- It's no secret, we're living in the future.
We got self-driving cars, people are living
into the triple digits, and with a click of a button,
you could have toilet paper delivered
to your house in a single day.
- Plus, there's like a million
professions we can choose from now.
You could be a sea captain or an internet video producer.
- Is that a real thing?
But can you actually just choose
whatever profession you want or does your gender
influence where you end up hanging your hat?
We don't know, but we're gonna go find out.
(upbeat electronica music)
To see if there's still some gender bias
out there in this day and age,
we got a few friends to help us with a little experiment.
- My name's Benedict and I am a nurse,
and I love taking care of people.
- I'm Kim and I am an aerospace engineer.
I've loved math and science for my entire life.
- I'm a dental assistant.
They expect a female to be doing my job, but it's fun.
- I'm Jen, I work as a technical project manager.
I'm a gay biracial lady who works in tech, and so there
aren't necessarily a ton of us, but we're there.
- Hey.
We printed out some pictures of our friends,
we printed out their occupations and some extra ones,
we're gonna see if people can match 'em up.
Let's go.
My name's Yessica, what's yours?
- Magic.
- Yessica, what's yours?
- Yadira.
- Edira?
- Yadira with a Y.
- Yoduro.
- Yadira.
- We're playing a game today.
We're playing a game.
- I like games.
- Yeah, great.
I just need you to match the occupation with the face.
- Okay.
- Does that sound like something you can do?
- Yep.
- All right, let's do it.
- Go with this girl being a teacher.
- [Yessica] Okay.
- [Voiceover] 'Cause she seems very friendly and very nice.
- He looks like a truck driver right here.
- [Benedict] Yessica chatted with 10 people
on the street and for the most part people
incorrectly matched the people to their professions,
but their incorrect guesses were interesting.
Out of the seven jobs to choose from,
50 percent randomly guessed Jen was a nurse
and 50 percent guessed Hugo was a firefighter.
- [Voiceover] Well, he definitely looks like a firefighter.
- She looks really nice.
I'm gonna call her a nurse.
- This guy looks like a firefighter.
He seems like someone who would save my life.
- [Benedict] So, are they bad guessers?
Nope.
It turns out that 94 percent of firefighters
are men and 90 percent of nurses are women,
so it totally makes sense that they went
with these guesses based only on looks.
But why is this?
Why do some professions skew heavily
for one gender when Ben, Kim, Hugo, and Jen
show that anyone can do anything?
Well, a lot of these career and gender associations
have to do with gender stereotypes.
Some traits are deemed more female
while others are deemed more male.
For example, in one study participants
were shown designs from an architect.
When they were told the architect was a man,
the participants reviewed the designs
as being more creative than when they
were told it was from a woman.
Researchers hypothesize that this is because this type
of creativity is often deemed a male trait.
Luckily, our friends are helping
to challenge those stereotypes and biases.
- I think more guys are getting involved into nursing
because guys are now allowed to be more compassionate.
- If you want to be in tech
and you are a woman, you belong here.
- For some reason they prefer a female assistant
because they think they're gonna be more gentle,
but I could be gentle, I could be caring,
and I can do all those things too.
- I think there's also a lot of push
to get more women into these stem fields.
We're just as capable of having these jobs as men are
and more women should be interested in it.
(soft drum and bass music)