By Christina Leslie | Correspondent
New research shows that, without positive female role models and active parental intervention, many girls decide they aren’t as smart as boys by the tender age of six.
Studies have shown that girls fail to use their academic skill and believe their voices are not good enough, math is too difficult, engineering is just for boys and that history exists primarily of important men accomplishing great things.
Two recent workshops, held on the Princeton campus of Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, gave parents and students the tools to combat these unhealthy gender-based assumptions. Michelle Dowling, head of Lower School, discussed “How to Combat Stereotypes” with elementary school-age girls and their parents, while Courtney Portlock, head of Upper School, led a workshop on “What Girls Need to Know About Leadership” for girls in middle and high school and their parents.
The May 22 workshops followed a study published in an issue of the journal “Science.” According to researchers at Princeton University, New York University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “By age six, girls don’t think they are as smart as boys.”
The researchers found that at this very young age, girls begin to decide that some activities are “not for them” because they are not smart enough. Their paper was titled, “Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence interests.”
Despite the current promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curricula in schools, deeply rooted cultural stereotypes like these are reinforced not only by American media and pop culture, but also in school textbooks where men account for 90 percent of historical figures, and role models for girls are scarce. A 2016 U.S. Department of Labor survey stated that women account for just 20 percent of graduates in physics, 7.8 percent of aerospace engineers and only 6.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Utilizing research from Dr. Andrei Cimpian, head of a cognitive development lab at NYU, and Dr. Sara-Jane Leslie, founding director of the cognitive science program at Princeton, Dowling summarized the findings for the attendees.
By the age of six, she said, young girls are less likely than boys to view their own gender as brilliant, and later in life, these differences in children’s perceptions are likely to be consequential. At a young age, both boys and girls assimilate the stereotype that brilliance is a male quality, and the same career fields underrepresented by women (such as science and engineering) are also fields that are thought of as requiring brilliance.
Dowling advocated two ways to help girls combat the cultural stereotypes. First, teach girls that they can get smarter through effort, good teaching and persistence (known as a “growth mindset”), and secondly, provide them with many female role models and mentors in order to “see it to be it.”
Echoing Cimpian and Leslie’s research, Dowling asserted, “Early and consistent exposure to such protective factors, and to the countless contributions made by women, may have the best chance of convincing little girls that they are, in fact, smart enough.”
Portlock maintained that leadership is not solely for heads of corporations, but a skill set that is integral in each girl’s daily life.
“Being able to lead one’s own life in a productive, healthy way is critical for personal development,” Portlock said. “It’s imperative for girls to learn that.”
If that direction is toward leadership, she noted, parents can prove invaluable.
“Listen to what your kids are saying, that’s key,” Portlock advised. “Ask questions, but don’t feel you need to respond. Instead, consider where their thoughts are taking you – it will allow you to engage them in ways that are very important.”
Encouraging children to become involved in a variety of activities, such as a sport or an art class, can also be a valuable method for cultivating leadership skills, she noted.