Who Can Do STEM?: Children’s Gendered Beliefs about STEM and Non-STEM Competence and Learning

Abstract

Although boys and girls start out performing similarly on STEM-related school subjects, the gap between them widens as they mature, leading to the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields at the college level and in the workforce. The current study examines the development of children’s beliefs about men’s and women’s competence and other boys’ and girls’ learning ability for STEM and non-STEM topics. Children ages 5 through 9 (N = 134) judged adults to be less competent at professions they perceived as more difficult. Boys gave higher competence ratings to men than women in STEM and non-STEM fields, but girls only gave higher ratings to women than men in non-STEM fields. Children also viewed girls as less capable of learning about STEM subjects compared to non-STEM subjects, but they perceived boys as similarly capable of learning both STEM and non-STEM subjects. However, children’s own school subject preferences and career aspirations (STEM or non-STEM) were not related to their judgments of adults or other children. The results point to the detrimental effects of gender stereotypes on children’s beliefs about women’s and girls’ abilities in STEM. Practice implications for caregivers and educators to close the gender gap in STEM are discussed.