Toys advertising in Spain will no longer be sexist from Thursday, with exclusive associations between, for example, dolls and girls or cars and boys, according to a code agreed between the government and brands.
As a general rule, toy advertisements should not show gender bias in the presentation they make of girls and boys, and promote a plural and egalitarian view of the roles they can assume, with the aim of promoting and enhancing their free choice of toys. “, reads point 35 of the new self-regulatory code for advertising toys for children that will come into force in Spain on Thursday 1 December.
Thus, the text continues, the exclusive association of girls with “toys that reproduce the roles of caretakers, housework and personal beauty” and of boys with “toys that promote experimentation, physical activity or technological development” will be avoided. .
To this end, ads featuring multiple children will “avoid being of only one gender” and will also avoid “performances that present a sexualized image of girls, avoiding appearing dressed and made up as grown women and calling them ‘sexy’, or that evoke a duty to please the male sex”.
Toys will also no longer have the “express or implied” indication that they are intended exclusively for children of one gender.
On the other hand, manufacturers will also try to stop using in the same campaign, advertisement or communication the opposition of colors or color series traditionally used in the identification of female and male gender, i.e. opposite blue to pink or light colors dark colors for example.
“Advertising should also not be organized by classifying toys according to gender” and makers “should promote diversity and gender equality and try to use inclusive language”, it’s also in the document that takes effect on Thursday, in time for the publicity surrounding the Christmas season.
The text stipulates that from now on in Spain advertisements for toys will not contain images “inciting discrimination or harassing treatment” of minorities, “always trying to offer images representing multiple profiles”.
Toy advertising will also seek to “present positive models to encourage healthy, responsible and sustainable consumption wherever possible,” the document says, which “encourages advertisers to include diversity in advertising.”
The new code, signed by the Spanish government and the Spanish Toy Manufacturers Association, contains 64 measures to regulate the advertising of toys aimed at children and replaces an earlier one from 2005.
According to the text, the The code has now been adapted to the social and technological evolution that has taken place in the meantime, with specific rules also for advertising on the internet or via mobile phone (which in the latter case is expressly prohibited when aimed at children under 14).
There is also, among other things, the commitment to the loyalty of the product to the presentation made of it in advertisements and rules for how adults are represented in advertisements.
Source: DN
