Gender Bias in Science: A Child’s Perspective
The increasing number of women in science can encourage young girls.
It is a long-held assumption that scientists are mostly men, but recent findings have shown that women have had increasing representation over the years. How do children see stereotypes of men and women in science — does it vary with the children’s ages, and how has it changed over the past five decades?
A 2018 analysis explored children’s perspectives on gender stereotypes in science through a survey of “Draw-A-Scientist” studies. This analysis consisted of 50 years of research, and included 78 different studies.
Although women are stereotyped as not involved in science, women scientists are now more than ever represented in mass media for children. The hypothesis was that older children would be more likely to draw men as scientists, but that this association would weaken over the decades.
Over the entire analysis, it was found that children tend to draw men as scientists more, at 73%. Kindergarten age children drew scientists as equally men and women, only starting to associate science with men later in grade school. Over the five decades, children increasingly drew women as scientists, portraying that gender stereotypes have changed a lot throughout the many years included in the study, and confirming the hypothesis.
The authors also discuss how science stereotypes from a young age can discourage young girls in their science aspirations, as they do not think it possible for themselves to be scientists. Though children in more recent studies did depict women scientists more often, there is still a clear association of science with men. The progress over time is encouraging, but more work is necessary to challenge these stereotypes.
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Study Details
Sample size(s): 78 studies
Participants: 20,860 children in grades K-12, over 50 years.
Design: Meta-Analysis
Reference:
Miller, D. I., Nolla, K. M., Eagly, A. H., Uttal, D. H., (2018). The Development of Children’s Gender-Science Stereotypes: A Meta-analysis of 5 Decades of U.S. Draw-A-Scientist Studies. Child Development, 89 (6), 1943–1955.
Summarized by WinSights team member Johanna de Koning
Edited by: Margie Christ, Bilal Rashid
