Are we teaching our girls to be less creative? 🧸

My early rising habits are well-known by now. Coffee, reading–and a bit of writing–to ease me into the working day. This week, our focus point is LEGO’s research on how the way we talk to our children affects the way they think about themselves and their capabilities. 

To put it simply, today I’m talking about how societal trends are affecting children’s creative confidence, with a focus on young girls. The research finds that we put the pressure of perfection–particularly in the way we talk to our girls–and it’s holding them back from reaching their full creative potential. 

“...girls as young as five are having their creative confidence knocked by so-called language bias, the pressure to achieve perfection, and a fear of failure.”
Forbes

We attribute terms like sweet, pretty, cute and beautiful exclusively to girls. While terms such as brave, cool, genius and innovative are–mainly–reserved for boys. It’s no new news that male artists, innovators, physicists and scientists are usually in the spotlight, while their female counterparts tend to be cast in shadow. Think about how many female artists you know of. The art world has always been bias and creativity is–inherently–a male characteristic. I’ll reserve that topic for another day though. The main takeaway here is that society takes men more seriously than women.

---

Wait… what have been doing wrong?

The way we talk to children is often loaded with implicit bias. Without meaning to, we often communicate this societal imbalance to children early on, and as a result they grow up believing it’s normal. This behaviour makes it twice as hard for young girls to break through in disciplines that are predominantly male dominated (the creative industry for example).

“A majority of under 35s agree that stereotypes have wide-ranging adverse effects on children’s subject choices at school, young people’s career choices, attitudes to who does the caring and attitudes to what it means to be a man or a woman.”
Fawcett Society

We have to wake up to the harm that gender stereotypes are doing to our society and the way they limit our future possibilities as a species. Without realising it, we are holding over half of the world’s population back before they’ve even had the chance to form their own personalities, ideas and mindsets. Often even seemingly innocent sentences like “girls are as good as boys in maths” can have a harmful effect. Statements like this imply that it’s more common for boys to be good at maths.

---

What’s the next step?

Praise mistakes as learning opportunities for all children, regardless of gender. We need to start valuing progress over perfection, and viewing children’s–and young adults–efforts as work in progress, helping them grow each step of the way. Make them feel less worried about making mistakes, getting things wrong or making a mess of things. Allow children to be messy and focus on a growth-mindset for girls that teaches them they can be imaginative, brave and inspiring. This attitude is no longer optional. We can all agree that in the last decades the world has been on a fast-track of technological innovation. It’s no longer acceptable to hold old societal stereotypes and we can’t wait for the change to be subtle and slow. We need to get cultural and societal progress on the fast-track lane too. 

---

Let’s celebrate women

🏃‍♀️ Every Woman’s Marathon is sponsoring an inclusive event for women, with support they need throughout the race and beyond.

💛 After being involved in Sisterhood’s Summer initiative last year–helping young girls launch their business in the world–I’d highly recommend more studios to get involved.

🔎 You can find out more about women the design world has forgotten in this insightful article by the Financial Times.