Toys that are marketed at girls maybe less complex...

Why sell one thing to a household, when you can sell two?

Baby dolls, home keeping, sparkles, unicorns.

Pink curvy pens.

Anything focused on aesthetics,

boys don't have to put up with this do they?

Action men, goggles for X-ray vision,

giant fist that you put on your hand and punch stuff.

Little work stations and stuff, which is yeah, super weird.

I mean, these are supposed to be enlightened times, right?

So why do we still have so much gendered stuff?

Pink is just a theme with the youngest one in particular,

I don't know why she started shouting the word pink at me, "Pink! Pink!"

Her little beaker's pink, so she'll go, "Pink!"

I can't say I mind it, I think it's quite a natural thing for them to be

into princesses and stuff, but I kind of don't push them towards it,

in fact I probably push them the other way.

I think the reality of it is that, it starts so, so early.

That makes it really hard to differentiate between,

what is an innate desire and what's a learned behaviour.

We kind of create that world, where gender is important.

The first thing we want to know when somebody gets pregnant

or has a baby is, "Is it a girl or a boy?"

Despite the absence of pretty much all basic survival skills,

babies are very good at picking up social cues,

right from the moment of birth.

And they're aware of the face and the sound of the person who

might be the source of their food.

So, less than a year old, babies are picking up the fact that there are

gendered differences in their world.

So they would respond with surprise to the vision of a man

putting on lipstick for example.

Young children are trying to make sense of a really complicated world.

We adults are used to having so many different stimuli around us,

but for young children they need to kind of figure out

what are the rules of the world?

By knowing that's a girl, that's a boy, so that tells me something

about them - that allows them to put their energy into other things.

So then, it just allows them to just organise it in a way

that is efficient.

It does feel really incongruous I think, that in recent years

we've made so much headway in the way that we talk about gender

and yet at the same time, we've still got this stubbornly

binary gender marketing.

If manufacturers make it so easy for children to see, this is a toy for me

or this is a toy not for me,

then they use that information and it funnels them into

playing with particular toys that might influence their

play behaviours, the different kind of skills they develop

and their career aspirations.

One of the things we've learned is that the brain is mouldable

from very early on, by all sorts of different experiences

that we might have.

For example, experiences with construction toys or video games

is a much better predictor of how you're going to perform on

spatial tasks, than if you are male or female.

I think the rigid view that we have of gender

is problematic for everyone.

So, in an ideal world we would have more openness about gender,

and I think that would be better for everyone in terms of women's

opportunities and in terms of male progression in many, many ways.

Boys know from very early on that they're not allowed to be vulnerable,

they're not allowed to be weak.

They're not allowed to show that because if they do, then people will

pick on them and so I guess if we can teach boys that they're able to

access those emotions firstly, and teach them how to articulate them,

then the outcomes for them will be completely different.

The piece that's missing is often the option, to like...

do whatever you want.

To be yourself, you have to be able to see yourself, either in the cinema

or in books or in arts.

Younger people today are very astute, and are throwing away a lot of the

old ideas about gender norms.

I think, we're very much at the beginning of a real sea-change,

in terms of gender understanding and openness I think.

Frozen was a really great example, I know it was very exciting when that

film came out and it was such a huge phenomenon that it had two girls,

as the leads and the focus of the story was on their relationship

as sisters and they saved each other.

And that was something that was only a subtle difference,

you were still looking at some very pretty animated girls,

but actually the kernel of that story was something quite different.

Writers are working within the traditional story telling format,

but actually trying to push the boundaries within that,

of the conventions that we're used to.

And I'm definitely conscious to try and give them an option,

and I secretly like it when they'll go for something that's maybe

seen as opposite.

What's interesting is, we're happy to see female characters be presented

in a more diverse way, but where are all the nurturing, caring, sensitive

boy characters? There's still a bit of a way to go,

in terms of representing boys like that.

Ultimately, I think the stories that we tell

become the realities that we live.

And it has been that way for thousands and thousands of years.

If we change the stories that we're telling,

the lives that we live will look very different.

We're at a point where we have the power to reimagine those things,

and completely change the script for a generation that's growing up.

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