Kids Industries finds 28% of parents calling for gender equality in children’s content

A study conducted by UK insights firm Kids Industries has found that 28% of parents globally want gender equality in children’s media content.

Jelena Stosic

The study, published in time for International Women’s Day today, revealed that 15% of children and 12% of parents are concerned about gender inequality in relation to their or their child’s future. This concern rises to 25% among children in Nigeria and 26% in India.

When parents consider screen-based content, namely TV, films and games, for their children, 28% felt equal gender representation was important. Seventeen percent of parents also felt having diverse creative teams behind the scenes was key.

A further 25% of children said that ‘seeing people being unfair to others based on who they are’ – for example, their gender or skin colour – made them unhappy.

Jelena Stosic, strategy director at Kids Industries, said: “This year’s International Women’s Day is encouraging everyone to #embraceequity and celebrate women’s achievements, raising awareness about discrimination and taking action – and that’s exactly why we’re releasing this data.

“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’s 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’s still under a third of them. Given the role that media, entertainment and play have in how our identities and future are shaped, it’s a call to action to all of us to do better. Better, arguably, than our audience is calling for.”

Kids Industries’ study covered 5,000 families across 10 countries and six continents. It is part of a bigger report that will launch at the company’s Global Family conference on March 21 in London.