Teaching our kids about gender stereotyping

As a mother, I tend to think too much about the future. More than anything, I want my son to grow up in a world where he can embrace his individuality and strive for anything he wants to be. One issue that stands out for me is rigid gender stereotyping. Too often, major brands are still reinforcing old, negative beliefs about gender roles that have the tendency to separate and box kids into certain categories.

Take the new GAP Campaign for example, their image depicts a boy, wearing a T-shirt of Albert Einstein’s face with the caption: ‘the little scholar’. His tagline, ‘Your future starts here’. Alternately, the girl next to him has at T-shirt captioned: ‘The social butterfly. Her tagline, ‘…the talk of the playground’. It is obvious as to why this campaign sparked outraged. What else is obvious, is the amount of time and effort GAP spent creating this campaign.  So much so, that they ingeniously spelt Einstein incorrectly (promoting scholars GAP?).

Gender stereotypes hurt everyone, not just a specific gender or group.  They can provide pressure and unrealistic expectations, they have the ability to disempower individuals and can give impressionable children ingrained beliefs about how they should be and act.

Don’t get me wrong, we have all done it.  My son’s room is filled with toy cars and blue paraphernalia.  However, he also enjoys our tea parties, Peppa Pig and dancing and singing along to ‘Shimmer and Shine’ .

Yes, there are bigger problems in the world. But surely we can all see that significant social issues stem from matters such as this. Unbelievably and disappointingly in the 21^st century, there is still ongoing gender discrimination in regard to recruitment, pay, leadership roles, media personalities, job assignments, the list goes on.

Earlier this year, a very well-known pen company, Bic,  brought out a pen specifically designed for women (because just in case you didn’t know it, we have been using men’s pens all this time). These ‘for her’ pens come in pink and purple (no surprise there). They emphasise that because of these pens, women will now be able to embrace their femininity and write with a pen that has a ‘sleek silhouette and jewelled accents’ as well as ‘soft contoured grip for all day comfort’. I’ve been managing all this time with the regular pens, so i think I’ll be alright. And where are the ‘for him’ pens? Surely men need a pen to affirm their masculinity? I can just see the tag line now: – “Hard and robust for a good strong grip”.

As parents, guardians and friends we need to teach our kids and society to eliminate these unjust labels and beliefs which have the potential to limit individuals and isolate those who do not fall into their assumed role. We need to make a greater commitment on choosing our words correctly and as consumers, support the retailers that support equality and don’t discourage it.

None of us tick all the boxes, some of us don’t tick any and some of us only tick a few. This is healthy, this is real and this is more than OK.

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