Close your eyes. Picture a CEO, a world-renowned scientist, a tennis player, and a coder. What does the imaginary person look like? Chances are, you imagined a “he” in almost all these instances. From a young age, we are told to believe that each gender plays a specific role. It is drilled into our brains that women cook and clean (and sometimes work, all while taking care of their children and planning their playdates), while men are the valued breadwinners for the family. Even though we have made significant leaps since the earlier centuries, these gender roles unconsciously affect our way of thinking. 

Take one of our classic movies, Legally Blonde. Elle Woods, the main character, pours her soul into her application to Harvard just to win back her longtime boyfriend, Warner Huntington III who also studies at the same college. This movie makes Elle’s motivations for higher education seem like they are only for Warner. While she does grow to love law, for young female viewers, what does it tell them? That you should shape your education around your significant other? The real issue here is the effect this mindset has on young girls. It is detrimental to their self-esteem and career choices.

In 2019, The Barbie Dream Gap Project was founded by Mattel. It’s a fund to help girls believe in themselves. In their video, they explain that only 6% of women are CEOs and that, as early as age 5, girls stop believing they can be presidents and scientists. In order to address this, Mattel came out with a new collection of Barbies that show women in different career fields: police officers, scientists, athletes and politicians.  Why do girls stop believing in themselves? It all boils down to gender stereotypes and a lack of role models. Most of the blame goes to the old media, (as in traditional movies/news) for failing to spotlight courageous girls who have taken action on issues they face. But we can’t blame the media for everything, because, in recent times, they have brought attention to girl activists like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai. 

The real problem is in our culture. Children get their father’s last names. How many times do you see a father cooking dinner for the entire family in movies? While there are some rare occurrences, they aren’t significant enough to change our mindsets. Decades ago, in India, when a woman was married, she had to change last name, as well as her first name. It was almost like when she was married, she had a new identity. She was seen as property. As Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, claims, there are no real differences between men and women, except for the fact that women can birth children. It is all an “imagined order” of how things should be done. 

In The Help, by Katherine Stockett, the only job Skeeter can find as a journalist in the 1960s is writing a domestic maintenance column. In other words, cleaning. When she went in for the interview, her interviewer read her resumé (which included a completed college education at Ole Miss) but still assumed she was interviewing for a job to clean toilets. The fact is, only 32% of women are working moms. Perhaps if there were more TV shows and movies with working mothers, people would think that it is possible to be both a mom and have a job. 

The media is amazing in so many ways: it gives us a window into other people’s lives, their successes and failures. But one thing it could do better is representing women with different household situations, perspectives and jobs.