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 in 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.

Overcoming stereotypes

Research from the University of Toronto suggests that these stereotypes can be overcome by having children read books in which the female characters work with maths to solve problems.

The researchers were particularly keen to try and overcome some of the stereotypes that have contributed to the lower enrollment of women in STEM classes. They hypothesized that the characters in children’s books can influence how young people think about what men and women can and cannot do.

The researchers conducted an experiment whereby over 300 children aged between 6 and 11 read books before completing a test that measured their gender-based stereotypical thinking. The children were asked to read three different books, with one featuring a young boy doing well in maths, the second a young girl doing likewise, and the third book more neutral.

The test involved sorting various maths and implicit terms into gender-based categories alongside answering how much they themselves liked doing maths problems.

The results show that children, of all genders, tended to have less gendered stereotypes regarding women after reading the book about the female character doing maths, which the researchers believe shows how malleable our mindsets are at that age.