Examining adolescent daughters' and their parents’ academic-gender stereotypes: Predicting academic attitudes, ability, and STEM intentions

Sexualized gender stereotypes (SGS) include the belief that girls should singularly prioritize their sexualized attractiveness for the attention and approval of boys. By elementary school, boys and girls perceive girls’ sexualized attractiveness to be incompatible with intelligence and competence. In the current 2-year study, we examined whether girls’ higher SGS endorsement in seventh grade predicted a diminished mastery goal orientation and lower perceptions of academic ability in eighth grade and whether this was moderated by gender typicality and self-monitoring. Cross-lagged panel analyses tested whether earlier academic attitudes better predicted later SGS endorsement than the inverse. The study included 77 girls in the final sample from four public middle schools ( MageT1 = 12.4, SD = .57). The sample was ethnically diverse (45% identified as White, 21% as Latinx, 19% as Black/African American, and 14% as multiracial). Girls’ greater endorsement of SGS in the seventh grade predicted lower academic self-efficacy later, controlling for age, academic ability, and earlier levels of academic attitudes. Highlighting a likely feedback loop, earlier academic self-efficacy equally predicted later SGS endorsement. For highly gender-typical girls, greater SGS endorsement also predicted lower mastery goal orientation over time.

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Too Pretty for Homework: Sexualized Gender Stereotypes Predict Academic Attitudes for Gender-Typical Early Adolescent Girls

The Journal of Early Adolescence ◽

10.1177/0272431618776132 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 39 (4) ◽

pp. 603-617 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andrew A. Nelson ◽

Christia Spears Brown

Keyword(s):

Adolescent Girls ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Academic Outcomes ◽

Early Adolescent ◽

Gender Typicality ◽

Academic Attitudes ◽

Educational Implications ◽

Academic Motivations ◽

And Gender ◽

The Relationship

Sexualized gender stereotypes (SGS) are commonly endorsed by adolescent girls. These stereotypes include the notion that girls can enhance their social status by prioritizing their sexualized attractiveness, which necessitates downplaying other traits such as intelligence. According to the stereotype emulation hypothesis, a girl will be more likely to “emulate” SGS if she also identifies as a typical girl. Based on this hypothesis, the current study examined the relationship between girls’ SGS endorsement and their academic motivations, beliefs, and motivations—and whether this relationship was moderated by gender typicality. Girls ( N = 99), aged 11 years to 14 years ( Meanage = 12.4 years, SD = .57 years), completed a survey assessing their academic outcomes, SGS endorsement, and gender typicality. As hypothesized, results indicated that higher endorsement of SGS was generally associated with maladaptive academic outcomes, and this association was the strongest for highly gender-typical girls. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.

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Quota Women Are Threatening to Men

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000195 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 76 (3) ◽

pp. 107-116 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Klea Faniko ◽

Till Burckhardt ◽

Oriane Sarrasin ◽

Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽

Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Organizational Performance ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Perceived Threat ◽

Preferential Treatment ◽

Public Sector Employees ◽

Different Types ◽

Low Levels ◽

Women In Decision Making ◽

The Impact

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.

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Yes I Can!

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000229 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 46 (2) ◽

pp. 76-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Dries Vervecken ◽

Bettina Hannover

Keyword(s):

Middle Childhood ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Vocational Interests ◽

Primary School Students ◽

School Students ◽

Employment Goals ◽

Linguistic Intervention ◽

Male Occupations ◽

Linguistic Backgrounds

Many countries face the problem of skill shortage in traditionally male occupations. Individuals’ development of vocational interests and employment goals starts as early as in middle childhood and is strongly influenced by perceptions of job accessibility (status and difficulty) and self-efficacy beliefs. In this study, we tested a linguistic intervention to strengthen children’s self-efficacy toward stereotypically male occupations. Two classroom experiments with 591 primary school students from two different linguistic backgrounds (Dutch or German) showed that the presentation of occupational titles in pair forms (e.g., Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure, female and male engineers), rather than in generic masculine forms (Ingenieure, plural for engineers), boosted children’s self-efficacy with regard to traditionally male occupations, with the effect fully being mediated by perceptions that the jobs are not as difficult as gender stereotypes suggest. The discussion focuses on linguistic interventions as a means to increase children’s self-efficacy toward traditionally male occupations.

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Macho Nachos

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000226 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 46 (4) ◽

pp. 182-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Luke (Lei) Zhu ◽

Victoria L. Brescoll ◽

George E. Newman ◽

Eric Luis Uhlmann

Keyword(s):

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Food Packaging ◽

Food Preferences ◽

Healthy Food ◽

Psychological Reactance ◽

Unhealthy Food ◽

Healthy Foods ◽

Gender Schema ◽

Male And Female ◽

Schema Congruity

Abstract. The present studies examine how culturally held stereotypes about gender (that women eat more healthfully than men) implicitly influence food preferences. In Study 1, priming masculinity led both male and female participants to prefer unhealthy foods, while priming femininity led both male and female participants to prefer healthy foods. Study 2 extended these effects to gendered food packaging. When the packaging and healthiness of the food were gender schema congruent (i.e., feminine packaging for a healthy food, masculine packaging for an unhealthy food) both male and female participants rated the product as more attractive, said that they would be more likely to purchase it, and even rated it as tasting better compared to when the product was stereotype incongruent. In Study 3, packaging that explicitly appealed to gender stereotypes (“The muffin for real men”) reversed the schema congruity effect, but only among participants who scored high in psychological reactance.

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Smart Girls, Dumb Boys!?

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000167 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 112-126 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Martin Latsch ◽

Bettina Hannover

Keyword(s):

Secondary School ◽

Stereotype Threat ◽

Gender Stereotypes ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

Learning Goals ◽

School Students ◽

Compensatory Strategies ◽

Media Portrayal ◽

Stereotype Lift ◽

The Media

We investigated effects of the media’s portrayal of boys as “scholastic failures” on secondary school students. The negative portrayal induced stereotype threat (boys underperformed in reading), stereotype reactance (boys displayed stronger learning goals towards mathematics but not reading), and stereotype lift (girls performed better in reading but not in mathematics). Apparently, boys were motivated to disconfirm their group’s negative depiction, however, while they could successfully apply compensatory strategies when describing their learning goals, this motivation did not enable them to perform better. Overall the media portrayal thus contributes to the maintenance of gender stereotypes, by impairing boys’ and strengthening girls’ performance in female connoted domains and by prompting boys to align their learning goals to the gender connotation of the domain.

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