The Ministry of Consumption launched a situation based on a symbolic “toy strike” to sensitize the entire population and, especially, families with children, on the importance of the game in the development of childhood and negative impact
of sexist advertising.

Thus, under the symbolic label #Huelgadejugues, the initiative includes an animation video in which different fiction characters call families to join their claim to raise awareness about the “problem” that supposes for them that only let them play with the
Half of the children’s population and aware that “playing has no gender,” said the Garzón department in a statement.

“We, even if we are plastic or stuffed, we also have our heart”.
“The time has come to say enough, to claim our right to play with 100% of boys and girls, not with 50%,” the toys explained in the videocommunicated, in which they summon families to mobilize
Perseons or virtually next Sunday, December 12 to let them “play with 100% of children”.

The action began this Thursday with a stuck of symbolic posters in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville and will culminate next Sunday with an act that will be held from 11.00 to 12. 00 hours at the puppet theater of El Retiro Park (Madrid), in
He who is invited to girls and children, along with their toys, show their “disagreement” with the sexist stereotypes and that will culminate with a storytelling, although the call, unprecedented in Spain, will also be able to support it ‘online
‘Through social networks publishing a photograph with the label #Huelgadejugues.

With this campaign, the Ministry of Consumer pretends to “raise awareness” about the “risk” of “reproducing roles and sexist stereotypes in advertising” coinciding with an era as the Christmas, in which “considerably increase the advertisements of games and toys”.

After emphasizing that, according to a study on stereotypes and gender roles in toy advertising prepared by the Institute of Women in 2020, almost 40% of these ads shows the girls archetypes related to beauty and care, while
50% of those aimed at children are related to professions such as pilot, police or military, the Garzon cabinet defended that this “has a direct impact on self-perception of minors.”

For this reason, consumption recommends choosing toys and games “free of gender clichés” and opt for gifts that, “instead of limiting the present and future development of children, they expand and stimulate it.”

“Sexist stereotypes are dangerous and negatively affect both them and them,” he argued in the launch of the Campaign the Secretary General of Consumption and Game, Rafael Escudero, who considered that the game is “basic for the configuration of his personality,
His skills and abilities “and emphasized that a choice of toys and games” free of gender stereotypes is key to the development of a population that, through the game, learns to know what life is like. ”

The ministry said that a sexist toy is anyone who has a differentiated version for each sex and that, therefore, “does not appear as suitable for both children and girls”.

This campaign adds to the actions that consumption comes by developing both with the manufacturer’s toy industry in Spain as with the distribution sector to advance the elimination of gender stereotypes in advertising toys and games.