"Girls will be nurses and boys will be doctors" - the problem with early socialisation of gender

Another day. Another sexist tweet.

It's safe to assume that as long as the internet exists, there'll always be another post or thread of comments that manages to upset the masses.

This time, it was a post made by Twitter account The medical shots, a page dedicated to medical and health related content. The post is an image of two young children, a girl and a boy, dressed in hospital scrubs with the words "Nurse in training" and "Doctor in training" written on their backs respectively.

Bet you're wondering how that could possibly result in online outrage.

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If you've been using the internet for a while, you've probably guessed it.

The girl will grow up to be a nurse, while of course, the little boy is a doctor-to-be.

Twitter users almost immediately spotted this blunder, and called out the blatant gender socialisation.

Years ago, we lived in a time when there were only men dominated as doctors and nursing was left to women. In fact, according to Healthline, in the year 1965 only one out of ten women enrolled in medical school. 

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Fast forward to 2019, and it's undeniable that men still make up the vast majority of physicians, but women are putting on a valiant fight for equal opportunities. 

This is exactly why we could not understand why the Medical Shots account thought it appropriate to revive the old belief that women are meant to be nurses while men are doctors.

View their tweet below which was captioned, "This is cute isn't it?"

This user responded, "The children are cute. The sexism on their backs is NOT"

While another user simply posed the question, "Why isn't she a Dr as well? Or why is the boy not the nurse?

Which is certainly a good question, because whether people would admit it or not, these types of posts are the real reason why women have felt boxed for so long. From a young age we were taught where "our place" is, and that place was never a higher position than a man.

While progress has been made, it's important that we expose sexism as often as we can, to highlight just how fed up we all are. Some twitter users were so fed up that they edited the picture to get rid of the sexist notion.

READ MORE: Young doctor exposes unfair systems in SA hospitals

This user wrote, "No, it's sexist. You are forcing a ceiling on this young lady's dreams. You are telling her: You can be a nurse and boys can be doctors. Stay in your lane [...]". She also mentions the fact that the girl is wearing pink, highlighting the issue of gendered colours.

A huge round of applause to all the men and women who pointed out the sexism in this picture in a bid to help people see the error in their ways.

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