Swedish toy company reverses genders in new catalogue

ad showing girl with a toy gun

Top Toy, one of the largest toy companies in Sweden, is flipping the gender script in its Christmas catalogue. This year, girls are shown playing with toy guns, while boys are playing with dollhouses. The company was called out a few years ago by a watchdog group for its stereotypical advertising, and decided it needed to adapt to Sweden’s progressive attitudes about gender.

Here’s hoping someday American toy companies heed the call of girls like Riley and quit with the ridiculously gendered marketing too.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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