Parents and children are beginning to worry more and more about gender equality across kids’ media content. In fact, 15% of children and 12% of parents are concerned about gender inequality in relation to the future, according to a study of 20.147 family members carried out by insights, strategy and creative agency Kids Industries.
In terms of the features that parents consider in the screen-based content (TV, films, games) that their children enjoy across media content, 28% feel that viewing equal gender representation is important. Moreover, 17% of parents also felt that having diverse creator teams behind the scenes was key. A further 25% of children cited that “seeing people being unfair to others based on who they are” – for example, their gender or skin colour – made them unhappy.
“This year’s International Women’s Day is encouraging everyone to embrace equity and celebrate women’s achievements, raising awareness about discrimination and taking action – and that is exactly why we are releasing this data,” explained Jelena Stosic, Strategy Director at Kids Industries.
“Achieving equity is a must-have, and the toy, gaming and media content industries have a responsibility to increase their efforts in creating characters that are diverse and inclusive. There has been some great work over the past 12 months, but as our data suggests, there is still a long way to go. Even though we are seeing a number of parents and children reporting that equal gender representation is important to them in content, it is still under a third of them. Given the role that media, entertainment and play have in how our identities and future are shaped, it is a call to action to all of us to do better. Better, arguably, than our audience is calling for,” Stosic concluded.