The American YouTube clip of Riley, a little girl who talks about princess toys for girls and superhero toys for boys, went viral and has now been viewed more than 2.7 million times.
I will end this post with a wonderful poem written by my friend Athos Athanasiou. He wrote it earlier this year and said he was was reminded of it because of the mention of 'girl inventors' in the PM report. See this poem and more on his website here.
Now I'm off to drink some champagne...
By the shed
In a garden of cloudspun light,
some dreams, like wings, lie broken.
They could have lifted her
on up to worlds unspoken
She picks them up no matter
and puts them back together.
Like many times in sun
and many in bad weather.
The bric nick nacks of daily life
morph in her hands of flurry.
Amid these grand contraptions,
the inventor starts to hurry.
She blows away the engine oil
she welds the parts together.
Attaches gears and counterweights,
fine balanced as a feather.
No ordinary road for her,
no desk job strong and steady.
She yearns for future greatness
unaware she's great already.
Common objections about feminists and feminism are:
1. Feminism is PC gone mad (see my interview on CNN with Richard Quest).
2. Feminists don't have a sense of humour.
This latter point reminded me of a song someone sent me on YouTube a while ago. Check this out. It's Mother of Pearl by Nellie McKay. It made me smile.
Part 1: What happened
My Christmas present came early. Hamleys ditched its gender signs. The story blew up last week and has been covered by most of the national newspapers, radio and TV, and numerous other news outlets in the UK and across the world. Read the article in the F-word.
Part 2: Reflections
When Hamleys ditched its gender signs, the story blew up like a bomb going off.
It is now more than a week since the media whirlwind began, and a good time for me to reflect on the campaign. As media coverage continues to trickle out, gradually subsides, and morphs into other debates, I have been mulling over what happened. Why did it work so well? What can we learn for future campaigns? Read the article in the F-word.
This article, published on the website of Movement for Change, is about my ideas for community organising and the key questions facing Labour at a local level.
There are three ways I think Labour can win the next election. The first is to build the party from within; engage its existing members, get new ones and harness their potential. The second is to connect with the public; win back support by aligning their interests and values with ours and showing that we can make a difference. The third is to offer clear, convincing and viable policy alternatives to the coalition.
Movement for Change – Labour’s community organisation – can help with the first two of these. I first heard about this organisation during David Miliband’s leadership campaign. As a lifelong supporter of Labour, I thought that this is exactly what’s needed; training up members and engaging the party, building it up to beat the coalition with energy, direction and shared purpose. There was a vision. It excited me. It made me want to find out more.
A year down the line, I was headfirst into local politics, campaigning across London and milling around the national events too. I went to the Labour Conference in September and, high on coffee, adrenaline and political energy, popped into the Movement for Change’s training session with Jack Dromey MP and others.
It was an inspiring session. It was real grassroots campaigning stuff. Jack had examples of CLPs gaining huge support from the public by demonstrating to them that they could make a difference on issues that affected the community.
In December, Movement for Change came to Ealing. The group who attended were mainly people keen to help out in the GLA campaign, and the session was coordinated by our organiser for Ealing and Hillingdon Labour parties, Dai Peters. But the beauty of community organising – as David Miliband identified all those months ago – is that it can be applied in the context of any campaign, it produces lasting results and is part of longterm strategy to win back the public’s support for the Labour party and what it can achieve.
What’s at the heart of it?
The principle of Movement for Change – and any other grassroots campaigning for that matter – is simple. It’s about developing genuine relationships and trust, and building on those to effect change.
First, it’s about building relationships with existing members. After all, that’s common sense: nurture the supporters who are already there. How can we do this? Movement for Change suggests setting up face-to-face meetings with members, developing relationships, finding out what they are interested in. While doing this, it’s possible to identify leaders, explore issues and share stories and goals.
Second, it’s time to take on the outside world. With this, it’s the simple case of ‘show not tell’. Find issues that concern local people, organise around these, build confidence and identify supporters of the Labour party. In other words, reconnect with people on a grassroots level. If Labour is doing this – if people see for themselves that Labour is making their lives and communities better – people soon draw their own conclusions about what party they want to support.
What can we learn from this?
In Ealing North, we already have a vibrant campaigning scene. We have dedicated members and activists, keen to volunteer their time. Tireless organisers are coordinating canvassing and social events. Our hardworking councillors are out and about and on top of the issues that concern people.
So what can we do now? I think we would benefit from an injection of further strategic thinking and planning. Can we develop our relationships with our members better; understand what they want and can offer to the party? Can we find out what people care about in the community and show them that we can make a difference? Can we carry out listening campaigns? What’s more, can we plan these activities strategically so we make the most impact with the resources we have?
These are key questions that I believe will take us up to a new level in terms of leadership, organisation and outcomes. We have the potential among us. We have examples of other CLP successes to draw on and learn from. We have the energy, enthusiasm and resources. Let’s do it.
In Boots, the toys are not segregated, but again the website has segregation.
Debenhams is the worst culprit for gender segregation. In the shop, there is a large pink 'girls' sign and a blue 'boys' sign and different toys in each segment. There is division on its website too.
More media reports
The Hamleys campaign is still being reported by the media, following the storm last week. It is generating a large amount of public debate. The Independent and Observer covered it at the weekend - it was the cover story in the Independent Review section. It was discussed on Loose Women on ITV, who were generally supportive.
Hamleys official stance on their decision to remove is that it had nothing to do with the campaign you orchestrated. What's your response to that?
I think it's a remarkable coincidence that the store changed their signs a few days after I wrote to the CEO, and a few days after I spoke to Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank that controls Hamleys. Also, when I spoke to their marketing team at the same time as sending the letter, Hamleys did not mention that they planned to changed the signs - surely if they were going to do so, they would have told me and all this could have been avoided! I think that, as it is so near to Christmas, the change of signs could only be due to campaign pressure. Iceland is a progressive county in terms of equal rights and opportunities so I suspected there would be interest and pressure over there.
If it really was a marketing decision, as they claim, what do you think the impetus behind that could be (considering that most toy stores keep their aisles gender codified because they claim in increases revenue).
I really have no idea. I would be very interested to know whether gender-codified toys actually increase revenue or whether there is no difference. I suspect the latter, and I think all people want is to be able to find their way around with minimum confusion. When the toys are categorised by type, there is no confusion whatsoever. I am surprised that Hamleys did not use the opportunity of this campaign to show that they were a forward-thinking organisation and had listened and responded to public opinion on this issue. I am certainly not the first person to campaign or write about this. Many people have campaigned hard for a long time in the UK and beyond and will be very pleased at the result. I think the resistance to the change from some people reflects the fact that gender stereotypes are so ingrained in our society, and that's exactly what we want to shake up and ask questions about.
Does it matter the reasoning behind their decision, or just the fact that they actually did it?
It doesn't matter. The fact they did it is enough to signify an important step toward gender equality. At the very least, it has generated a huge amount of public debate. It has been covered in most of the newspapers, on radio and TV, and many people are discussing it on social media and beyond. It's really important that we discuss this issue seriously, because gender stereotyping and conditioning of children is a likely to be a huge factor in influencing the activities they engage in, the skills they develop and ultimately the roles they end up fulfilling in society. We have gaping inequalities between the genders in our society (for example, in the UK, only a fifth of our MPs and less than 1% of business leaders are female). There are many factors contributing to these disparities, and it's important to try to unpick them. As yet, there is no scientific consensus that boys and girls are born with differences in terms of aspirations, caring tendencies and cognitive abilities, such as problem-solving skills, ability to think logically and to be more or less suited to leadership. Conversely, the exposure of children to different types of toys, as well as other types of conditioning, is much more likely to affect the development of skills, interests and paths people take.
Do you think more stores will follow Hamley's lead
I do. In fact, other toyshops have already ditched gender labelling in response to campaigns, such as the Early Learning Centre a few years ago, and Toys 'R' Us in Sweden. Hamleys is one of the world's largest and most influential toyshops in the world, and the considerable amount of publicity will certainly carry weight. More people are talking about the issue, toyshops may think again and we will keep campaigning.
For the past day and a half I have been non-stop on the phone with journalists about the Hamleys story, whisked off to BBC studios to debate gender stereotyping and responding to radio and TV stations on twitter interested in covering the story. The twitter hashtag #hamleysgendercampaign has been very active.
Natasha Walter wrote a great piece for Virago books here. There have been numerous others - too many to mention - spanning Italian, Portuguese, Canadian and Australian news sites, magazines such as TNT, political websites, marketing magazines and parents' websites.
Also, on Polish, United Arab Emirates, Belgian, Slovenian, Hong Kong and Dutch news sites.
Today I was interviewed BBC Radio WM by Danny Kelly [start at 0.47:30].
Plus listener reaction, as follows, according to @athosfolk
"His eventual stance was that it was totally absolutely OK with letting children play with whatever toys they wanted too. He would have no qualms if his young son wanted to a barbie with frizzy hair or his girl with a toolbox but he wasn't sure other parents would feel the same. I think he was positioning himself to have debate with both sides... The presenter asked him how he would feel if his 7 year old son wanted to be given a barbie with curly hair to play with and he was expecting the tough guy to respond with some form of shock or disgust but he said "To be honest that would be fine. It wouldn't bother me "... "some family's that might bother but they have backward views and we've moved on". He was asking similar questions to everyone and they mostly weren't bothered so he began asking what parents would do if their son wanted to wear pink dresses to school (he was saying he was still fine with this ) so then some callers began saying how that might "turn the children gay" but it was still ok to play with pots and pans ( it got a bit silly at this point)."
Reema Patel has written a blog here and AskaMum here. Numerous other blogs and news sites all over the world have covered it.
Feedback
Some of the feedback on the Telegraph site is as follows:
"As a parent (to several boys), I've been quite surprised over the last 15 years by how much more toys are divided by gender than they used to be when I was growing up. It's a massive rip-off - all sorts of things that never used to be manufactured in pink and blue versions now are - I assume partly to make sure that parents with both boys and girls face pressure to buy the same toy twice in different colours. E.g. instead of water bottles in a proper range of colours, you often get them in pink and blue only - hence pressure from girls to have a 'girls' one and from boys to avoid using a 'girls' one at any cost. There's so much pink out there, and the expectation that girls need pink things is so strong, that I've even found myself hesitating before buying quite ordinary non-pink things like board games and ordinary lego (there is now pink lego too!) for girls as birthday presents, just because they're not pink, when as a girl myself I would have played quite happily with those alongside dolls. It's scary how that pink expectation creeps up on you."
"I for one would welcome a change back to more how toys used to be - when it was the nature of the toy itself that was responsible for attracting either girls or boys more to it, and not a label put on it by the manufacturer or shop. So what if 90% of a particular toy is bought by one sex rather than the other? I've no problem with nine out of ten trains being bought by boys or whatever. I've even no problem with grouping similar toys together so you have a de factor boys floor and girls floor. But officially labelling vast numbers of toys as only 'for boys' or 'for girls', and colour-coding them accordingly by making half of them *pink* - quite frankly that's gone too far now, and it's definitely a consumer rip-off. The manufacturers and retailers might love it, but it's not doing us as shoppers, parents and children any favours."
"I don't think sections should be split. Maybe boys will actually like make-up! Maybe girls will actually like Spiderman! I think it's a good idea. I hope the same happens to the Irish Hamleys."
"I think it's unfair to say whether toys are for girls or boys. I used to like action figures when I was younger and that doesn't make me a boy. There are probably loads of girls who feel pressured to buy dolls when they would rather buy something else!"
"I may be a girl but I hate all the pink, frilly, girly things that everyone expects girls to play with. I would much prefer something Pirates of the Caribbean or Harry Potter related. I think that although lots of girls love pink things, it is unfair to label things 'for girls' or 'for boys', as if someone is seen in the wrong gender aisle they could be embarrassed."
My 'favourite' negative comments on the Telegraph article (I haven't yet had a chance to look at the Daily Mail!) are:
"For Feminist, I defined: "Ugly Female". And for Sexual Harassment; "Chatting up tasty totty in the presence of a Feminist."
"Nelson, who works for a healthcare charity.... a girls job."
"Is Laura Nelson really a nom de guerre for Harriet Harhuman?"
Mumsnet gave the campaign a wonderful statement of support
"From birth, boys and girls are bombarded with stereotypes which influence the roles that they go on to fill in society, and contribute to gender inequality. Many Mumsnet users will be delighted that Hamleys have changed tack and will no longer be prescribing which toys are 'girly' and which are only suitable for boys." Justine Roberts, co-founder and CEO, Mumsnet
Last week, I spoke to Hamleys's PR office and sent a letter to the Chief Executive, Gudjon Reynisson. I also called up the PR office at Landsbanki, the nationalised Icelandic bank that controls Hamleys. (Iceland is a very progressive country in terms of providing equal gender rights and opportunities; they rightly took notice.)
The letter was along the lines of a blog I wrote in October, in which I outlined my concern that the layout of the toyshop restricts children’s and parents’ choices and contributes to our society's inequality.
The blog was also published on the leading political website Liberal Conspiracy. As a result of the blogs, there were many comments, tweets and discussions. This topic resonated with many people - parents, feminists, journalists, scientists. There has also been interest from Icelandic journalists and feminists, who have been adding to the pressure of this campaign.
This is a summary of what I said in the letter to Hamleys:
requested they categorise toys by interest (type of toy), not by gender
pointed out that on the girls’ floor, the toys are focused on domestic, caring and beauty activities and the boys’ floor is geared to action and war, with little scope for creativity (arts and crafts)
said that gender stereotypes in toys are highly influential and pervasive, and influence children’s and parents’ choices, aspirations and expectations. These different toys also promote the development of certain skills and encourage boys and girls to pursue activities that are consistent with the gender stereotypes we see in our society generally (women in passive, caring and homemaking roles; men in active, leading and aggressive roles).
told them about a group of schoolchildren Sweden in 2008 who wrote to Toys ‘R’ Us and persuaded it to change, The Early Learning Centre in the UK which similarly responded to such complaints from Pinkstinks in 2009 and WH Smiths, which agreed to abandon its use of the term ‘women’s fiction’.
The campaign worked! Thank you all for your support (moral and otherwise) and encouragement. Many people have tweeted, retweeted and suggested ideas and strategies.
Congratulations everyone!
We still have work to do on the nature of the toys themselves, and the gender stereotyping of their marketing (see doll babies marketed at girls on left) - but we have come to a milestone. Great work!
One of Seema’s priorities will be to do more to engage women in politics at a local level, to bring politics closer to people who might otherwise not take part.
I campaigned for Seema last weekend and my favourite comment on the doorstep was this, which came from a woman:
“Who’s the candidate...? Oh it’s a woman...really?” The woman on the doorstep was surprised but very pleased.
Seema herself has had similar reactions. She says in the interview with the Labour Women's Network:
“As I’ve spent time campaigning in our area, I’ve found that women really connect with the idea of a female representative – that it provides an opportunity for them to have political conversations that might not otherwise occur. I think women can bring a very different perspective to the political debate, whether on economics or family and community issues. Often, women are deeply rooted in their communities and are central to the invisible networks that hold communities together. I believe there is real value in that perspective being represented in Parliament."
Seema grew up in Feltham, and went to school in Heston. She is co-founder and Director of the Fabian Women’s Network.
Dr Laura Nelson is a writer, speaker and entrepreneur, and has a doctorate in neuroscience. She set up Breakthrough: The Gender Stereotypes Project, a schools programme with the aim of exploring the influence of gender stereotypes among children and their parents. Laura writes fiction; her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and she is working on her second novel, which is a political romantic thriller. Laura led the successful Christmas 2011 Hamleys campaign, which was covered on radio, TV and in newspapers across the world. She has written political commentary in the Guardian's Comment is Free, as well as writing the odd limerick. She has a fascination for Brazil.
"I was lucky to get a seat at Dr Laura Nelson's recent Cafe Scientifique presentation in Leeds. The audience stayed riveted to the spot as she told her entertaining and revealing stories about gender stereotyping...This is science communication and public engagement at its best." Barbara Govan, CEO, Screenhouse Productions
“Dr Laura Nelson is definitely someone to watch. Listen to her message and be inspired to change the way you view and respond to the world.” Claudia Crawley, Director of Winning Pathways Coaching.
Hamleys changed its gender specific signs following the campaign calling for a stop to gender segregation of toys, which restricts children's choices and futures and contributes to our society's inequality.
Organisers, who agreed in 2011 to a one-female-speaker-a-day quota in their all-male national conference for 10,000 entrepreneurs and business people, have managed one woman in their line-up for 2012.
Speaking about Hamleys campaign
'Inspiring Leaders' event, November 2010
Chairing a panel discussion on 'overcoming the challenges of leadership'
Fiction reading
On Sunday 26 June, I read a short story at a London Lit event. Video here.
short story published
Science fiction story, Monkey Retreat, published in Litro magazine, April 2011
"Very enjoyable and lively. Many of your political comments are spot on."
Natasha Walter, author of 'Living Dolls' and 'The New Feminism'
"I'm really enjoying your blog - great work!"
Siobhan Curham, author and winner of the 2010 Young Minds Book Award
"I recommend her blog on equality, ethics, science and life..."
Rowenna Davis, newly elected (May 2011 by-election) Labour Councillor in Southwark, on Delilah in the New Statesman
"Leading feminist blogger"
Kathryn Perera, Vice-Chair of Aylesbury Constituency Labour Party and founder of SheBlogs
"Don't give up the day job!"
A former MP, who said this to me before he stopped doing his day job (and before I stopped doing mine)
An event by Delilah
Inspiring Leaders was a day of leadership training, discussions and debate, organised by Delilah in partnership with Progressive Women. It took place on Saturday 6 November 2010 and was SOLD OUT.
Fiona Mactaggart, Shadow Junior Minister for Equality, was keynote speaker.
