Early exposure to gender inequality shapes children’s beliefs about gender and job status

• In Event: 2-085 - Power, privilege, and position: How children use and reinforce social hierarchies

Integrative Statement

Both adults and 11-year-old children attribute higher social status to male-dominated jobs than female-dominated jobs (e.g., Liben et al., 2001; Signorella et al., 1993). What are the sources of these stereotypes? One possibility is that people infer these stereotypes from environmental cues indicating gender inequity, such as gender pay gaps. Here, we investigated whether early exposure to gender pay gaps favoring males over females leads people to associate masculine jobs with high status.

Study 1 examined (1) whether 4- to 8-year-old children make inferences about job status from its gender composition, and (2) how exposure to gender pay gaps shapes these beliefs. Two groups of children were tested: one from a city with a high gender pay gap (Champaign-Urbana, IL; N = 80), and another from a city with a low gender pay gap (New York City, NY; N = 80). We introduced children to a novel male-dominated job, a novel female-dominated job, and doctors and bus drivers that served as controls. For each novel job (e.g., “cheeblers”), participants saw pictures of its workers. In the male-dominated job, there were more male than female faces, and vice-versa in the female-dominated job. Next, children rated the job’s status using a 6-item scale adapted from Liben et al. (2001). A factor analysis uncovered two factors—difficulty (e.g., how difficult it is to learn how to be a cheebler) and prestige (e.g., how much money cheeblers make). The two control jobs validated these measures: Children rated doctors as having a more difficult and more prestigious job than bus drivers (ps < .001). Importantly, children from Champaign-Urbana (but not New York City) also perceived the male-dominated job as being more difficult than the female-dominated job (ps = .031 and .900, respectively), suggesting perhaps that gender inequity in children’s environments influences the extent to which they form stereotypes about gender and job status. No differences were observed for the prestige dimension, ps > .80.

In Study 2, we examined (1) whether it is the observed pay gap per se that predicts people’s gender stereotypes about jobs (as opposed to observed diversity, urbanicity, etc.), and (2) if the relationship between the gender pay gaps observed in childhood and people’s gender stereotypes about jobs persists into adulthood. We adapted the procedure of Study 1 for adult participants (N = 400). We also gathered data both on participants’ current and their childhood city (gender pay gap, diversity, etc.). Adults perceived the novel male-dominated job to be marginally more prestigious than the female-dominated job, p = .068, and the perceived difference in difficulty trended in the same direction, p =.133. Importantly, the gender pay gap of participants’ childhood city predicted the perceived status difference between the male- and female-dominated jobs (b = .18, p = .028), above and beyond the gender pay gap of one’s current city and other demographic factors (e.g., diversity).

In conclusion, our studies suggest that early exposure to gender pay gaps may foster the development of stereotypes associating masculine jobs with high status.

Authors

• Lin Bian, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author