For some time now there have been campaigns to ensure the toys children play with better reflect the modern world, especially in terms of the roles depicted.  Girls are encouraged to play with construction toys, boys with dolls, and so on.  New research from the University of Sussex highlights how difficult these stereotypes are to shift in children, however, especially boys.

The study suggests that girls tend to exaggerate their gendered voices to imitate workers in various professions up to the age of about seven, but boys tend to continue on beyond that age, whilst also using overtly masculine voices even when imitating workers in gender-neutral roles.

In traditional experiments around gender stereotypes, there is a concern that participants say what they think is expected of them rather than their true thoughts.  The researchers attempted to get around this by tapping into the unconscious stereotypes of the children and asking them to speak in the voices of people in various occupations.

Gender stereotypes

Research from the University of Houston shows that children as young as 6 also tend to develop ideas that girls are less keen on subjects such as engineering and computer science than boys are.  The researchers argue that these stereotypes continue into our teenage years, and are likely to contribute to the gender gap that’s evident in STEM-related courses at college and subsequent careers.

“Gender-interest stereotypes that STEM is for boys begins in grade school, and by the time they reach high school, many girls have made their decision not to pursue degrees in computer science and engineering because they feel they don’t belong,” they explain.

The results emerged from four studies that combined surveys and experiments to try and capture the beliefs of a diverse group of children from 1st grade through to 12th grade.

How stereotypes emerge

The researchers wanted to build on previous studies that explored how stereotypes about ability emerge, with a particular interest in how we think about who likes particular topics as well as who is good at them.  They wanted to better understand how these stereotypes affect a sense of belonging or willingness to participate in subjects among children.

The researchers cite data from 2019 highlighting the lack of female representation in STEM careers, with just 25% of computer scientists and 1% of engineers being women.  To explore how stereotypes underpin these statistics, the researchers surveyed over 2,200 children to explore their beliefs about both computer science and engineering.  The surveys were designed to use phrases that the children would be familiar with from school.

The data showed that just over half of the children thought that girls were less interested in computer science than boys, with that figure rising to 63% for interest in engineering.  In contrast, just 14% thought that girls were more interested in computer science than boys, with just 9% thinking so for engineering.

The initial survey was followed by lab studies, which asked children to choose from two different activities.  This experiment showed that girls were marginally less interested in computer science when they were also told that boys were more interested in it than girls than when they were told that interest was equal between the sexes.

“The large surveys told us that the kids had absorbed the cultural stereotype that girls are less interested in computer science and engineering. In the experiments we zeroed in on causal mechanisms and consequences of stereotypes,” the researchers say.

“We discovered that labeling an activity in a stereotyped way influenced children’s interest in it and their willingness to take it home—the mere presence of the stereotype influenced kids in dramatic ways. This brought home to us the pernicious effect of stereotypes on children and teens”

This matters, because if girls don’t think that they belong then it discourages them from pursuing courses or careers in engineering or computer science, which will worsen the gender gap in STEM-related topics.

“Current gender disparities in computer science and engineering careers are troubling because these careers are lucrative, high status, and influence so many aspects of our daily lives. The dearth of gender and racial diversity in these fields may be one of the reasons why many products and services have had negative consequences for women and people of color,” the researchers continue.

Doing science

A recent study from New York and Princeton universities suggests an alternative approach that could help to improve numbers.  It reveals that children are much more confident that they can ‘do science’ than they are that they can ‘be scientists’.

What’s more, this belief carried on into their views of adults, as they believed many more adults were capable of doing science than they thought could be scientists.  It suggests that young people generally have a pretty inclusive view on who can do science whilst at the same time having stereotypes about who can be a scientist.

The researchers quizzed over 300 elementary-school children in the Brooklyn and Bronx areas of New York over the course of the school year.  The children were reflective of the racial makeup of their local community and were split evenly between boys and girls.

“Studying a more diverse population is crucial if we want to understand and ensure efforts to improve science engagement work for everyone,” the authors explain. “That we see similar effects across children of different backgrounds in these communities suggests that using action-focused language could be a promising strategy to help a large number of children stay engaged in science.”

Focusing on actions

The team aimed to test the interest and self-efficacy in science for each child three times during the course of the year.  Half of the children were asked how keen they were to become a scientist and also how good they thought they were at science.  The other half were simply asked how good they were at doing science.

Interestingly, over the course of the school year, children’s confidence and interest in being a scientist typically declined, whereas their confidence in their scientific abilities generally endured throughout the year.

They then dug deeper to try and understand what underpinned these findings.  They asked the children how they see people who do science, and how they see those who are scientists.  The children were asked to think of all of the parents of other children at their school, and calculate how many of them either were scientists or did science.  The results suggest the children think far more people do science than actually were scientists.

“These finding suggest that using identity-focused language with children, such as asking them to ‘be a scientist,’ can, in fact, backfire whenever children have reason to question if they are really a member of the group,” the authors explain. “Such reasons to question can come from social stereotypes–such as a belief that few people from a child’s community can grow up to be a scientist.”

The findings suggest that a seemingly insignificant change in how we talk about science with children can have an impact in sustaining their interest in science, and hopefully encouraging more to do science as adults.