Lean In, a female empowerment non-profit, collaborates with the American stock photo agency Getty Images to provide a wide selection of sexism-free images of women for business use. The organization founded by Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg will provide a collection of 2,500+ stock photos that portray women of various professions and in various settings in a positive light, without any sexist implications.
Today, a large number of portraits of business women are sexualized or are cheap and tasteless, supporting stereotyped way of thinking about female professionals. Some brands like Dove are already doing a great breaking these prejudices.
The curated collection of images features 25% newly sourced photos—the rest is selected from the Getty Images rich library. The range of photos approved by Lean In will expand as new portrays will be added to the collection on a monthly basis. The new range is to be displayed on the loading page of the Getty Images website, encouraging more photo editors to use the sexism-free images of businesswomen and women in family settings.
“There’s so much terrible stock imagery out there, so we wanted to put something out that felt really authentic and empowering,” commented Jessica Bennett, Lean In’s contributing editor to Ad Age. “You’ll see some women who are not in their twenties and thirties.”
The collaboration with Getty Images is not the first Lean In’s editorial partnership with recognized publications. The previous ventures included collaboration with Time on the “Letters from Dad” devoted to Father’s Day, and Ms. Sandberg’s engagement in editing the quarterly “Cosmo Careers” section of Cosmopolitan magazine.
Lean In will receive 10 percent of the proceeds from the licensing of the images. Getty’s site informs that some portion of the fees from the Lean In Collection will be used for supporting female empowerment via photography. As part of its partnership with Lean In, Getty Images has also announced a $10,000 grant, which will be given to a photographer, “whose project is focused on an important but under-told news story about women, girls and their families and communities.” The applications will be accepted from April 1 through May 15.