Not every little girl is a princess: why we should all be fighting the ‘pink takeover’

Let’s hear it for Waterstones, which has put its sizeable retail muscle behind a campaign to end the marketing of books as “for girls” or “for boys”.

Publishers like Usborne are also supporting the move, alongside authors like Philip “His Dark Materials” Pullman and the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

I know the evidence for this can only be anecdotal, but I’m convinced the pinkification of children’s toys has become more widespread in the last few years, and the insidious creep of the colour pink also appears to have affected the publishing industry.

It can’t be right that while the boys are doing clever stuff like playing with Lego and Power Rangers, and reading Horrid Henry, the girls sit coyly in the corner, toying with their Barbie dolls and play make-up, only pausing to dip into a Princess Poppy book (tagline “Every Little Girl is a Princess”).

So what if little girls want to be Batman instead? Or build a fantastically lofty Lego tower before sending the dumper truck crashing through it?

I remember buying my eldest daughter two dressing-up outfits for her birthday – Snow White and Batman. Without steering her one way or the other, I let her pick which to wear for her party. She opted for Batman.

If she felt like the odd one out when her friends arrived in full Princess regalia, she didn’t let on. (Though I must admit feeling I might have been hoist by my own feminist petard when the day turned out sweltering, and the Batman outfit really wasn’t weather-appropriate).

Since then, the pink takeover has continued its onward march. Virtually every present for my youngest daughter’s last birthday was infused with some sort of pink. That included even gifts as seemingly gender-neutral as felt-tip pens.

And when I went down to the toy shop to buy some Lego I was immediately guided towards the Friends range. The Butterfly Beauty shop didn’t quite do it for me, so I ended up unearthing my old box of the stuff – all in brilliant primary colours, not a brick of pink or mauve in sight.

Don’t get me wrong, I personally love the colour pink. But the gender divide over toys and books is surely worth taking seriously.

Because if girls and boys are encouraged to play differently, and girls are put off the more hands-on, boisterous toys and reading, we’ve only got ourselves to blame if the women of the future go for “girly” jobs, leaving heavy careers like engineering to the blokes.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, warned not so long ago that the lack of female engineers had the potential to cause huge economic problems. Astonishingly, half of all state schools don’t have a single girl doing physics.

It’s time for government ministers to add their voices to the Waterstones-backed campaign.

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