings of your presentation, on Page 7 of the brochure, there is a ‘Boys’ bike called an Apollo Police Patrol. There is no reason that this bike should or could be categorised as exclusively a boys bike other than your prejudice towards the motif employed showing a police motorcyclist, and the words ‘Police Patrol’ written on it. I’m sure you are aware that approximately 27% of police officers are women, and the UK police forces have targets to increase that proportion in future years. Your casual dismissiveness of the role that women can and do play in the police force by labelling this as a boys bike does nothing to help break down the barriers that young women will face in trying to enter the force in the future.
A quick trawl through the selection of bikes as categorised by gender shows that the names (not to mention the colour schemes) shows a clear discrimination against the acceptance of girls being able to do or be interested in certain areas of common life. For example the boys bikes are given names such as Fire Chief (see above for police), Disney’s Cars (my daughter loves the Cars film), Digby (she loves diggers too), Rocketman (ditto spaceships), Claws (and yes, dinosaurs too). Meanwhile the girls bikes are called LuLu, Sugar and Spice, Minnie Mouse, Cupcake, Petal, Pixie, etc etc…
Now I recognise that many children (or more particularly their parents) will actively select the bikes according to the gender designation you have given it, but for sure when you label a bike as ‘Boys’, girls are almost certain to reject it, and thus reject the association of having Police Patrol written on their bike, and thus the acceptance that women can be police officers too is removed from them in this context.
I recognise too that in the context of the choices parents will make for their children’s bikes, you are as a commercial enterprise duty bound to cater for the purchasing choices that your customers will make. My complaint is not that you have bikes with the names as listed above, or with the nauseating predeliction for pinks and purples in the girls section (my daughter’s favourite colour is green by the way) – my complaint is that you overtly limit the choices that parents and children feel able to make in a way that reinforces and entrenches the prejudice towards women performing roles with equal value being placed on their contributions in their adult lives. It comes across that you support society having a view that boys can be interested in real things like dinosaurs, cars, diggers, and do proper jobs like police or fire officers, while girls must concern themselves only with pretty and frivolous/imaginary things, like pixies and fairies, and look forward to a career based around making cupcakes.
It is for these reasons – because I abhor a society along the lines that currently discriminates against the woman my daughter will be, and object to your role in perpetuating that future – that I will not be bringing my custom to your shop again. I look forward to your response to this email, and some assurances that you will reconsider your marketing in future years.
In the meanwhile I would urge you to look at the work being done by Pink Stinks www.pinkstinks.org.uk and have a look at this article about a child lead campaign against similar stereotyping in a Toys R Us catalogue.
Yours in anticipation
Sven Rufus”
And Halfords’ response
“Dear Mr Rufus
Thank you for your feedback on our marketing of children’s bikes. We are sorry to hear of your concern.
It is never our intention to cause upset to any of our customers. Although we appreciate that we will not be able to please everybody, we are receiving praise from our customers regarding our children’s bike and it generally seems to be prompting a positive response.
However, you do make some good points in your email, and we will pass this to Marketing so they could perhaps look at removing the distinction between boys and girls bikes.
Thank you for taking the time to get in touch with us.
Kind Regards
xxxxx “(Name removed by me)
