Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GirlsInScience (Building an Evidence-Base for Reducing Gender Bias in Educational Pathways)
Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2022-09-30
In 2012, the European Commission launched the campaign Science: It’s a girl thing!, aimed at encouraging women to choose research careers, as they are sorely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Given that gender disparities in aptitude for specific fields are generally very small, highly gendered skewness in educational choices suggest pathways dictated by stereotypes rather than abilities, leaving valuable STEM talents unused. Many European countries have invested in boosting girls’ participation in STEM through workshops with girl-oriented science topics, contact with female role models, and information packages. However, the vast majority of these initiatives have not been scientifically evaluated. Further, most programs leave untouched one of the key underlying processes keeping girls from STEM that emerge from the research literature, namely daily socialization reinforcing gender stereotypes in the school and family context. The project aims to fill this gap by studying sources of gender stereotyping in the school setting, in materials such as school books, classroom organization, gender of teachers, and teacher implicit bias. In addition the project will longitudinally investigates salient family processes from infancy to late adolescence to inform parent education programs. This approach is innovative because it is the first to systematically study multiple sources of gender stereotyping in the school setting in both primary and secondary education, and the family study is unique because it includes children and adolescents across development in both the school and the family context. The insights from this study will provide new avenues for both research and practice regarding gender socialization. The project fits seamlessly with my expertise in gender socialization, and experience with longitudinal and RCT projects in schools and families
For the family study more than 400 families have been visited at home for the collection of information on gendered family processes that we measure through interviews, computer tasks, video observations, and questionnaires. SEveral groups of bachelor and master students have been trained for the coding of the video materials, and are currently working on this. The data set is almost ready to be analyzed by the five PhD students to write their first papers.
For the school study we analyzed 33 school books, identifying more than 10,000 characters, their gender, their occupation, and their activities, showing systematic underrepresentation of female characters in general, and specifically among characters with a profession, and characters in technical and professional sport activities. The results of this study were made available in free online reports, and have been covered in national newspapers, television and radio shows and have reached an estimated 10 million members of the general audience. In addition, the national and international branch organization of educational publishers have publicly committed to improving gender diversity and reducing stereotypes in new editions of their school books.
For the school study we analyzed 33 school books, identifying more than 10,000 characters, their gender, their occupation, and their activities, showing systematic underrepresentation of female characters in general, and specifically among characters with a profession, and characters in technical and professional sport activities. The results of this study were made available in free online reports, and have been covered in national newspapers, television and radio shows and have reached an estimated 10 million members of the general audience. In addition, the national and international branch organization of educational publishers have publicly committed to improving gender diversity and reducing stereotypes in new editions of their school books.
The broad scope of the school book subproject went beyond the state of the art as it covered ALL school books in math and Dutch available in the Netherlands with the full cooperation of the publishers. The societal and stakeholder impact went far beyond our expectations. We expect to continue this path, as we are currently preparing the collection of unique data on gender of teachers and boys' and girls' school achievements for tens of thousands of Dutch secondary school students, something that has not been done before. We will also be able to conclude from the upcoming experimental study whether Dutch teachers show gender bias in their grading of student tests, and to what extent primary school classroom organization in the Netherlands is gendered and whether this variation can be explained by teacher or school characteristics. Regarding the family study, we will be able to show how early childhood gendered family processes may impact adolescent school achievements, vocational interests, and study choices.