Furlined's New Film for Education and Employers Inspires Children to Be What They Want

Inspiring the Future, run by the national charity Education and Employers, exists to help children aspire to be whatever they want – regardless of who they are and where they come from.

In 2016 MullenLowe Group created a film for the charity called ‘Redraw the Balance’ – a documented 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 creation of a bespoke version in China. To date the work has received over 40 million views.

In 2018, Inspiring the Future and MullenLowe Group are again joining forces. This time to move the conversation on, and ask society to drop the ‘female’ tag. Through a thought provoking online film and head-turning out of home posters the campaign shows how the language we all use contributes to the problem of unconscious bias.

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. Shouldn’t people be judged on their manner, skill and output; not by applying a gender label?

Nick Chambers, Chief Executive of the Education and Employers taskforce 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.”

The ‘No More Female Professionals’ work launches online today.