Negative gender stereotypes strike early on

Last week, a study was published suggesting that children have absorbed negative gender stereotypes by the age of six. Researchers found that by this time children were already associating intelligence with men more than with women.

The study, which was conducted by researchers from three US universities and written up in the journal Science, involved a series of tests on a group of 400 children. In one test, for example, the children were read a story about a highly intelligent person and asked to guess the character's sex; in another, they were asked to match traits with images of men and women. The results showed that the youngest children associate intelligence more with their own sex than with the opposite sex but that by the age of six girls are beginning to associate it more with men. The girls did associate their own sex with achieving good grades but attributed this to hard work rather than innate intelligence. Girls of this age were also less willing to play games advertised as requiring high levels of intelligence, but were willing to play the same game when told it simply required hard work. Although this was a relatively small scale study, academics noted that the findings fit with previous research.

Consider the influences on children. Campaigns such as Let Toys Be Toys have shown how frequently children's products participate in gender stereotyping. Followers of the campaign, many of whom are parents, constantly draw attention to toys and children's clothes that perpetuate these ideas—such as a set of books which advises girls on “How to be gorgeous” and boys on “How to be clever,” or a play set called “It's girl stuff!” featuring a doll with a bucket and mop. The same is true of cartoons, which overwhelmingly have male protagonists. Research has shown that there are three times as many male characters in children's films as female ones, and that those female characters tend to adhere to gendered stereotypes.

These are issues in products designed specifically for children that are merely a reflection of stereotypes that exist in society more widely, and the myriad signals from all kinds of sources that children are exposed to every day. For example, previous studies have found that teachers underestimate girls' ability in maths and tend to attribute strong performance in the subject to hard work for girls but innate ability for boys; they also give boys more opportunity to talk during classroom assignments. Children pick up on these messages. Although adults may be more conscious of bias, the assumptions that the six-year-olds made in the tests reflect assumptions that society makes—and has taught them.

And there are consequences. It shouldn't be surprising, for example, when adult women are held back in their careers by a lack of confidence if they have already learnt by the age of six that intelligence is for men but not for women (even though the statistics say otherwise). It shouldn’t be surprising that women spend more time gaining more qualifications and do longer hours at the office when they have been surrounded by signals that teach them that women achieve through hard work—not innate intelligence. Nor should it be surprising if they are less likely to pursue certain career paths, to speak up in meetings or to put themselves forward for promotion when, from a young age, they have been taught to doubt their abilities.

There is a tendency to put the onus of fixing these problems on women themselves. Women simply need to be more confident, say some; if equality in the workplace is to be achieved, they need to get better at speaking up or putting themselves forward. Research such as this shows that it's not that simple. The problems start far before women reach the workplace, and these are characteristics that are taught and then ingrained during a lifetime. We can and should make efforts to fix the symptoms—but to get to the root of the problem we need to start at the beginning and ask ourselves what we are teaching our children.