US Stereotypes are Changing as More Children Begin to Draw Female Scientists

In 1983, a shocking study conducted by David Chambers, an American social scientist, depicted gender stereotypes through children’s drawings. Out of the 5,000 children who were asked to draw a picture of a scientist, not a single one drew a female scientist. Today, the story is completely different as one out of three children’s drawings depict a female scientist. Are the gender stereotypes finally changing?

Children’s Perception of Scientists

A social scientist named David Chambers decided to collect data on how children see women in various professional roles and asked teachers around the country to collect drawings from 5,000 different children. The experiment which was conducted in 1960’s and 1970’s was published as part of Chamber’s groundbreaking research paper in 1983.

Children who participated in the experiment were all asked to draw doodles of a scientist, and upon close observation of the 5,000 drawings, a number of similarities were noticed: the doodles all wore lab coats and owned microscopes, a stereotypical image of a scientist depicted on the television. But the most surprising aspect of the experiment was that all the photos had one common theme across them – none of the scientists was a woman.

Chambers pointed out in his study that the photos highlighted long sideburns, signs of moustache and beard – all typical masculine traits. Not a single one of the doodles had long hair or any other physical characteristics of a woman. None of the boys had drawn a female scientist, but more surprisingly, not many of the girls had either. In total, there were 28 doodles of female scientists even though half of the children who participated in the study were girls.

Evolving Stereotypes

Few children are aware of gender stereotypes in young age but the more they learn about the perception of society with the time, the more aware they become of existing gender roles which are engrained in our culture.

But as the times have changed, so have children’s views on gender roles. David Miller, a psychology student from Northwestern University has spent the past five years reviewing all the draw-a-scientist studies conducted over several decades. In total, he had amassed over 78 such researches to see how the children’s views on what a scientist should look like have changed over time.

After the disappointing study of 1983, 3 out of 10 children had begun to include female scientists in their drawings. A report which observed doodle images drawn by 21,000 students from the age of 5 to 15 was published in the Child Development journal last week.

According to the report, more and more young children were starting to accept women in the role of a scientist. Researchers also noticed that children’s perception changed drastically as they grew older. Most girls who drew female scientists before the age of 8, slowly shifted their mindset after middle school and started drawing more male scientists. Miller believes that the change of perception happens due to the information children are constantly exposed to on various platforms as they grow older.

Significance of the Research

Experts Believe that Children should be introduced to more female scientists through conferences, public speaking and television appearances so that they can dismantle the gender stereotype once and for all.

The research is of extreme significance since it shows the changing perception of gender roles in our society through the eyes of young children. In the past 50 years, the stereotype attached to various professions in the field of science have slowly decreased as more children are starting to accept women in the role of a scientist.

Female representation in various scientific fields has also increased significantly over the years with as many as 49 per cent of the biologists and 11 per cent of astronomers being women.  Statistics from National Science Foundation show the shifting gender roles as more women earn degrees in psychology and biology whereas majority of men gravitate towards physics, engineering and computer sciences.

The co-founder of a grass-roots organization called the 500 Women Scientists, Jane Zelikova, says that it is about time that the world starts looking at scientists from a different lens and move away from the Bill Nye stereotype. Zelikova believes that the results of the new study are promising but just 28 per cent of the children who see women in the role of a scientist are not enough.