A report that Amazon no longer sorts toys into “boy” and “girl” categories is currently sweeping the internet. It’s not exactly true, but it might be a sign that the change might be on the way.
First, a breathless tweet earlier this week claimed Amazon no longer had separate sections for boys and girls toys:
This week Amazon eliminated the gendered taxonomy of toys: http://t.co/fn8Afi7Kvq
There are no more "boys" and "girls" sections!— Jack Danger (@jackdanger) May 2, 2015
This was kinda accurate. There was a tiny change to Amazon’s site, but a consumer probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Jason Kottke showed a before-and-after screengrab where the Gender section used to sort search results in the left-hand column had indeed removed the “boys” and “girls” checkboxes:
But if you head over to Amazon’s site there’s still dedicated Boys and Girls sections right there in the top navigation, with notably different offerings:
It’s a small milestone, perhaps, but this could be a first step that the retailer is making towards making its toy offerings more gender agnostic. We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment.
