Our Claire has been watching the Olympics again…

Olympian Tom Daley made the headlines twice last week: Once for winning a gold medal and once for knitting. There’s nothing unusual about knitting. So the reason why it was newsworthy was because it was a man – Tom Daley – who was doing the knitting. This is because it confounds the stereotype that men don’t knit. Such stereotypes contribute to toxic masculinity but the stereotype – the expectation – that only women knit is also harmful to women. It is very much part of the damaging mythology that “A woman’s place is in the home”. That is not to say there is anything wrong with knitting per se – only when we place expectations on who can and can’t do it.

Unfortunately, stereotypes exist everywhere. They apply to race, class, wealth, politics, religion… anywhere and everywhere we classify someone as different, there will be a stereotype associated with that classification.

There’s ever more evidence that stereotypes do great harm. For example, gender equality campaigning charity, The Fawcett Society, produced a report last December stating that gender stereotyping has helped fuel the UK mental health crisis afflicting young people and that it is “at the root of problems with body image and eating disorders, record male suicide rates as well as violence against women and girls.” 

Psychologists have also confirmed that there is a fear of doing something that would validate negative perceptions of a stigmatised group that we are members of. They call this “stereotype threat” and there is apparently a wealth of research linking it with women’s underperformance in maths and leadership aspirations. For example, a study demonstrated that women tended to avoid leadership roles after viewing advertisements based on gender stereotypes.

So when stereotypes are so harmful, surely the best thing is to avoid them? Unfortunately, because of the pervasiveness of stereotypes, it isn’t that simple. Instead, the best thing is to confound them with positive role models. So we might celebrate Michelle Obama, for example, as a beautiful black woman with great leadership skills. Or celebrate Kathy Burke as a working-class woman who is a world-class actor and director. Best of all though, we could seek to confound the stereotypes ourselves and become positive role models for others.

This is where WHISC comes in: As well as everything else they do, WHISC offer training courses that seek to empower women. For example, The ‘Do It’ Project helps women to set goals, increase self-esteem, reduce stress, learn new skills, prepare a CV, and present themselves effectively at interview to enable them to get back into work. There’s also a host of workshops this summer as part of the Directions project. These workshops help women to develop skills to look for work, education or training, create their CV, and practice and expand their interview skills. For more details about these and everything else WHISC does, please take a look at the What’s On page of this website.