Sex Roles - Gender Stereotypes

Gender Stereotypes

A study done by Beverly I. Fagot, Mar D. Leinbach and Cherie O'Boyle, tested gender stereotypes and labeling within young children. The researchers divided this into two different studies. The first study looked at how children identified the differences between gender labels of boys and girls through using materials. The second study looked at both gender labeling and stereotyping in the relationship of mother and child. Within the first study 23 children between the ages of 2 and 7 underwent a series of tests, those tests being a “Gender Labeling Test” and “Gender Stereotyping Test”. These tests consisted of showing the children either pictures of males and females or objects such as a hammer or a broom and identifying or labeling those to a certain gender. The results of these tests showed that children under 3 years could make gender-stereotypic associations. The second study looked at gender labeling and stereotyping in the relationship of mother and child using three separate methods. First consisted of identifying gender labeling and stereotyping, essentially the same method as the first study. Second consisted of behavioral observations, which looked at ten-minute play sessions with mother and child using gender specific toys. Third was a series of questionnaires such as an "Attitude Toward Women Scale", "Personal Attributes Questionnaire", and "Schaefer and Edgerton Scale" which looked at the family values of the mother. The results of these studies showed the same as the first study with regards to labeling and stereotyping. They also identified in the second method that the mothers positive reactions and responses to same-sex or opposite-sex toys played a role in how children identified them. Within the third method the results found that the mothers of the children who passed the “Gender Labeling Test”, had more traditional family values. These two studies, conducted by Beverly I. Fagot, Mar D. Leinbach and Cherie O'Boyle, showed that gender stereotyping and labeling is acquired at a very young age, and that social interactions and associations play a large role in how genders are identified.

According to Niedenthal et al.:

Virginia Woolf, in the 1920s, made the point: "It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail" (A Room of One's Own, N.Y. 1929, p. 76). Sixty years later, psychologist Carol Gilligan was to take up the point, and use it to show that psychological tests of maturity have generally been based on masculine parameters, and so tended to show that women were less 'mature'. She countered this in her ground-breaking work, In a Different Voice, (Harvard University Press, 1982), holding that maturity in women is shown in terms of different, but equally important, human values. Gender stereotypes are extremely common in society. One of the reasons this may be is simply because it is easier on the brain to stereotype. The brain has limited perceptual and memory systems, so it categorizes information into fewer and simpler units which allows for more efficient information processing. Gender stereotypes appear to have an effect at an early age. In one study, the effects of gender stereotypes on children's mathematical abilities were tested. In this study of American children between the ages of six and ten, it was found that the children, as early as the second grade, demonstrated the gender stereotype that math is for boys. This may show that the math self-concepts are influenced before the age in which there are actual differences in math achievement. In another study about gender stereotypes, it was found that parents' stereotypes interact with the sex of their child to directly influence the parents' beliefs about the child's abilities. In turn, parents' beliefs about their child directly influence their child's self-perceptions, and both the parents' stereotypes and the child's self-perceptions influence the child's performance.

In 2007, Kiefer and Sekaquaptewa conducted an experiment involving the gender stereotype that women perform worse than men in math. They believed that women, even in an environment that reduced stereotype threat, would be negatively affected by the gender-math stereotype threat. A series of tests were used to gauge the implicit knowledge of the participants with regard to the stereotype present among women in math. The tests confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis; the participants with more implicit knowledge of the stereotype performed worse on the math tests. The researchers believed that the stereotype was built into the conscience of the participants, and that it was accessed in math situations regardless of the environment or situation. However, a recent review article of stereotype threat research related to the relationship between gender and math abilities found most studies either couldn't be replicated or had methodological problems and concluded "that although stereotype threat may affect some women, the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this as a mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics."