A reflection on the role that media, advertising, and fiction play in…
The Expert
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Everything is born with a riddle. A riddle with a very simple answer, but for many people the answer is not so obvious. Why?
The directors start from a well-known riddle: “A father and his son are in a car accident and the father dies. The son is in a very serious condition and the greatest expert in surgery must operate on him. When the expert arrives, they says 'I can't operate on him because he is my son.'” Guess: Who is the eminence?
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Distributor subjects
Education; Women; Short Films; Iberian Studies; Sociology; Gender + Sexuality Studies; YouthKeywords
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Listen carefully to this riddle:
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A father and son travel
from Madrid to Valencia by car.
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They have an accident and the father dies.
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The son needs a complicated operation
so the hospital calls the top expert in surgery.
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Upon seeing the boy, the expert says
“I can’t operate, he’s my son”.
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Who is the expert?
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Do I have to answer?
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Is it obligatory?
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I’m completely baffled
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You’ve got me there
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I don’t know, my mind wandered off. No idea.
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Can you say it again?
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The facts are:
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they have an accident, the father dies,
the son is in hospital.
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They call the expert surgeon who says
“I can’t operate because he’s my son”.
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First off it would be the Dad, but…no.
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The father's spirit
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He could be the father of someone,
but not the boy next to him.
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The biological father or something like that.
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The expert? No idea, unless it’s the King
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Um, um, um, um.
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The expert? It must be God, I suppose.
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Because he’s my son… the expert…
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I don’t know.
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No, not at all, no idea.
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I have no idea.
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The father died, so this is someone else.
He can’t operate because it’s his son?
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It must be God, I can’t think of anything else,
it doesn’t make sense.
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The expert
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CRISTINA CÁNOVAS/ NATURAL SCIENCE MUSEUM
If the mother is the last thing you think of
when you hear this riddle, it’s an educational problem
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It’s incredible because I work in this and
I heard the riddle when I was preparing the exhibition
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but I didn’t think of the mother.
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How is that possible?
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ROCÍO DE IRIARTE / NATURAL SCIENCE MUSEUM
I didn’t get it right. It’s incredible that
we assume that experts are men and not women.
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I suppose it’s because of stereotypes,
images we have deep inside.
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Well, the patriarchy exists.
Who else could ’the expert’ be? A man.
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From early on we're taught that
scientists and technologists are men.
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When we think of doctors or engineers,
we think of men.
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Einstein
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Einstein
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Einstein
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Albert Einstein
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Severo Ochoa
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Ramón y Cajal
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Ramón y Cajal
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Stephen Hawkins
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Gay-Lussac
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Bohr
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Bill Gates
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Fleming
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Newton, Galileo and the rest
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We need more women in textbooks, please!
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They've been hidden in history but they are there.
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SARA GÓMEZ “WOMEN AND ENGINEERING” PROJECT
If you ask children for examples of
famous women scientists or engineers,
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the answer is either silence or
someone like Marie Curie.
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I can remember a woman scientist
but I can’t remember her name.
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I don’t know, my mind’s gone blank.
I don’t know.
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Hang on, I can’t remember.
I can’t think at all. I really can’t think at all.
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Does my parasitology professor count?
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I don’t know, Madame Curie.
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Marie Curie, exactly!
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie, for example
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Marie Curie
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There are others we don’t know so well.
Women who designed a cart for delivering milk,
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who created a device for reading braille.
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Others who have 400 patents,
who invented an iris identification system.
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Even Hollywood actresses.
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During an exhibition about Marie Curie,
many women told us that reading about Marie Curie
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led them to study physics, chemistry or medicine.
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If there had been lots of Marie Curies,
more women would have studied science.
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Many women have changed the world
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and we don’t have to look abroad to find them.
In Spain we have wonderful examples.
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Margarita Salas is a pioneer, a driving force in
biochemistry and molecular biology in Spain.
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MARGARITA SALAS / BIOCHEMIST
It’s hard to overcome invisibility.
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You must keep going, not be discouraged,
even if they ignore you
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because you do feel ignored and invisible.
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But you mustn’t give up,
you must show you’re as good as men can be.
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SUSANA MARCOS / PHYSICIST
When I go to evaluate European projects
there's a lot of talk at the start,
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so that the evaluators bear it in mind,
about the imperceptible unconscious bias
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that may exist without us realising.
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It’s important because, although I don’t want positive
discrimination, to be given things because we’re women
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I don’t want negative discrimination either,
to be denied things because we’re women.
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Gender-equal committees and juries, 40-60 or 60-40,
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are important so that women are considered as well as men.
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Now there are 900 men
and 48 women Nobel Prize winners.
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Barely 5 percent.
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It’s time to make women visible.
Of course it depends how you look at it.
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Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian Nobel Laureate in Medicine, said
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it was a miracle to have 48,
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bearing in mind the stolen years of education.
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The task is for boys and girls
to understand that they are equal
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and that, with the same opportunities,
the only obstacles for men and women
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should be their intelligence and effort.
Then it would end.
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Horserider,... scientist,...
explorer,... animal carer.
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Three things:
gamer, football player and traceur.
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I want to be a gymnast, gymnastics coach and scientist.
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I want to be a gamer, football player and traceur.
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Football player, traceur and... scientist.
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When I was young I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
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I always wanted to be an engineer because
I liked messing around, tinkering
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Playing with meccano and building.
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In the 6th form a woman science teacher
awoke my passion for physics
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and I decided to study physical sciences.
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I never felt a vocation for research or thought
I would be a researcher when I was little
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but once I got into research I was hooked.
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The message I received was that
engineering was for men.
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In fact, that view still prevails.
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CAMILA MONASTERIO / BIOLOGIST
These stereotypes appear from the age of 5 onwards.
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Boys are good at maths and
girls are good at human sciences and listening.
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It’s not just about telling girls
“You can study aeronautical engineering”
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it’s about telling boys “You can develop
skills that are not supposedly for boys”.
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It’s hard to think of any women that we studied.
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As I remember, we studied very few women.
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Sometimes Marie Curie,
one of the most famous ones.
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We don’t remember them because
we’re not told about them when we’re little.
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There are few women scientists in textbooks,
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few on TV
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and we don’t generally see these role models.
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We can’t remember them
because we’re never shown them.
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This needs to change.
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Other stories are necessary.
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History has not been written by
white men alone but also by women.
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Another criticism is that it should not
only be European Western women.
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It’s not enough to include women in science
if we all come from the same social class.
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We’ve been lucky enough to study,
to get a degree.
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If you only include a certain kind of woman,
you’re not making a fairer system.
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The one I know best is Marie Curie.
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Marie Curie
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Madame Curie
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie
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She was one of the first women scientists in history.
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For Christmas I got a book
about women that made discoveries
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and did great things
in a world dominated by men.
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I know about Marie Curie,
Rosalind Franklin
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and another,...
I can't remember her name.
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Margarita Salas
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My aunt is a scientist.
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She does research at Dublin University,
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investigating water molecules.
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Was there one called Hipatia?
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She was a woman born in the year 340-something.
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Her father worked in a library until it burnt down.
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She wanted to be a scientist,
watched her father and read books all the time.
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Everyone told her not to read,
to go out, to get married
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but she didn’t want to. She kept on reading
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They accepted her because she was so clever.
She studied and became a scientist.
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It was amazing because
she was the first woman scientist.
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I found it really interesting.
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I can remember another one, Jane Goodall.
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One who studied and spoke to
gorillas when she was young.
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One who worked with orangutangs
or gorillas or monkeys.
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She really caught my attention.
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One who did research into atoms
and atomic particles,
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discovered lots of things about nuclear fusion,
things like that.
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Someone told me that
women invented the lift and the fire ladder,
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but I don’t remember their names.
I hadn’t heard of them.
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I was impressed by Ada Lovelace because
not many people knew about technology back then.
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Elena… I can’t remember her surname,
she invented an exoskeleton
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to help children with brain and motor problems.
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And another I can’t remember, who invented radiology
or something like that, with her husband.
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In Year 3 we did a project about women scientists.
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I have lots of books about women scientists
with information about them.
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I like reading about people who
made great discoveries, in Wikipedia.
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It’s important to have role models at different levels,
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people who spark your curiosity
or show you the way
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or opportunities. Then you decide.
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We’re going to draw some pictures
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‘Biker’
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‘Artist’.
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What do you think?
‘Astronaut’, ‘police officer’, ‘biker’, ‘artist’.
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I’ll give you one sheet each.
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Each person imagines what they imagine.
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I have to draw a good uniform.
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This is a man painter drawing a house.
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This is a policeman directing the traffic.
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This is a man astronaut.
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This is a man, this is a man, this is a man.
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A woman painter drawing this girl.
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This is a girl.
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This is a man biker.
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I’ve drawn a man travelling to the moon.
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This man is an “Important Painter”
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In my gymnastics class there aren’t any girls.
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- Off: There are no girls?
- Oh! No boys!
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This is a policeman with a stick.
I usually see policemen.
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ISABEL TAJAHUERCE/ UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
If all police superintendents are men,
how many girls identify with that?
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If women make the pancakes and stew,
who will girls identify with?
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No boys will want that.
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It’s about the professions that
the media portray and our everyday roles.
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In media fiction, who are the stressed-out carers that
take the children to school? Women.
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Who are the professionals who work late and
have no time with the children? Men.
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That’s how we build our worldview.
It’s the same for personal relationships.
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I want to be a vet or something with animals.
I’m not sure.
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Vet, gymnast, ballerina.
00:16:15.800 --> 00:16:17.520
Teacher.
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Gymnast and vet.
00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:23.360
I’d like to be a teacher.
00:16:23.680 --> 00:16:32.720
I want to be a policeman,
I love having adventures.
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Video-game programmer.
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I could invent video games.
00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:44.640
And something where you move around a lot
because I never stay still…
00:16:45.120 --> 00:16:46.600
Basketball player.
00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:54.880
A long time ago a 7-year-old girl said to me
“I know what I want to be when I’m older”.
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I asked her what and she said “A boy”.
00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:05.240
I asked her why.
“Because they have all the fun things, the interesting things”.
00:17:05.520 --> 00:17:11.160
Boys’ toys are fun,
they make noises, do things.
00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:21.560
Girls’ toys are boring, lifeless,
with music that sends you to sleep.
00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:27.560
From my experience in schools,
children describe engineers as
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“Very strange men who don’t talk much”.
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It’s important for young children to see that there are men
and women engineers who are perfectly normal,
00:17:41.960 --> 00:17:46.840
just like in other professions.
That’s part of the Women and Engineering project.
00:17:47.280 --> 00:17:56.240
I’ve drawn some police officers and a thief they’ve caught.
00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:00.320
They’re all women.
Off: Why?
00:18:00.800 --> 00:18:03.280
It’s unfair if there are only men.
00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:12.160
They always say that astronauts are men
but I’ve drawn a girl because I wanted to.
00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:23.080
I’ve drawn a policewoman because
I want to be a policewoman and two other things.
00:18:23.600 --> 00:18:38.200
An artist or painter. I drew a woman because
we did a project about famous painters
00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:45.360
and they were all men, except for Frida Kahlo,
so I wanted a woman.
00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:53.560
The astronauts I’ve seen are almost always men
and I wanted to draw a woman.
00:18:54.120 --> 00:19:02.440
It’s unfair that only girls can be circus artists
or ballerinas, not boys.
00:19:02.800 --> 00:19:08.680
Or that boys can only be football players.
That’s why I drew both.
00:19:10.760 --> 00:19:13.680
A father and son travel from Madrid to Valencia by car.
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:17.280
They have an accident and the father dies.
00:19:17.720 --> 00:19:24.480
The son needs a complicated operation so the hospital
calls the top expert in surgery.
00:19:25.040 --> 00:19:31.040
Upon seeing the boy, the expert says
“I can’t operate, he’s my son”. Who is the expert?
00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:35.680
- The father.
Off: The father?
00:19:36.040 --> 00:19:37.080
The mother.
00:19:37.720 --> 00:19:39.000
The mother.
00:19:39.400 --> 00:19:41.360
The expert is the mother.
00:19:41.760 --> 00:19:50.240
A child has a mother and father so
if the father has died it must be the mother.
00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:55.480
First I thought they were gay and had adopted but…
00:19:56.280 --> 00:20:01.800
If the father has died, it must be the mother.
00:20:02.280 --> 00:20:05.960
Either his father, because they’re gay,
or his mother.
00:20:06.440 --> 00:20:09.680
I thought it was the father’s clone
or that the father was still alive or…
00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:21.840
When people think of a surgeon,
the first thing that comes to mind is the name of a man.
00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:26.640
They’re not used to women doing important jobs.
00:20:27.320 --> 00:20:33.840
Men were in charge and women had to do the worst jobs.
00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:39.640
It’s because of sexism, right? If not…
00:20:41.080 --> 00:20:44.280
Because of sexism, I suppose, but that’s all, isn’t it?
00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:51.080
Do women say it’s the other father as well?
Do women do that too?
00:20:51.760 --> 00:21:02.560
Unfortunately, lots of people think there are
only male terms for some things
00:21:03.080 --> 00:21:12.400
but they can be women too.
For example, a fireman can be a woman.
00:21:12.840 --> 00:21:16.640
Nowadays it’s not such a big thing any more.
00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:27.320
You can see it with teenagers,
we get the answer right more than older people, I think.
00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:30.440
I feel hopeful.
00:21:31.320 --> 00:21:35.440
I believe in the present because it’s exciting,
it’s where we can do things,
00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:37.480
but above all I’m excited about the future.
00:21:37.760 --> 00:21:45.640
The new generations are well prepared
and have huge opportunities.
00:21:46.040 --> 00:21:50.280
The future world is much better than the one we have now.
I’m totally optimistic.
00:21:50.640 --> 00:21:52.200
I like the world more and more.
00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:55.600
The Expert
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.240
I’d like to be almost everything a little bit
00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:14.080
Scientist.
Because I could invent things to help people.
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:22.880
I’d like to be a surgeon because
I could save lives and help people.
00:22:26.560 --> 00:22:31.680
I think that men and women can
both do science perfectly well.
00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:38.320
I’d like to be an astronaut.
Distributor: Pragda Films
Length: 23 minutes
Date: 2019
Genre: Expository
Language: Spanish
Grade: Middle School, High School, College, Adult
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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