There is a very powerful film from MullenLowe London showing how early in life career opportunities and gender stereotypes are defined. In fact, gender stereotypes are defined between 5 and 7 years of age. This period is quite decisive and is key to avoid learning about gender stereotypes, or better learn not to have any.
If you ask children, as they did in the short film, to draw you a pilot, surgeon, firefighter and a nurse, you will probably get three of them drawn as men and one of them drawn as women. I will let you guess which ones.
These stereotypes are mainly valid for jobs considered as more “for men”, however we should keep in mind that the opposite also exists.
For example, there are mainly women working as nurses. This graph from a paper made by the World Health Organization in 2019, shows the percentage of women working as nurses compared to men in that sector. The percentages are quite self explanatory and quite far from gender equality.
The reason why there are more women working as nurses than men is probably not because of less opportunities for men but education. From childhood, through stories, TV, people surrounding us, we implicitly understand that mainly women exercise as nurses. Growing with that bias will lead to less men applying or willing to work as so, only because it has been implicitly considered as a female job. This shows how important education toward gender equality is.
Knowing that gender stereotypes are learned that early in life is knowing where to start and try solving the issue. In fact, trying to solve the issue at its roots is one of the only ways to achieve durable results. By durable results, I mean less gender inequalities, biases, stereotypes later in life like in the workplace, for example. Growing without biases will lead to a change and reduction of gender gaps, only because equality will seem normal to future generations.
One barrier to not learn about gender stereotypes is language, and unfortunately we won’t be able to change it in a near future. For example, in French “sage-femme” (and in English “midwife”) is highly women connotated, suggesting, at least for a child using those words, that these professions are made for women. While language is not always very helpful, education plays an even more important role.
Finally, we need to show the younger generation, and as early as 5 to 7 years old, that there is no such thing as a job specialized for one gender. Education is on two levels: school and home. However, we should focus on what we can control, that is to say: school. Showing diversity at school will help fight against discrimination, gender inequalities and even more inequalities.
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