Heartbreaking study finds girls think they’re less smart than boys from the age of six

Really depressing...

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by Emma Dodds |
Published on

A study about young children's perceptions of gender has released its findings today - with some shocking results.

US scientists from Princeton University, New York University and the University of Illinois studied 400 children to discover what their perceptions of how smart men and women are, if this changed and at what point.

Findings showed that both five-year-old boys AND girls thought their own gender was "brilliant".

However, just one year later, their perceptions had completely changed.

For example, one of the studies was reading children a story about someone "really, really smart" but it was purposefully left ambiguous to the children who the story was about.

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Gender stereotypes are affecting young girls' confidence from as young as six-years-old (Credit: Alamy) ©Alamy

The children were then asked to guess the main character out of four pictures - two of men and two of women. When the study began with the children being five-years-old, boys picked men and girls picked women around 75% of the time.

Only a year later, boys continued to pick men while girls were slightly more likely to pick men too.

Another study found that children were asked to play a board game - in one scenario it was decribed as being "for children who are really, really smart" and for others it was "for children who try really, really hard".

Echoing the previous study, six and seven-year-old girls enjoyed the game for "those who try" just as much as boys, but were not nearly as likely to enjoy the game for "smart children".

The worrying results are causing some experts to think that this may be the reason why there aren't as many women going for higher up jobs.

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This could be one of the reasons not as many women get into higher levels in the workplace (Credit: Getty Images) ©Getty Images

Researcher professor Andrei Cimpian thinks the reason for this change could be society's judgements and the culture they are in. He spoke to the BBC: "The message that comes out of these data is that young kids are exposed to the cultural notion that genius is more likely a male than a female quality.

"It's disheartening to see these effects emerge so early. When you see them, you realise how much of an uphill battle it's going to be.

"Early on, society's stereotypes can create differences in trajectory. At five, six or seven you're not thinking about a career, but soon you're making decisions about what courses to take and what extracurriculars to take part in.

"Even if the difference starts small it can snowball into something a lot bigger."

This comes after last year's Girlguiding Girls' Attitudes Survey found that girls as young as seven were feeling pressure to look "perfect".

The survey found that of the 1,600 girls and women aged between seven and 21 who took part, only 61% felt happy about their bodies - and this is down 73% from 2011.

If that wasn't bad enough, 69% of those surveyed said that they were "not good enough".

We hope that something can be done about this perception from young girls.

Do you have daughters? How do you help them to feel more confident? Let us know over on Facebook and Twitter.

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