{"id":19306,"date":"2024-10-28T07:58:32","date_gmt":"2024-10-28T11:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.xello.world\/blog\/gender-bias-youngest-learners\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T13:42:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T18:42:25","slug":"gender-bias-youngest-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.xello.world\/en-ca\/resources\/blog-posts\/gender-bias-youngest-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Bias in Career Choice: Does It Still Influence Young Learners?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Learn how gender biases manifest in students young and old\u2014and find out what educators can do about it.<\/b><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s been a long time since little girls dreamed only of becoming nurses or teachers and young boys exclusively aspired to be firefighters or engineers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Or has it?<\/span><\/p>\n

While much of western society has evolved past pink and blue stereotypes, we\u2019re still seeing signs of a persistent gender bias in career choices and post-secondary majors. Women make up<\/span> only 34 percent<\/span><\/a> of bachelor\u2019s degree recipients in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). And U.S. Department of Education data reports that women earned 95 percent of cosmetology certificates while men earned 94 percent of welding certificates in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 40 years since Congress banned sex discrimination in American education, so what\u2019s at the root of persistent occupational gender lines? The answers aren\u2019t so clear, though we know early education plays a crucial role in shaping these perceptions, as early childhood experiences contribute to internalizing gender stereotypes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read ACTE Whitepaper: Career Development in the Early Grades\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/h2>\n

Colleen Ganley, a psychology professor at Florida State University, studies gender and education. In a recent study published in the American Educational Research Journal, she and her co-authors made some discoveries that may paint part of the picture. They noted a large gender gap in majors and fields of study believed to perpetuate bias against women. This means fewer women, compared to men, are choosing to pursue some high-earning professions such as engineering, economics, and other science and math-based careers. Gender stereotypes and external influences can deter young women from pursuing their intended career paths, especially in fields like STEM, where they are underrepresented.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the study, we were less interested in the gender bias and more in whether people perceived it. We found that these perceptions\u2014whether they were reality or not\u2014predicted whether we saw patterns of more or fewer women going into a particular field,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know if women are taking this bias into account consciously or unconsciously but, if you think about it, a major where you\u2019re going to be one of the only females in a bunch of classes, making it potentially harder for you, is not one you may choose to pursue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What Is Gender Bias?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

According to Ganley, gender bias refers to making assumptions about an individual based on their gender group. \u201cIt can take many forms. It can be explicit, such as a teacher saying, \u2018You\u2019re a girl, you don\u2019t need to worry about math,\u2019 which we don\u2019t tend to see as much as we did in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut [gender bias] can also come in smaller, more subtle actions, like if a teacher, consciously or unconsciously, encourages a student to pursue a field of study or career based on the patterns they\u2019ve seen with people of the same gender.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Research suggests that gender bias typically begins early. \u201cA 2017 study published in Science suggests that girls as young as 6 can be led to believe men are inherently smarter and more talented than women, making girls less motivated to pursue novel activities or ambitious careers,\u201d writes<\/span> Maria Danilova for the Associated Press.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The study, which involved 400 children ages 5-7, found that 5-year-olds were most likely to select people of their own gender when asked to identify a person described in a story as \u201creally, really smart\u201d. At ages 6 and 7, after they\u2019d been at school, these same children were significantly less likely to choose women in the same scenario.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second part of the study, children were asked to choose between a game for \u201creally smart children\u201d and \u201cchildren who try really hard\u201d. Five-year-olds of both genders were equally likely to play the game for smart kids, but 6- and 7-year-olds were split among gender lines. More boys still wanted to play the game for \u201csmart\u201d kids while most girls chose the other activity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Female students often receive more emphasis on work-life balance in networking scenarios, which can discourage them from pursuing certain career ambitions compared to their male counterparts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ganley has also gathered data about gender stereotyping, finding that it seems to seep through sometime between pre-K and high school. <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, early on, kids think their own gender is better at everything. As they get older, they start to develop views that are more in line with what society thinks,\u201d she says.<\/b><\/p>\n

Gender bias in career choice<\/b><\/h3>\n

\u201cIn a study I did, we found that a lot of students by high school are aware of gender stereotypes even if they don\u2019t endorse them or think they\u2019re true. They somehow picked up on it being a thing, but I don\u2019t know that we have a great idea of what they\u2019re picking up on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that, along with women\u2019s low participation in STEM, a low percentage of men also choose to enter careers traditionally dominated by females, including nursing, social work and teaching. \u201cWe tend to focus on STEM careers because they\u2019re higher paying and higher prestige whereas the fact that men not becoming nurses or teachers doesn\u2019t seem to bother people as much,\u201d said Ganley.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAround 90 percent of teachers in elementary school are women. This is equally bad inequity. If men aren\u2019t going into teaching, it may be because they feel like it\u2019s not something men should do. Kids benefit from male role models in their early years, so these are missed opportunities for everyone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, many women are drawn to fields like nursing and health care, which are traditionally ‘female’ roles and often result in lower wages compared to male-dominated occupations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where Do Gender Stereotypes Come from Today?<\/b><\/h3>\n

The authors of the study published in Science are uncertain about where the stereotypes came from, though they suspect parents, teachers and the media. Ganley is also hesitant to commit to a definitive answer, but she points to some clues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding these patterns through the lens of social psychology is crucial, as it helps analyze how gender stereotypes influence individuals’ self-perceptions and career choices, particularly in STEM fields.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some unpublished work where we find pretty gendered patterns with career choices in kids in early elementary school. This would suggest they\u2019re picking up on things fairly early and that presenting an occupation to kids that men or women do will change how much they want to do it, based on their own gender.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She points to the way kids tend to look for patterns and make assumptions based on them. When a group of young children were asked, \u201cWhat are the requirements to be president of the United States?\u201d one child\u2019s answer was, \u201cYou have to be a boy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t know that was an actual rule, but their thinking was that, why else would all presidents be men?\u201d says Ganley.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other seemingly innocuous but influential factors include:<\/span><\/p>\n