Math–Gender Stereotypes in Elementary School Children

Overview

In psychological models of human social cognition it has proved useful to distinguish stereotypes from self-concepts. The first has to do with beliefs about a social group; the latter has to do with beliefs about one's self. Stereotypes can be thought of as associations between concepts that represent social groups and attributes. For example, the belief that math is associated with males is a stereotype (note that stereotypes can be “true” or “false” at the group level). A self-concept includes the association between the concept self and other attributes (e.g., a math self-concept can be characterized as “I identify with math”). Stereotypes and self-concepts are related but distinct concepts. A stereotype is a belief about a group of individuals (that may or may not include the self), whereas self-concept is a belief about the self, an identity one holds. If a child believes that boys as a group are better in math than girls, the child is demonstrating a stereotype. If a girl believes that she herself is a math person, that is a self-concept; we can say that the child identifies with math. Recent empirical tests of cultural stereotypes about mathematics have usefully made the distinction between math stereotypes and math self-concepts, which has helped clarify many debates that were engendered when this distinction was not so clearly drawn.

Math–Gender Gap

The gender gap in mathematics performance has narrowed significantly in the past 2 decades. In K–12 education, girls receive higher classroom [Page 1456]grades in mathematics than boys, and many standardized assessments in the United States indicate that girls score just as high as boys in mathematics. Nevertheless, a gender gap in participation exists at the top of math-intensive fields (e.g., doctoral degrees awarded) and fewer women than men enter math-intensive jobs in the workforce such as engineering or computer science.

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