Do they have to be "boys" or "girls" - can't they simply be children?

Abstract: The gender debate has become more and more apparent in recent years, not least in the fashion industry for children. Messages, prints, colors and not least how clothes are presented in the store has highly been discussed in media. People express their concern and opinions about that the fashion retailers, such as H&M, chose to distinctly separate "boys" and "girls" clothes based on stereotyped gender roles, which reinforce a picture of the genders that does not match the reality. This debate aims to show that this is no longer a thing that can pass unmarked, but actually is important to do something about. The aim of the paper was to examine whether a gender-neutral clothing presentation in the children's department at H&M should be executed and if it - really - would affect the consumers, as well as the brand, favourably. A quantitative experiment was conducted with 201 respondents in order to address the research questions. The results revealed that H&M should consider restructuring their gender-divided children's clothing department. Firstly, the results showed that a gender-neutral presentation of children's clothes had a significant positive influence on the consumers. As a matter of fact, a presentation that includes gender neutrality leads to emotions of pleasure and positive change in customer attitudes, both in terms of the attitude towards the presentation of the clothes, but also in terms of attitudes towards the brand. Furthermore, a gender-neutral presentation is perceived as creative due to the fact that it is incongruent in comparison to what consumers expect from H&M, which also affect their interest in the brand. For H&M, the investment in merging the two gender-divided children's departments would lead to increases in purchase intention, recommendations from consumers and last, but not least, positive buzz and thus - hopefully - also an opportunity to set a new standard for the Swedish fashion market.