  Search engines in e-commerce settings allow users to search, browse, and
select items from a wide range of products available online including
children's items. Children's products such as toys, books, and learning
materials often have stereotype-based gender associations. Both academic
research and public campaigns are working to promote stereotype-free childhood
development. However, to date, e-commerce search engines have not received as
much attention as physical stores, product design, or marketing as a potential
channel of gender stereotypes. To fill this gap, in this paper, we study the
manifestations of gender stereotypes in e-commerce sites when responding to
queries related to children's products by exploring query suggestions and
search results. We have three primary contributions. First, we provide an
aggregated list of children's products with associated gender stereotypes from
the existing body of research. Second, we provide preliminary methods for
identifying and quantifying gender stereotypes in system's responses. Third, to
show the importance of attending this problem, we identify the existence of
gender stereotypes in query suggestions and search results across multiple
e-commerce sites.
