There is a longstanding myth of a gender gap between boys’ and girls’ math ability, suggesting some biological differences in how the two genders care and approach math and science. From the toys kids play with, the TV shows they watch, the attitudes of their parents, teachers and peers, girls and boys progressively internalize the idea of a male “math gene” that girls don’t have, and the message that math isn’t for girls. One can remember for example the first talking Barbie saying “Math class is tough!” (sold and retracted in 1992) or the T-shirts made by the clothing company David & Goliath just a few years ago that read “I’m too pretty to do math” (sold in 2011). From an early age, kids are taught that math performance comes from an innate ability that males possess but females lack and that being a girl and being good at science are mutually exclusive. It is not surprising that in the end, women are still underrepresented in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Indeed, according to the French Observatory of Inequalities, 75% of students in humanities are women in 2015, while they account for 25% of students in the STEM field in France.
To explain this enduring gender gap in STEM careers like engineering, a growing body of literature provided strong evidence for the role of stereotypes and its powerful impact on women themselves through a process called “stereotype threat” (for a recent review, see Régner et al., 2014). This phenomenon refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about a stigmatized group due to awareness of the stereotype itself. For example, being aware that women are considered as bad drivers (another gendered ability) can increase performance impairment for women drivers. Beyond gender asymmetries, Steele and Aaronson showed in 1995 that African-American students performed worse than their Caucasian peers when they were asked to indicate their race before completing an exam. When race wasn’t a salient factor, everyone performed the same.
Although the power of stereotypes emerged repeatedly in numerous studies to explain the gender gap in STEM, one can wonder when stereotype threat starts affecting the performance of girls in this domain. To examine this question, Shenouda and Danovitch (2015) designed an experiment, published in a special issue of the IRSP on stereotype threat among children, to test the effect of stereotype threat on girls’ and boys’ performances on a spatial task in kindergarten and elementary school.
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Does gender identity begins to threat gendered performances in kindergarten?
Twenty-two preschool girls took part in a first study. To make gender identity salient, half of them colored a picture of a girl holding a doll. The other half colored a picture of trees. Then, they were asked to perform a task requiring spatial skills, which have been shown to relate to math and science performance. This task consisted of a block-construction task, in which LEGO blocks had to be assembled as quickly and accurately as possible. To find out if girls implicitly believed that boys were more skilled at block-construction than girls, the authors employed an implicit stereotype measure. A story was told to participants about a child who won a block-construction competition, but whose gender was not specified. When participants were asked to repeat the story, the experimenter noted whether they referred to the child in the story using a masculine, feminine, or neutral pronoun. The authors investigated whether gender identity threatened girls’ performance to this spatial task. The results showed that coloring a picture of a girl holding a doll increases performance impairment at an activity related to math and science, suggesting that gender-identity affected girl’s performance in this domain. Moreover, even though girls did not express explicit gender stereotypes about blocks, they implicitly associated superior block competence with boys.
A second study conducted among girls and boys in pre-school and first grade children (using a similar procedure) examined whether their performance on the block-construction task could be predicted from implicit and explicit stereotyping levels, the child’s favorite toy as reported by parents (blocks or not), and how often children played with LEGO blocks.
Attitudes, not aptitudes, contribute to the performances
The results showed that, after controlling for the effects of age and gender, both boys and girls were slower on the LEGO task if they thought boys were more skilled at block-construction than girls, if LEGO blocks were not their favorite toy, and if they did not frequently play with LEGO blocks. To explain that both genders were slower if they believed that boys were more skilled at block-construction than girls, the authors proposed that boys who believed their group was better at this task may have develop anxiety about meeting this expectation. Overall, study 2 showed that children’s performance on a spatial task was predicted by their preferences for and explicit stereotypes about block-construction, suggesting a link between children’s attitudes and performance.
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Bridging the gap: encouraging girls in STEM starts early
As this study shows, gender stereotypes, and threats that accompany them, begin to form in an early age. This study highlights the danger that stereotypes constitute from childhood a “hidden barrier” to girls’ future advancement in scientific domains. Stereotypes about who is good at math and science mean that boys are more often praised for being inherently good in this domain, which can affect boys’ and girls’ orientation toward learning. Encouraging girls with activities related to the development of STEM skills could help bridging this gender gap.
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Here you can see a post on this topic from G. Sundem’s blog at “Psychology Today”:
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References
Régner, I., Steele, J. R., Ambady, N., Thinus-Blanc, C., & Huguet, P. (2014). Our future scientists: A review of stereotype threat in girls from early elementary school to middle school. International Review of Social Psychology / Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 27(3-4), 13-51.
Shenouda, C. K., & Danovitch, J. H. (2015). Effects of gender stereotypes and stereotype threat on children’s performance on a spatial task. International Review of Social Psychology / Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 27(3-4), 53-77.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797.
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Find the special issue of the IRSP on “Stereotype threat in children: Past and present” on Cairn at: http://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale-2014-3.htm
Download the article from the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByqQsjszcV2jZ2hnbVpIM1N1ems/view?usp=sharing
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