Inspiring the Future UK has just last week launched a new campaign that asks whether the language we all use when talking about jobs, contributes to the problem of unconscious bias, with a short film called 'No More Female CEOs'. This bias towards gender, limits the opportunities that children perceive they have. By dropping the ‘female’ prefix for builders, soldiers, surgeons, CEOs and others, society is asked to consider why we unnecessarily add a gender label to a female professional. It asks, shouldn’t people be judged on their manner, skill and output; not by applying a gender label?

The campaign, devised and completed pro bono for the charity by MullenLowe Group, moves the conversation on from the first campaign they did together in 2016 called #RedrawTheBalance. This documented an experiment exploring how gender stereotypes form in minds as young as the early years of primary school. The work reached far and wide, spreading on social media with the support from the likes of Emma Watson and Sir Ken Robinson. It even spurred the UN to recreate the experiment themselves and the Chinese to create their own version. The film had over 40 million views.

Nick Chambers, Chief Executive of the Education and Employers Charity commented:

“In 2016 we successfully shone a light on the young age that gender stereotyping takes hold. A lot of progress has been made when it comes to gender equality, but the language that we use in the workplace still paves the way for unconscious bias. And that, in turn, can affect the dreams and aspirations of future generations. We’re here to correct that. And that’s exactly what this campaign sets out to do.”

Education and Employers research, most recently Drawing the Future, shows that children start to form gender stereotypes about career aspirations from as young as six years old. The campaign invites people from the world of work to sign up to www.inspiringthefuture.org and volunteer an hour a year in state schools to chat to children about their careers, what inspired them to follow a certain path and what educational route helped them to get there. By exposing children to a huge range of jobs and introducing them to real people doing them, it shows future generations that gender or socio-economics should not determine what they aspire to be.