For decades, schools and community organizations have worked to get more girls to “see themselves” as scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.
The largest study to date of children’s gender stereotypes in STEM suggests both girls and boys become alienated from the subjects as they grow older—but not always in the ways educators assumed. Stereotypes about girls being less attuned to math than boys may be overblown, and may overshadow deeper gender biases in specific areas of science, such as engineering and computing.
In a study published this week in the journal Psychological Bulletin, David Miller, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research, analyzed more than 40 years’ worth of research—spanning more than 145,000 children in 33 countries from 1977 to 2020—on the development of students’ STEM identity.
Many of these studies used common tasks in which children are asked to draw or describe a scientist, or report their interests and confidence in their abilities in STEM subjects.
Across studies, the findings showed that at age 6, both boys and girls were more likely to think those of their own gender were better at math than those of the opposite gender. By age 18, a larger share believed that either there were no gender differences in math ability, or that the opposite gender was better at math.
Girls started out even more confident than boys, and had a sharper fall in confidence about their own sex’s capabilities in the subject over their years of school.
Science stereotypes were more gendered than those in math, but they differed depending on the field. By age 6, more than half of all children agreed with stereotypes that boys were better than girls in engineering, and about a third thought boys were better in computer science.
“Math is the STEM domain that gets the most attention among parents and teachers and education policymakers, but if you put a gender lens on that, math is not where the big male bias is,” Miller said. “The strong male bias in computing and engineering, for instance, I would argue has less to do with it being math-intensive, but more due to children seeing the dominance of men in those industries and picking up cues in their environment.”
For example, in a 2016 study conducted by Richard Jones, a science education professor at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu, a girl named Malia said she didn’t see herself as a scientist, “mostly because I’m really bad at math, and when I think of science, I think of math.”
But the girl also said she learned about scientists from media depictions. While she didn’t draw a male scientist, she drew her female scientist with frizzy hair, glasses, and a lab coat, and holding a smoking test tube.
Megan Barrett, the executive director of Engineering Tomorrow, a nonprofit that works with schools to increase student interest in the field through mentors and activities, finds that children often get little exposure to different kinds of science during school, and may develop misunderstandings about what scientists in different fields actually do. For example, because of the root “engine” in the word “engineer,” a 2022 study found that roughly three-quarters of children in elementary grades believed an engineer “repaired cars” or “installed wiring,” while less than a third thought one would “design things.”
“There is a gap many students experience between what they learn in the classroom and the careers they’re able to envision for themselves,” Barrett said. “Specifically, highlighting the work and achievements of a diverse array of STEM professionals within their classrooms may help students gain role models and have a more concrete understanding of how their math and science lessons connect to these professions.”
Miller’s study found biased beliefs in science increased as students aged. By adolescence, more than half of students also believed boys were better in physics. However, among older students, girls were perceived to be as good as or better in biology than boys.
It’s also important for educators to understand that children’s identity in science and math isn’t the same as their performance in those subjects.
Among 8th graders, boys outperformed girls in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress in math and science (in 2022 and 2019, respectively), but girls outperformed boys on NAEP’s 2018 technology and engineering test. Gender gaps in math performance also fall differently depending on the community: Boys tend to outperform girls in wealthier and whiter school districts, while girls outperform boys in districts serving more low-income students and students of color.
Teachers, Miller said, can help reduce students’ gender bias by helping students see STEM careers more broadly than common media depictions.
