The Effects of Gender Stereotypes on Children's Activity Choices

• In Event: Gender socialization, stereotyping and gender development across childhood and adolescence

Abstract

Research has shown that there is a strong cultural bias against women: Many people believe that women are less intellectually talented than men (Bennett, 1996, 1997; Kirkcaldy et al., 2007; Upson & Friedman, 2012). This societal bias, combined with the belief that certain fields require innate intelligence in order to achieve success, could account for the gender discrepancies in certain fields such as STEM. More recent work indicates that messages suggesting that an activity requires a high level of intellectual ability can influence children’s attitudes toward the activity. Specifically, girls as young as age six were less motivated than boys were to pursue gender-neutral activities that were said to be for children who are really smart (Bian, Cimpian, & Leslie, 2015). In recent years, toys and programs traditionally thought to encourage interest in STEM-related fields have been designed and marketed specifically for girls (e.g., pink legos, GoldieBlox) (Weiss, 2013).
The current study investigates whether messages about intellectual ability influence boys’ and girls’ motivation toward an activity that is either stereotypically masculine or feminine. In particular, we asked whether girls’ previously-documented avoidance of activities said to be for smart children would be minimized if the activities were feminine in content and appearance. In this study, children ages 6 and 7 are presented with either two stereotypically masculine or two stereotypically feminine activities (randomized between-subjects regardless of child’s own gender), one of which is described as requiring hard work for success and the other as requiring intelligence. Additionally, children’s preferences for each activity are measured through a series of questions (e.g., “If you had this game in front of you, would you want to play it or not want to play it?”). We hypothesize that boys’ and girls’ differential interest in “smart” vs “hardworking” games will be moderated by whether the games are made to look feminine or masculine, which will be tested using a three-way repeated-measures ANOVA. A second hypothesis, which will be tested using paired-samples t-tests, is that that girls will show a higher preference for smart games when the games are made feminine, and a preference for hardworking games when they are made masculine.
Data collection is still ongoing, but its completion by April is feasible, as our lab is averaging 5-10 participants per week in online data collection. Preliminary data shows that children appear to show higher preference for activities tailored to their own gender, regardless of the accompanying message that the activity carries (Fig. 1). Moreover, it would appear that making the activities either feminine or masculine might eliminate the discrepancy between children’s preference for either “smart” or “hardworking” games. Such results suggest that presenting young girls with toys that are targeted specifically to them might counteract the negative effects of gender stereotypes. This project is intended to shed light on the factors that successfully encourage girls’ interest in STEM-related activities from a young age and to inform the design of future interventions aimed at increasing female participation in male-dominated areas.

Authors

• Amalia Ionescu, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Christina Marie Tworek, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine Sandhofer, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author