For February, the theme of my content is stereotyping, highlighting sexist stereotypes, examining how they can be harmful and how they are intertwined with equity issues for women.

From the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights:

”A gender stereotype is a generalised view or preconception about attributes or characteristics, or the roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by, women and men. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives.”

Some stereotypes can be clearly harmful, such as ‘women are too emotional to lead,’ while some can appear to be neutral, such as ‘men are strong,’ or ‘women are nurturing’. However, on deeper inspection, the last one reinforces the idea that women should be default primary caregivers; we know that the vast majority of child care and other caring responsibility falls to women and is unpaid, thus creating inequality of opportunity, power and finances. So all stereotypes are worth examining for their truthfulness and impact.

In the workplace, you might have come across situations such as a woman in the meeting always being asked to take notes or make the drinks rather than a man, even when she is more senior. Perhaps you’ve seen women with young children not being invited onto projects or to apply for promotions because it has been assumed that they are no longer ambitious or able to commit. If a woman is seen to be direct, she might be looked down on for not being kind (GASP!), when a man would be seen as assertive and viewed positively for the exact same behaviour. We all have an abundance of lived experience of stereotyping harming women in the workplace.

Stereotyping is a huge contributor to the lack of a level playing field or equity for women in the workplace and in the wider world. The first step to tackling the harm that stereotyping causes is to understand the breadth of sexist stereotypes, notice them affecting people’s behaviour and expectations of others out in the world, and to take time to reflect on the implications of not tackling them.

What are the bigger paradigms that are reinforced by allowing stereotypes to perpetuate? Is it really for the best for the world, your workplace and all the women you know that sexist stereotyping continues? It might seem ‘minor’ in your world, something we just have to put up with, yet at the other end of the scale, women in Afghanistan can no longer access education and in some states medical care because of it. It’s all part of the same continuum, and is misogynistic at its roots. None of it is ok or helpful for your future, nor our collective future.

And yes, men are hurt by sexist stereotypes too. More on this here.