Women experience gender inequality on screen, on the field, and in the boardroom. But not everyone knows that it starts at a much earlier age. In fact, according to research, gender stereotypes are defined as early as 5 and 7 years of age.
We wanted to highlight this fact to encourage more volunteers to sign up to Inspiring the Future’s mentorship program and tackle the problem right where it starts.
We took an art class and turned it into a medium where we asked children to draw a firefighter, a surgeon, and a fighter pilot. Out of 66 drawings, 61 were drawn as men and only 5 were drawn as women. What the children didn’t know was that the “teachers” were examples of professionals they were asked to draw. When we revealed the truth, their reaction was priceless.