Math Gender Stereotype, Research Paper Example

Society has provided men and women with distinct gender stereotypes that appear to define their abilities and importance in the world. Traditionally, men have been thought of as workers and were considered to be responsible for providing a family with financial support. Furthermore, men were considered to be the head of the household. Women, on the other hand, were needed to raise children and to keep the house orderly (Smith & Postmes, 2010). Since the man spent a majority of the day working, it would be their responsibility to meet their husband’s needs while they were at home, which included cooking dinner for them and allowing them to relax after a busy day. Because the stereotypical role of man is that of a breadwinner, it is intuitive for individuals in this role to receive a formal education in order to promote an ability to make money. While many women were traditionally sent to school, many, before the last several decades, never attended college because these skills were not necessary to achieve a happy home life.

The different societal roles between men and women throughout history has led to the development of many assumptions of their abilities (Galdi et al., 2014). Men are typically seen as the stronger and smarter gender because they are able to engage in a higher degree of physical activity than women. Furthermore, they are considered to be more intelligent because they are more likely to have attended school and for a longer period of time. On the other hand, women are seen as docile and weak, which makes many people feel that they are less valuable than men. However, it is important to consider how the role of women has changed over the past several decades. Now, more women than men are enrolled in college in order to achieve a higher education. This has led to an enhanced status of women as the leader of their households in many situations. Women are no longer responsible for the affairs at the home and many go out and work while their husband’s stay at home to tend to the children. Despite this shift in cultural role towards women, there is a continued believe that men perform better academically than women. Specifically, math is considered to be a man’s subject and many people believe that men are able to excel at math compared to women due to differences in brain structure. It is therefore essential to determine whether this hypothesis is a reality or a myth; continuing to believe this gender bias may be detrimental to the role of women in society. While there are many physiological differences between men and women, it does not appear reasonable that mathematical ability is one such difference.

Studies have shown that societal perception of gender has the ability to impact academic performance. One such study attempted to demonstrate the mathematical ability of 7-8 year old girls. The study found that the girls performed poorly on the exams when they were presented with objects that reminded them of gender stereotypes, such as dolls, because this reinforced their understanding of their roles within society. When these gender stereotypes were not provided, the girls performed well on the exams (Neuville & Croizet, 2007). Follow-up studies have shown that there is a neurological explanation for this phenomenon; when girls are reminded of feminine stereotypes, the part of their brain that is associated with social and emotional processing becomes activated compared to the region associated with mathematical learning (Krendl et al., 2008)/

An additional study demonstrates that women do not perform as well when they are required to perform academically in competitive environments with men (Inzlicht & Ben-Zeev, 2000). This occurs because from a young age, boys are taught that they are good at math while girls are not (Cvencek et al., 2011). Furthermore, to help girls learn, it may be necessary to reduce this stereotype to allow girls to put in the same effort into learning math as boys (Boucher et al., 2012). A major gap in women learning math is therefore that they simply perceive it as difficult, which is blocking them from being able to complete problems to the best of their ability (Kim et al., 2012).

While there is societal phenomena that is undermining the academic achievement of girls, there is also social stigma that prevents boys from being able to achieve academically in all subjects. Boys are typically considered to perform well in math compared to girls, but modern schools demonstrate that girls are more likely to excel in academics overall. As a consequence, many boys do not think that they are smart enough to learn as well as girls and often put themselves in positions that allow this to be true (Hartley & Sutton, 2013). To ensure that both men and women are able to succeed equally in math and other subjects, it is important to lift the gender stereotype affiliated with each (Johnson et al., 2012).

It is anticipated that the results of this study will demonstrate that men and women have equal mathematical abilities if they are provided assessments of their skills without having gender educational stereotypes provoked. Each participant will not be provided with knowledge of the background information used in this experiment to ensure that this will be the case.

Discussion

 The results demonstrated that men and women have an approximately equal mathematical ability when taking the standard deviation of the scores into account. Ultimately, it appears that when individuals that attend college are subjected to the same experiments that researchers have tested on younger groups, there is a smaller effect of gender on academic performance. This is because to enter college, individuals have had to demonstrate academic ability and are required to continue to demonstrate this ability to succeed. Rather than considering men or women as the better group, all students consider themselves to be intelligent due to their current academic standing. It is therefore likely that a closer gap will be seen in mathematical achievement as groups with higher levels of education are explored. For example, if the same test were to be repeated among students in master’s or PhD level programs, it is expected that the standard deviation of scores in both groups would decrease and the average means of scores would be closer for each study group.

These results confirmed the understanding that if we do not associate an understanding of gender with academic performance, students will perform better regardless of gender (Eriksson & Lindholm, 2007). To ensure that this is a possibility, it is necessary to teach young girls and women that they should not doubt their mathematical abilities (Marx et al., 2013). Likewise, it is important to not put pressure on either men or women, because this runs the risk of minimizing scores as well (Tagler, 2012). Ultimately, removing these stereotypes during early education will help promote the learning of both boys and girls throughout their academic lives. Making women aware of the stereotype threat is the first step in ensuring that it can be eradicated (Johns et al., 2005).

While the effect of gender expectations between men and women is significantly less in the college setting, studies have shown that women need to work harder to develop their math skills in order to overcome these expectations. Women at this level who show lower gender identification are able to perform better on math tests, and this lack of association may be a mark of the college culture (Kiefer & Sekaquaptewa, 2007). However, it is challenging to tell whether this lack of gender association has existed among these individuals throughout their lives and it may be necessary to conduct a longitudinal study to discern the timing aspect of this trend.

It would be informative to repeat this study in a manner that accounts for demographic variables. Many of the individuals tested in this study come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and this ethnic distribution was not equal and may not reflect the overall population. It would therefore be necessary to target a wider range of individuals from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds to determine whether gender stereotypes impact math equally across all cultures. Some societies have an enhanced utilization of gender roles and it would be helpful to determine whether the individuals that derive from these societies have an enhanced effect with regards to a women’s confidence and ability to perform math compared of a male member of that same society. It is expected that these results would be comparable to the disparity between men and women’s mathematical performance in the United States prior to the 1960’s, but it is necessary to confirm this hypothesis to gain an understanding of the math gender stereotype as a whole.

An additional component of this project that would allow it to improve would be to enhance the participant selection process. The individuals selected to participate in this study were a convenience sample because they were easy to access on campus. However, if the study were to be truly randomized, it would be essential for me to find a way to randomly select participants from the community, such as through recruiting in populated areas or by sending out mailed surveys inviting participation. Furthermore, recruiting a larger number of individuals to the study would allow for the results to be more accurate with regards to the population that is being sampled. This would also enhance the likelihood that the results could prove to be externally valid, meaning that the data may apply to students in other colleges or people in other communities as well.

The information gained from this study could be used to optimize the early childhood education experience by allowing children to develop a sense of self-confidence in the work they are doing in school. Teachers should develop creative ways to foster this self-confidence and equality between genders in their daily activities so that by the time the children are required to do more complicated academic work, they will all feel confident in their ability to succeed and achieve higher marks as a result.

References

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Cvencek D, Meltzoff AN, Greenwald AG. (2011). Math–Gender Stereotypes in Elementary School Children. Child Development, 82(3): 766-779.

Eriksson K, Lindholm T. (2007). Making gender matter: The role of gender-based expectancies and gender identification on women’s and men’s math performance in Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 8: 329–338.

Galdi S, Cadinu M, Tomasetto C. (2014). The Roots of Stereotype Threat: When Automatic Associations Disrupt Girls’ Math Performance. Child Development, 85(1): 250–263.

Hartley BL, Sutton RM. (2013). A Stereotype Threat Account of Boys’ Academic Underachievement. Child Development, 84(5): 1716–1733.

Inzlicht M, Ben-Zeev T. (2000). A Threatening Intellectual Environment: Why Females Are Susceptible to Experiencing Problem-Solving Deficits in the Presence of Males. Psychological Science, 11(5): 365-371.

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Kiefer AK, Sekaquaptewa D. (2007). Implicit Stereotypes, Gender Identification, and Math-Related Outcomes: A Prospective Study of Female College Students. Association for Psychological Science, 18(1): 13-18.

Kim H. Lee K, Hong Y. (2012). Claiming the Validity of Negative In-group Stereotypes When Foreseeing a Challenge: A Self-handicapping Account. Self and Identity, 11: 285–303.

Krend AC, Richeson JA, Kelley WM, Heatherton TF. (2008). The Negative Consequences of Threat A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation of the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Women’s Underperformance in Math. Psychological Science, 19(2): 168-175.

Marx DM, Monroe AH, Cole CE, Gilbert PN. (2013). No Doubt About It: When Doubtful Role Models Undermine Men’s and Women’s Math Performance Under Threat. The Journal of Social Psychology, 153(5): 542–559.

Neuville E, Croizet J. (2007). Can salience of gender identity impair math performance among 7- 8 years old girls? The moderating role of task difficulty. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 22: 307-316.

Smith LGE, Postmes T. (2010). Shaping stereotypical behaviour through the discussion of social stereotypes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50: 74–98.

Tagler MJ. (2012). Choking Under the Pressure of a Positive Stereotype: Gender Identification and Self-Consciousness Moderate Men’s Math Test Performance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 152(4): 401–416.