The last bounce of the ball echoed around the gym walls until slowly it faded away. Basketball practice ended late again, all because we couldn’t focus during the previous defensive drill. The coach drummed up the energy to yell until their face swelled under the loud screeches of anger. Making sure to keep the team and I running till we keeled over from exhaustion.

The first star in the night sky, trees look tall, and a cool breeze replaced the heat of the day. Under the moonlight, the streets lay calm. While walking home, I ran through the day’s events, pondering my IT and cooking classes. Thinking of the endless lines of code, I had to write; I can’t even imagine how the app is even going to work. They say hard work pays off, but I don’t know, it was hours of work!

Luckily, I got to celebrate my hard work in cooking! I finally was able to cook something edible. With my apron still tied around my waist, I sat down at my group table with a smile and a blueberry pie baked to perfection. One small step for me, one giant leap for my cooking!

I wrote this story with one person in mind, but I’ve given you no indication to who they are. I told their story and let you make your inferences for yourself. Is it a boy? Is it a girl?

You most likely made a decision and concluded the gender of the person.

What was your first thought?

More importantly, how did you do it? And why did you do it?

Gender Bias

Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, boys and girls, that are socially constructed. The social constructs include norms, behaviors and roles associated with these socially constructed characteristics and the relationship between them.

A study called, ‘Bias at the intersection of race and gender: Evidence from preschool-aged children’ reported that gender bias must be addressed before children reach kindergarten. They noted that children’s sensitivity to negative social biases could be induced or intensified when they witness expressions of gender bias, intentional or unintentional.

Biases have been engrained within each of us. We are bombarded with media reinforcing these biases, from every medium: written, visual, and even spoken.

Written: In 2017, the Académie française, France’s ultimate authority on the French language, was thundering against ‘the aberration of “inclusive writing”’, claiming that ‘the French language finds itself in mortal danger’ from workarounds for the generic masculine (Invisible Women, 2019).

Spoken: In 2012, a World Economic Forum analysis found that countries with gender-inflected languages, which have strong ideas of the masculine and feminine present in almost every utterance, are the most unequal in terms of gender. But here’s an interesting quirk: countries with genderless languages (such as Hungarian and Finnish) are not the most equal. Instead, that honor belongs to a third group, countries with ‘natural gender languages’ such as English. These languages allow gender to be marked (female teacher, male nurse) but largely don’t encode it into the words themselves (Invisible Women, 2019).

Gender inequalities are still plaguing the world with no sign of slowing down.

From a young age, gender biases become engrained. By introducing children to biases, they internalize it unconsciously, and ultimately, perpetuate the problem further.

For children, we need to engage in conversation around gender biases early and often. By doing this, we can blaze a trail toward equity long before girls and boys are engaging in romantic relationships, choosing college majors, or entering the workforce.

For adults, we need to evaluate our own biases first. We need to be mindful of the language we use, the perspectives we hold about our abilities and traits, and especially, the way we treat people of different genders.