MALIBU THEY-BIE IN CALIF.
Gender-neutral aisle
Major retailers in California are just weeks away from having to create gender-neutral toy sections for children — or risk being fined hundreds of dollars under a controversial state law set to take effect in the new year.
Under the terms of the legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2021, California-based department stores with 500 or more employees that sell “childcare items or toys” must have a gender-neutral section “regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.”
The law defines “childcare items” as any product designed to facilitate sleep, feeding children, relaxation or “to help children with sucking or teething” and defines children as those 12 and under.
Any store that fails to create a gender-neutral section could face a $250 fine for a first violation and a $500 fine for any subsequent violations.
The law does not prohibit typical boys and girls sections.
LGBTQ advocates called the measure a win at the time the legislation was signed, arguing the pink and blues hues of traditional marketing pressure kids to fit gender stereotypes.
“Keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the products and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate,” part of the legislation states.
The bill was originally introduced into the California Assembly by Evan Low, who compared it to earlier laws that require publicly traded companies to add women to their corporate boards, force employers to release pay data to improve gender equity and require single-occupancy bathrooms to use “all-gender” signs, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Traditionally, children’s toys and products have been categorized by a child’s gender,” he told fellow lawmakers at the time. “In retail, this has led to the proliferation of [science, technology, engineering and mathemattoys ics]-geared in a ‘boys’ sectoys tion and that direct girls to pursuits such as caring for a baby, fashion and domestic life.
“The segregation of toys by a social construct of what is appropriate for which gender is the antithesis of modern thinking.” Similar legislation put forward in 2019 and 2020 failed. Children are able to decipher which toys are meant for girls and which are meant for boys at the age of 3, according to Campbell Leaper, a professor of psyUniversity chology at of CalSanta ifornia Cruz.
“We know from a variety of different research once they have those categories in their heads, and if you try to label something for girls or boys, children will often ignore it if it’s labeled for the other gender,” he said in the LA Times report. Low said that is why he was encouraged to write the legislation. But some saw the bill as government overreach and a way of forcing social change on companies. “Activists and state legislators have no right to force retailers to espouse government-approved messages about gender,” argued Jonathan Keller, president of the conservative California Family Law Council lobbying group. “It’s a violation of free speech and it’s just plain wrong.”