We’re sad to read the research that came out this week indicating that girls begin to lose confidence in their talents at an early age:
Girls start to see themselves as less innately talented than boys do when they are only six years old, a group of US researchers has said. They said the “disheartening” results suggested the problem could snowball to affect future careers.
The study on 400 children, in the journal Science, initially found both five-year-old boys and girls thought their own gender was “brilliant”. But then only one year later, gender differences had emerged.
The study put sets of five, six and seven-year-olds through different experiments.
In one, the children were read a story about someone who is “really, really smart” but it is not clear who the story is about.
They then had to guess the protagonist from four pictures – two of men and two of women.
At age five, boys pick men and girls pick women around 75% of the time. But fast-forward a year to age six and boys are still picking men while girls are now slightly more likely to pick men too.
You can help!
Whether you have a daughter or a son, it’s important to combat gender stereotypes. Check out this list of great books that challenge traditional assumptions and perceptions. (Princess Smartypants is a great book, by the way!)
It’s also a good idea to emphasise hard work and effort with children, rather than some ‘natural gift’:
Fellow researcher Dr Lin Bian advised parents and teachers to emphasise the importance of hard work. She told the BBC: “[Studies suggest] that everyone does better when hard work is believed as the key to success.
“In our studies, girls might be particularly impacted by the messages focusing on ‘hard work’ – they became equally interested in playing the game as boys.
“Thus conveying the importance of hard work to success could protect and even promote young girls’ interests.”
