Here’s a novel way to fight sexism: through stock photos.

That’s Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s plan, at least. On Monday, Sandberg’s nonprofit feminist organization Lean In announced a partnership with the stock photo agency Getty Images, with the goal of improving the images of women used by news organizations on the Internet. Her goal is to replace photos of, say, women laughing alone with salad, or women as caretakers for their babies, with a photo library of ladies taking names in the workplace and generally defying tired caricatures.

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A photo from the collaboration by Tara Moore.

“When we see images of women and girls and men, they often fall into the stereotypes that we’re trying to overcome, and you can’t be what you can’t see,” Sandberg told The New York Times.

A quick survey of the new collection shows many awesome ladies debunking the typical stay-at-home mom image that has infected and fascinated the Internet as of late. A recent Jezebel article titled “What, Exactly, Does a Feminist Look Like?” may well have served as the motivating factor behind the initiative: The site found that many of the stock images under the keyword “feminist” were either absurd, degrading, old-fashioned or all three.

The Lean In/Getty collaboration, meanwhile, emphasizes powerful women in the workplace. There’s a woodworker, a slackliner, a factory worker, and a woman with a fiery punch. There are also women of different races, cultures, body types and ages. Men make an appearance, too, but they’ve been given caretaker roles. Like this dude in a blazer with a baby strapped to his chest.

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A photo from the collaboration by Thomas Barwick.

Hey, this partnership might not shatter the glass ceiling. But considering that the three most-searched terms in Getty’s database are “women,” “business” and “family,” this is an undeniably good place to start. And at the very least, it’s closer to real life than this stuff.



Check out the full collection here.

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