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Male Gender and Lego?

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Why does Lego appeal more to the male gender than the female? I know there are some female members here but most of them are male. Even when I go to stores, I see all these little boys crowding around the Lego but no girls. Why is it this way? :sceptic:

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Well, in dutch higher education (and also secondary education) there are much more boys than girls involved in Technical subjects and courses. I know that this is the case in most countries. LEGO looks a bit technical (and in fact is quite technical, it has to do with visual insight and perception, construction, etc.). This also has to do with role patterns: boys get a LEGO set from age 4, girls get a Barbie doll or something like that. (Grand)parents play a large role in gender confirmation, but also peers.

At the FIRST LEGO League we try to stimulate girls in participating, because if there are say 30% girls this will draw more girls so we hope to once get a 50-50 mix of boys/girls.

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This is totally un-PC to say these days, but I'll let you in on a little secret: males and females are different. :wink:

It's not just that males and females are different.

LEGO doesn't gear there products to girls as much as boys. They did a small study like 25-30 years ago that told them girls liked to play instead of build. Which is why Belville and Scala were created. Although I've loved LEGO all my life, they never had the sets I wanted as a child. Now as an adult, with Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, etc. They are finally producing things I would have wanted back then. If they actually had a Town in their Town sets instead of people constantly needing to be rescued, saved from fires or to catch bad guys, it would appeal to more girls.

Also they don't make enough animal sets. Some of my favorite sets are the Creator line, but even so, most of the animals appeal more to guys -- dinos, lizards, lions, etc.

LEGO is slowly coming around that there are female fans of LEGO, but its taking them a long time.

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I think it is because (for many of the reasons above) LEGO designers have been overwhelming male. It has been a closed loop of constant reinforcement of a design aesthetic created by males for males that inspires new males to design for males...

Hopefully changing now (yeah Modular Houses theme!) but it will be a long time, if ever, to have a balance of male and female designers and a resulting change in what they are coming up with.

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Hello, I am Peppermint and I will be your Sociologist today.

Girls and Boys are different, both physically and mentally (through different hormonal "sloshes"). Therefore society has made, over the centuries, a distinction between the two , these are Gender Roles. This goes as far back as the Bible and if you believe that way, Ancient hominids. Because the two sexes have different Gender Roles there are different expectations for each gender. This means parents, those responsible for a significant chunk of vital development, treat you differently from birth, even pre-natal if they know the babies sex. An experiment found that a small child in pink was treated differently to a small child in blue, even when the boy was the one in pink, the girl in blue. This means parents and society as a whole give children different toys to play with. Construction toys are for boys as construction has traditionally been seen as a male occupation. Even when Lego release a set in "girly" colours there is a stigma for girls to play with construction toys.

Therefore, Lego is a male thing, some girls are even chastised for wanting Lego. This makes the Toy aisle in TRU really hard for me, unless my plain speaking little brother is with me, then he loudly says how stupid that is because, "You are really good with Lego" (to me of course, but the parents hear too).

Wow, that Sociology A-Level was really useful!

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In my own way I'm trying to change this problem. I want to prove that girls can do it too!

LEGO.com called me "the first and (so far) only female freelance LEGO artist in the world!"

Does that tell you something?

That's why I started writing books so that both girls and boys could learn how to build better with LEGO.

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Because men find the oddest things to get obsessed with...

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Because men find the oddest things to get obsessed with...

I'm going to agree with that. Look at all the followers of other obsessions, Star Wars, LOTR, Comic Books. Almost all of them are men. I'm not sure why but men seem to like that sort of think more.

Edited by Tom Bricks

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In my own way I'm trying to change this problem. I want to prove that girls can do it too!

I applaud your efforts, and surely, no one person can be defined by their gender, race, country of origin, or other common demographic divisions. There are female AFOLs like yourself out there for sure, and speaking personally, I'm a fan of your creations! But I do suspect that LEGO has already invested significant research, development, and marketing efforts over the years into breaking into the girl's toy market. I think if making LEGO sets that appealed to girls in a way that was profitable for LEGO was simple, they would have figured it out already. The point I was trying to make is that I feel there is more going on here than the sort of sets LEGO makes, or even the influence of parents.

With our son, we never taught him to like cars and trucks. He was fascinated by them before he ever had a toy car or truck, spotting them in pictures, out the window, etc. In the nursery at church, with all sorts of traditionally "boy" and "girl" toys to choose from, he always played with the cars and trucks. Now, this is just one example, and not at all a scientific study. Perhaps someone with a daughter has even had the exact same experience, with their daughter loving cars! But I believe there are innate differences in boys and girls, and that all other factors aside, the different genders tend naturally to be drawn to different toys, and later in life, different occupations and interests. Basically what I am trying to say is that I think whatever sets LEGO makes, it's always going to be more popular with boys than it is with girls.

On the other hand, there certainly were a lot of girls at the Annapolis R2-D2 model build I helped with a couple weeks back.

Side note: Man, I totally miss those animal creator sets! All we get these days are dinosaurs and dragons, which are fine and all, but they don't offer a great color variety.

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I really think it is marketing. Girls are just as likely to play with legos as boys..look in any lego sponsored free play area. The sets have been marketed to boys, boys on the advertising, boys on the commercials. Females are genetically hard wired to be more color sensative than Males, due to gender specializing for hundreds of thousands of years as gatherers while the men were the risk taking hunters (and men who didn't take risks starved to death). Females should actually be more drawn to lego elements, as these have better genetic gathering and organizing skills

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I'm not sure about the hardwired to like something gender specific,but then again it might be how your brain works that predisposes you to a certain thing . I loved toy cars, I always had Ken (Action Man was too violent when I was little) and Duplo moved to Lego very quickly. I always went for the cars or the construction toys. Then again, I have never been a social person, nor been particularly bothered with people. I once was found with my brothers plastic tools and him with my baby doll... However my two sisters were "classic" girly girls. My sister only played if there was some element of story and character interaction.

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Lego is technical.

And TLC is focussing more on male audience: batman, exoforce, starwars, racers, power miners, pirates, agents, technic, city (subtheme construction, police, etc) etc, etc.

So I guess Lego is for men who are in touch with their feminin side. (Playing with minifigs, changing their outfits and hairdo, etc.) :tongue:

And for females who are in touch with their masculin side (technical).

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The same could be said of any number of toy lines from videogame systems (Playstation and Xbox in particular) to action figures and toy cars.

Whether this is a question sex (physiological) or gender (sociological) is probably a question best left to a psychologist or sociologist. As AFOLs we already represent an aberrant group when it comes to this topic which makes it exceedingly difficult to come to an objective opinion when it comes to anything LEGO. We simply love it too much.

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It's not just that males and females are different.

LEGO doesn't gear there products to girls as much as boys. They did a small study like 25-30 years ago that told them girls liked to play instead of build. Which is why Belville and Scala were created. Although I've loved LEGO all my life, they never had the sets I wanted as a child. Now as an adult, with Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, etc. They are finally producing things I would have wanted back then. If they actually had a Town in their Town sets instead of people constantly needing to be rescued, saved from fires or to catch bad guys, it would appeal to more girls.

Also they don't make enough animal sets. Some of my favorite sets are the Creator line, but even so, most of the animals appeal more to guys -- dinos, lizards, lions, etc.

LEGO is slowly coming around that there are female fans of LEGO, but its taking them a long time.

I do not completely agree on the difference statement either. Almost all our behavior is learned and culturaly dominated.

There are some great woman in science and technology who are a 100% woman.

The idea of men and woman roles is purely cultural, there have been tribes for example were woman did the fighting just as men.

But given our culture I think you nailed it. There should be more sets containing animals such as dogs cats and horses.

Not in a different scale but as normal lego city sets. I found my girlfriend actually likes sets containing animals and regular city live.

Although she never really was into lego as a kid.

And i found she doesn't think sets should be pink to be appealing to girls.

Examples of sets she might like could be:

-horse stables with a training ground for horse jumping.

-An animal docters office

-Animal shelter

-Regular shops/ shopping mall

-tourist office

-theatre

-restaurant

-appartement building

-village square with music performance (band playing)

well just my two cents.

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LEGO doesn't gear there products to girls as much as boys. They did a small study like 25-30 years ago that told them girls liked to play instead of build.

Could you please document that study? It would be fascinating to see, since they rarely release that kind of information. I'm much more likely to believe that they watched their customer base and it was primarily male. You cater to whoever buys your product, and part of that is driven by society and out of their control completely. No company would ignore a potential market if that market existed.

Although I've loved LEGO all my life, they never had the sets I wanted as a child. Now as an adult, with Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, etc. They are finally producing things I would have wanted back then.

No one considered the adult market to have that much potential back then, and that's what it took to get the modular line. Didn't matter the sex, only the age being considered.

If they actually had a Town in their Town sets instead of people constantly needing to be rescued, saved from fires or to catch bad guys, it would appeal to more girls.

They did all through the 80's. Where were you? You missed some great sets! Houses with couples who didn't need to be rescued, but who drove their little cars around in the peaceful world of LEGOLAND. Trains were never conflict based. Even Fabuland was a girl-friendly theme, if you want to call it that, and it had cute animals and was still basically a system line. Castle has currently found a large female fanbase, despite not being the least bit more female oriented than it ever was. Then the 90's brought Paradisa, which was far from the weird doll world of Scala or Belville. It still didn't sell well enough to maintain, so it disappeared, now people want those sets. It's hard to blame LEGO for backing off, though. Get girls and their parents to think differently, and you'll find that the current lines have plenty to offer everyone and LEGO would happily add new things to cater to an expanded market.

Also they don't make enough animal sets. Some of my favorite sets are the Creator line, but even so, most of the animals appeal more to guys -- dinos, lizards, lions, etc.

Can't argue with that, but hopefully cows will be the first step to a new animal kingdom for LEGO, one that boys have wanted as well.

Therefore, Lego is a male thing, some girls are even chastised for wanting Lego. This makes the Toy aisle in TRU really hard for me, unless my plain speaking little brother is with me, then he loudly says how stupid that is because, "You are really good with Lego" (to me of course, but the parents hear too).

If you feel funny as a girl wanting LEGO, you're going to hate being an adult wanting LEGO. Best to get over it now before it drives you out of the LEGO world.

In my own way I'm trying to change this problem. I want to prove that girls can do it too!

LEGO.com called me "the first and (so far) only female freelance LEGO artist in the world!"

Does that tell you something?

Sadly, it does, it says that the focus is still in the wrong area. As long as the distinction is being made, we're still taking two steps back. I much prefer to see female fans who simply build and don't have to make a point out of it, they just participate. Otherwise, it'll always be, "well, she can build pretty well... for a girl."

Fortunately, based on the increasing numbers of female fans on this site and at events, it's changing from the bottom up, just as it should. That's how the day will come when no one bothers making a distinction at all, because it doesn't matter.

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Therefore, Lego is a male thing, some girls are even chastised for wanting Lego. This makes the Toy aisle in TRU really hard for me, unless my plain speaking little brother is with me, then he loudly says how stupid that is because, "You are really good with Lego" (to me of course, but the parents hear too).
If you feel funny as a girl wanting LEGO, you're going to hate being an adult wanting LEGO. Best to get over it now before it drives you out of the LEGO world.

I never feel any shame in the Toys R Us. I even tell the people at the register it is for me.

And I discuss the sets with my small nephew and my girlfriend in the toy aisle.

(Maybe I feel no shame because I'm Dutch, and we have some reallly weird people over here :tongue: )

And I can tell you that my girlfriend her female friends are always genuinly interested in my Lego.

They even confess liking to play with Lego when they were younger.

It was mostly their parents making the distinction between girl stuff and boy stuff.

I only ever succeeded to embarress a good friend during a holliday. I wanted to go to a toyshop to buy a new set and he went along.

I proudly proclamed at the register it was for me and I had been waiting for that set for quite a while. He later told me he felt ashamed.

Probably he was digging the girl behind the register. :tongue:

Because back at the boat he insisted on building along. haha.

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I never feel any shame in the Toys R Us. I even tell the people at the register it is for me.

That's the spirit!

(Maybe I feel no shame because I'm Dutch, and we have some reallly weird people over here :tongue: )

We have plenty of weird people in America, it doesn't help. :laugh: I will agree that it seems more accepted there, but with as many action figure fans as there are here, it's getting very typical to see adults buying toys for themselves now.

I only ever succeeded to embarress a good friend during a holliday. I wanted to go to a toyshop to buy a new set and he went along.

I proudly proclamed at the register it was for me and I had been waiting for that set for quite a while. He later told me he felt ashamed.

Probably he was digging the girl behind the register. :tongue:

Because back at the boat he insisted on building along. haha.

:laugh:

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I do not completely agree on the difference statement either. Almost all our behavior is learned and culturaly dominated.

There are some great woman in science and technology who are a 100% woman.

The idea of men and woman roles is purely cultural, there have been tribes for example were woman did the fighting just as men.

You're right. If it wasn't for these silly gender roles and cultural baggage, women could be stars in the NFL, and men could nurse their young! :hmpf:

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Sorry, think i was misunderstood. It's awkward in TRU because my little bothers likes to say (in the wonderful "whisper" only children have) how stupid an opinion that is... Plus I have to fight the urge to walk up to them and say that I have been playing with Lego all my life and have a career that researchers have linked to adults who played with lego as children (Civil Engineering). I have no issue with playing with lego while being both 20 and female, I just have issue with anyone who wants to pigeonhole girls and limit their potential.

To sum up: Playing Lego=Good, no matter age or gender.

Stupid Parents Stereotyping = Bad

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I do not completely agree on the difference statement either. Almost all our behavior is learned and culturaly dominated.

There are some great woman in science and technology who are a 100% woman.

The idea of men and woman roles is purely cultural, there have been tribes for example were woman did the fighting just as men.

I don't agree with that at all. It's far more complicated than that. Stating that behaviour is completely learned is as ridiculous as stating that it is entirely down to our biology because it is next to impossible to separate the two. The issue is called the nature vs. nurture debate.

TLG aims its products mainly at boys and this may explain some of the difference. If it were simply a matter of making different sets it would appear as though they are missing out on a large market. They have tried various different product lines aimed more at girls (Clickits, Belville and whatnot) but they never really seemed to last very long or become very big. Do they simply suck at marketing to girls or are girls in general less interested in a construction toy (for whatever reason)?

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited by Ralph_S

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To sum up: Playing Lego=Good, no matter age or gender.

Stupid Parents Stereotyping = Bad

Yeah, I hate that. Its like how parents think kids have values. Sorry of topic

Anyways, I don't like how people assume a girl wants a something that involves parenting. It just aint right.

It kinda reminds me of a sketch from the simpsons (Warning, homage alert) when they go to a Build-a-bear like shop and Lisa asks for costumes for her (and they're jobs like doctor, profferser ect.) and the employee there keeps handing her outfits of of simaliar jobs woman are stereotyped doing. So lisa says "Its a boy" so the employee hands her a doctors outfit. And it turns out lisa tricked the employee as lisa calls her stuffed dolphin "Betsie". Sorry for getting of topic, but the subject reminded me of it.

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You're right. If it wasn't for these silly gender roles and cultural baggage, women could be stars in the NFL, and men could nurse their young! :hmpf:

Now you are stretching the topic into the extremes.

That is only becasue those NFL sports favour body strenght.

Making it more likely men will star.

But it does not exclude woman perse.

Not all men star in the NFL either.

If we could train monkeys to star in the NFL they would win due to their superior body strenght. men or female monkey that is.

I dont suppose you star in the NFL?

If so, give me some tickets. :tongue:

In other sports woman beat men, for example the top woman in long distance swimming are faster than the men.

And there are other areas in which the top woman outperform the top men.

But looking to the extremes and reducing that to the norm is quite a strange simplification.

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Personally, I feel that the reason that there are far more male lego fans than female lego fans is very simple: because TLC has for years had a preconcieved notion that they should only market general lego products to boys. Instead of making products that appeal to both genders, they focus almost entirely on action heavy themes that feature lots of conflict and shooting devices.

Now, I'm not saying that girls don't like that stuff at all, but in general themes like Power Miners and Mars Mission are going to appeal a lot more to boys than girls. Some girls do like action oriented sets, and some boys like more peaceful sets, but usually it's the opposite, meaning that the girl market generally gets the short end of the stick from TLC when it comes to making products that they would like.

Fortunately, there are promising signs that TLC may be starting to shift in the other direction. City is the best example of this. In 2009, we got our usual assortment of action oriented sets like construction and the garage, but we are also getting residential sets like the City Corner, sportscar, and camping van. We also got a whole farm subtheme, which, while filled with vehicles as well, is a theme that really transcends gender lines, with sets that both boys and girls would love to play with. Then, in the castle line, we got the Medevial Market Village, which is currently the only castle set that does not cater to the conflict heavy mindset.

This is the stuff that TLC should be marketing more - instead of focusing almost entirely on action heavy sets, they should release a variety of products that appeal to both boys and girls. Ideas for sets and whole themes based around this concept would include zoos, carnival sets, castle village sets, action-light space sets in the style of the old space themes, houses, wild west sets that don't just focus around sherifs and bandits, etc. As soon as TLC gets over their preconcieved notions about boys and girls and starts marketing sets to both the genders at the same time, then we really could have a breakthrough in toy manufacturing. :wink:

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I don't agree with that at all. It's far more complicated than that. Stating that behaviour is completely learned is as ridiculous as stating that it is entirely down to our biology because it is next to impossible to separate the two. The issue is called the nature vs. nurture debate.

TLG aims its products mainly at boys and this may explain some of the difference. If it were simply a matter of making different sets it would appear as though they are missing out on a large market. They have tried various different product lines aimed more at girls (Clickits, Belville and whatnot) but they never really seemed to last very long or become very big. Do they simply suck at marketing to girls or are girls in general less interested in a construction toy (for whatever reason)?

Cheers,

Ralph

I dont agree at all with your statement. By nuancing like this you are basically discriminating against all men and woman who want to behave differently.

By claiming there might be a natural way in behaving seperated by gender lines. Which I believe there is not.

I believe there is a large grey area inbetween men and female gender. Only in the extremes you will find differences.

But that argument about extremes could also holds between people from different countries. But then it is called discrimination.

While taking the entirely opposite view leaves freedom for all individuals to behave as they think is best.

Since you stated we can not proof either one I think it is best to uphold the view which limits the fewest people.

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