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A new study of more than 20,000 pupils has found no substantial gender gap when it comes to maths performance.

The study carried out by education assessment company Renaissance looked at how schools used its Accelerated Maths computer-based maths practice programme.

Children's achievements were measured using Renaissance's Star Maths test and found "no substantial difference" between average scores for males and females, either when measuring how their scores have risen over time or their progress relative to students of the same age with the same starting point

"Maths skills are becoming more and more important," Keith Topping, professor of education at Dundee University, said. "This study shows practically no difference between boys and girls when it comes to attainment. Educationalists must challenge the gendering of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects if we are ever to see more female engineers, scientists and mathematicians."

There has long been concern about the proportion of girls who drop maths after GCSE, with an Institute for Fiscal Studies report published earlier this year finding that a lack of confidence in their ability to succeed in maths and physics could explain why fewer girls choose to take them at A level.

In 2018, A-level results confirmed that girls are still less likely to take Stem A levels than boys.

Despite receiving 55 per cent of A levels overall this year, girls received 43 per cent of A levels awarded in Stem subjects.

The new study 'Implementation fidelity and attainment in computerised assessment of mathematics' also looked at how closely teachers implemented the maths programme with children aged 6 to 18.

The study compared the average percentage of correct answers to questions on diagnostic tests taken before learning a skill, practice tests taken while learning a skill and review tests taken once students have learnt a skill. These scores can show how well the Accelerated Maths programme is being used by showing how accurately the assignments are being customised and monitored by teachers. Again these scores found that there was very little difference between boys and girls in how the programme was being used.

Professor Topping said the findings were important because it meant that boys and girls scores were comparable and not due to one gender simply working harder than another.

"Finding no significant difference in terms of implementation means not only are girls and boys scoring more or less the same but [teachers] seem to be implementing Accelerated Maths equally well," Professor Topping said. "So you can't say that boys would have higher attainment but [teachers] are not implementing the programme as well."

He added that many schools did not stick closely to the recommended method for using Accelerated Maths and with better implementation scores could be higher.

The study also found that pupils who spent more time practising the right skills at the appropriate level, time and pace on Accelerated Maths, did better than those who did not.

The study looked at performance in different year groups, although this data was not broken down by gender. It found that children tended to do better as they went through school from Year 2 to Year 7, and then attainment dropped sharply in Year 8 - although the research was not designed to look into why this had happened.

Commenting on the findings, Lauren Shapiro, special projects team manager at Renaissance said: "There is an enduring myth that girls don't perform as well as boys in maths; this stereotype can follow them into later life with fewer women taking up careers in Stem subjects or becoming maths teachers.

"But this research indicates that does not need to be the case. This should be a wake-up call for all educationalists. We need to push for a cultural change in schools to shake off the male-oriented reputation that certain Stem subjects have among students."

For more on encouraging girls to study maths see this week's Tes magazine, available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can and iOS users can

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Exclusive: Study shows girls' maths ability equal to boys

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A new study of more than 20,000 pupils has found no substantial gender gap when it comes to maths performance. The study carried out by education assessment company Renaissance looked at how schools used its Accelerated Maths computer-based maths practice programme.

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There's new evidence that girls start out with the same math abilities as boys.

A study of 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science of Learning.

"They are indistinguishable," says Jessica Cantlon, an author of the study and professor of developmental neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University.

The finding challenges the idea that more boys than girls end up in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) because they are inherently better at the sort of thinking those fields require. It also backs other studies that found similar math abilities in males and females early in life.

"The results of this study are not too surprising because typically we don't see sex differences at the ages assessed in this study or for the types of math tasks they did, which were fairly simple," says David Geary, a psychologist and curators' distinguished professor at the University of Missouri who was not involved in the research.

But there is evidence of sex differences in some exceptional older students, Geary says.

For example, boys outnumber girls by about 3 to 1 when researchers identify adolescents who achieve "very, very high-end performance in mathematics," Geary says, adding that scientists are still trying to understand why that gap exists.

The new study came from earlier research by Cantlon that found boys and girls as old as 8 had similar abilities when it came to perceiving numbers and grasping elementary mathematics concepts.

That research showed how kids behaved, but not what was going on in their brains, Cantlon says.

So she and a team of scientists studied children as they engaged in math tasks while lying in a magnetic resonance scanner that monitored activity throughout the brain. The children watched an educational video that included clips from Sesame Street and covered math topics such ascounting and addition as well as reading topics for comparison.

The researchers found that in kids, just like adults, math activities create a lot of activity in the intraparietal sulcus, a brain area involved in estimating the number of objects in a group, processing number words, and performing addition and subtraction.

And that activity was remarkably similar in boys and girls, Cantlon says. In fact, "you can't tell one group from the other," she says.

The researchers also found that boys and girls were equally engaged in watching the video and that brain maturity did not vary by gender. (The new study refers to gender rather than sex because researchers relied on parents' reports of a child's gender rather than chromosome tests.)

Finally, a standardized test of mathematics ability found no difference between boys and girls.

So why are fields like mathematics and computer science so dominated by men?

Cantlon suspects the answer involves the societal messages girls and young women get, and the difficulty of entering a field that includes very few women. "You can look at ratios of women and men participating in different activities and you can get the hint," she says.

But Geary says an international study he did with Gijsbert Stoet at the University of Essex suggests a different explanation.

Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics and reading, they found that in two-thirds of all countries, female students performed at least as well as males in science.

Yet paradoxically, females in wealthier countries with more gender equality, including the U.S., were less likely than females in other countries to get degrees in fields such as math and computer science.

Geary thinks the reason may be that women in these countries are under less pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more freedom to pursue what interests them most.

Also, males may be more likely to choose science because they are less likely than females to have strong reading, writing and language skills, Geary says.

A study of gender achievement gaps in U.S. schools found that the gaps varied widely depending on whether the school was in a wealthy area.

When all school districts are pooled together, "there isn't really a gender achievement gap in math, but there is in reading," says Erin Fahle, an assistant professor at St. John's University and an author of the gender gap study. Males were about two-thirds of an academic year behind females, she says.

But when the researchers focused on more affluent school districts, "boys tended to do better than girls in math," Fahle says.

That research, along with the new study, makes a compelling case that factors other than biological differences explain why girls are less likely to pursue degrees and jobs in math and science, shesays.

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Math Looks The Same In The Brains Of Boys And Girls, Study Finds

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There's new evidence that girls start out with the same math abilities as boys. A study of 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science of Learning.

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While gender differences in learning math have long been debated, new research debunks an old myth about the math abilities of boys and girls.

Women have surpassed men in college enrollment and degree attainment, with one exception. Mathematics continues to be a male-dominated field. Despite STEM educational programs (science, technology, engineering, and math) around the globe, these areas of study remain underrepresented by women, creating a math gender gap.

Are boys inherently better at math than girls? Do their brains have a higher aptitude for numbers? Or are boys more positively influenced by subtle psychological factors that boost their confidence in math?

In a new groundbreaking study from the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, and Carnegie Mellon, researchers investigated the early biology of math and gender. The journal article, " Gender Similarities in the Brain During Mathematics Development," summarizes the study and concludes unequivocally that learning math is similar in boys and girls. In fact, math processes engage the same neural networks of the brain, regardless of gender, during the critical years of cognitive development.

To compare the neural processes involved in learning math, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to ascertain the brain activity of 3- to 10-year-old children as they observed video clips of math skills like counting and addition. They compared the results to the brain images of adults who watched the same videos, looking at how neural activity was similar or different.

If boys were inherently better at learning math than girls, as many have believed for decades, their brains would show a biological origin for this strength during the crucial years of mathematical development.

Yet researchers found no such link. In fact, their findings suggested that learning math was statistically equivalent from the perspective of neural processing. Girls and boys learned math at similar rates. As they interacted with math videos, girls and boys drew on the same areas of the brain known for their association with math ability. Boys did not have a higher aptitude for learning math or for processing numbers than their female counterparts.

Why Society Should Care About the Math Gender Gap

According to the National Science Foundation, jobs in the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer sciences have the smallest gender pay gaps and align with some of the highest areas of job growth in the global economy. With fewer women choosing to pursue careers in these fields, gender income inequality will rise.

Math and science careers are incubators for social and technological innovation. Employees are working to solve some of the most important challenges of our time, including the development of renewable energy sources, treatments for diseases like cancer and malaria, and providing communities with clean drinking water. Math-related professionals are designing buildings, computers, cars, and medical equipment.

When women are underrepresented in these careers, their voices, needs, and desires are not heard. Innovation suffers. With a more diverse workforce, products and services will be better designed.

It will take parents and educators willing to address the math gender gap, debunk the myth that boys are better at learning math than girls, and take action to help girls believe they can achieve at math before young women will be equally represented in the science and math fields.

To do this, psychology will play as important of a role as girls' math abilities.

The Psychology of Learning Math

The new research on gender similarities of learning math leads to the conclusion that other, more complex factors underlie the math gender gap.

Another group of researchers pursued the question: How do girls' and boy's mathematics ability beliefs relate to different career outcomes? Specifically, their research suggests that even at the same levels of ability, girls believe their math abilities are lower than boys.

In " Gendered Pathways: How Mathematics Ability Belief Shape Secondary and Postsecondary Course and Degree Field Choices," these researchers outlined key concepts that can help improve girl's belief in themselves, encourage them to pursue their love of learning math, and guide them to successful careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Two concepts outlined in their report are straightforward and easier to achieve:

Girls are not often aware of the clear steps from high school through college that are essential to budding female scientists. Students should consult with a school advisor early.

Taking physics and calculus in high school dramatically increases girls' chances of choosing math-related college majors.

The next two concepts are more psychologically complex:

Girls tend to underperform when faced with negative stereotypes. For example, when they are reminded of boys' dominance in learning math, they perform lower on academic tests. The stereotype acts as a stressor to performance.

Girls who have a growth vs. a fixed mindset about learning math are likely to believe in their abilities, an essential pathway toward scientific degrees.

The new gender research makes a strong case for what other researchers, like Carol Dweck, have long suspected-that the psychology of learning math is as important for girls as their math abilities. With decades of negative stereotypes, lack of role models, and subtle messages that suggest their inferiority, girls have been left out of some of the most important and lucrative careers of our time.

Stanford professor Carol Dweck's research with growth mindsets and math performance sheds light on the psychology of learning math. She explains why girls with fixed mindsets are susceptible to setbacks and stereotypes.

Dweck says, "Stereotypes are stories about gifts-about who has them and who doesn't. So, if you believe in a math gift and your environment tells you that your group doesn't have it, then that can be disheartening. But if, instead, you believe that math ability can be cultivated through your efforts, then the stereotype is less credible."

One of Dweck's studies involved two groups of junior high math students. One group was taught about their brain, how it formed new connections when they learned new things, and how that learning increased over time. The other group served as a control and was not taught about the brain. Before the intervention, both groups had declining math scores.

After the intervention, the group that received the message that their brains can grow earned significantly higher math grades than the control group. But even more interesting was what happened with boys and girls.

In the control group, girls performed as they typically would-less well than boys. But in the group that received the "growth mindset" message, the difference between boys and girls disappeared.

Dweck's work suggests that psychological factors associated with girls learning math at a similar level as boys are as important as developing girl's math abilities.

What message should parents and teachers send to girls?

If you enjoy learning math and want to succeed in a mathematics field, you can work hard and develop your abilities. It's that simple.

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Learning Math: Are Boys Better Than Girls?

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While gender differences in learning math have long been debated, new research debunks an old myth about the math abilities of boys and girls. Women have surpassed men in college enrollment and degree attainment, with one exception. Mathematics continues to be a male-dominated field.

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Abstract

Sex differences in spatial ability are a seriously debated topic, given the importance of spatial ability for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and girls' underrepresentation in these domains. In the current study we investigated the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability (i.e., "spatial ability is for boys") in 10- and 12-year-old children. We used both an explicit measure (i.e., a self-report questionnaire) and an implicit measure (i.e., a child IAT). Results of the explicit measure showed that both sexes associated spatial ability with boys, with boys holding more male stereotyped attitudes than girls. On the implicit measure, boys associated spatial ability with boys, while girls were gender-neutral. In addition, we examined the effects of gender beliefs on spatial performance, by experimentally activating gender beliefs within a pretest-instruction-posttest design. We compared three types of instruction: boys are better, girls are better, and no sex differences. No effects of these gender belief instructions were found on children's spatial test performance (i.e., mental rotation and paper folding). The finding that children of this age already have stereotypic beliefs about the spatial capacities of their own sex is important, as these beliefs may influence children's choices for spatial leisure activities and educational tracks in the STEM domain.

Keywords: gender stereotypes, gender beliefs, spatial ability, sex differences, children

"Is Spatial Ability a Boy Thing?

Children's Beliefs about Sex Differences in the Spatial Domain and the Effects on Spatial Performance."

Introduction

Spatial reasoning is an important and unique aspect of children's thinking, consisting of different abilities involving the mental representation and manipulation of spatial information (e.g., object rotation, mental folding, perspective taking, and navigating). Children's spatial abilities are related to many of their daily activities, such as finding their way to school, sports, and playing games (Newcombe and Frick, 2010). Importantly, children's spatial abilities are fundamental to quantitative reasoning, such as mathematics (e.g., Nuttall et al., 2005; Newcombe et al., 2015), and to later success and achievement in the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM; Shea et al., 2001; Wai et al., 2009). Given the underrepresentation of girls in these domains, the development of sex differences in spatial ability is an important topic of investigation.

There is growing consensus that sex differences in spatial ability emerge in the course of childhood, notably around 10-years of age (e.g., Johnson and Meade, 1987; Titze et al., 2010a; Neuburger et al., 2011; Hoyek et al., 2012). Better performance of boys is particularly evident for mental rotation tasks. On other spatial tasks, such as the Paper Folding Test and WISC Block Design test, no consistent sex differences are found (Voyer et al., 1995). This relatively late emergence of sex differences in mental rotation suggests that socio-psychological and experiential factors play an important role in their onset. There is strong evidence that sex differences in spatial ability are related to sex differences in spatial experience, such as play with spatial toys and participation in spatial school subjects (e.g., Baenninger and Newcombe, 1995; Jirout and Newcombe, 2015; Moè, 2016). Another relevant factor is stereotyping. Spatial ability is stereotypically considered a male aptitude (Nash, 1979; Neuburger et al., 2013). In the long term, stereotypic beliefs about the masculinity of spatial ability may lead to sex differences in spatial achievement by affecting boys' and girls' self-concept of ability and by influencing the degree to which they are involved in relevant spatial activities at home and at school (e.g., Baenninger and Newcombe, 1995; Bussey and Bandura, 1999; Dweck, 1999; Jirout and Newcombe, 2015). In the short term, the activation of positive or negative beliefs about the ability of one of both sexes may lead to sex differences in spatial performance in a test situation.

Especially in late childhood, stereotypic gender beliefs may provide an explanation for the observed sex differences in spatial ability. Around 10 years of age children have developed awareness of stereotypes (McKown and Weinstein, 2003) and make important steps in the development of self-concepts of ability (Berk, 2013). However, the literature is inconclusive whether at this age (1) children (already) have stereotypic beliefs on sex differences in spatial ability; (2) there are short-term effects of gender beliefs on spatial test performance, as observed in studies with adults (e.g., Moè and Pazzaglia, 2006; Heil et al., 2012). We investigated these two topics in 10- and 12-year-old children, by examining with different types of measures the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability and by examining the effects of experimentally activating beliefs about sex differences in spatial ability (i.e., instructing children that either boys are better, girls are better, or that there are no sex differences) on spatial performance.

Stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability in children

Stereotypical beliefs about certain abilities or activities being typical for one of both sexes (e.g., the belief that spatial ability is for boys) can be assessed with either explicit or implicit measures. Explicit measures are for example self-report questionnaires asking children whether they consider certain abilities and/or activities as more boyish or more girlish (e.g., Neuburger et al., 2015). Implicit measurement methods on the other hand are indirect, in that participants are not aware on which concepts or on which relations between concepts they are reporting. An example is the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998), a computer task requiring participants to categorize as quickly as possible words from different concepts (e.g., boys' and girls' names and words related to different school subjects) in stereotype-congruent (e.g., boy-spatial) and stereotype-incongruent sorting conditions (e.g., girl-spatial). The assumption in this type of tests is that people with stronger stereotyped beliefs will respond faster to stereotype congruent than to stereotype incongruent conditions.

Explicit and implicit measures may assess different constructs. Children's answers on explicit measures are the result of conscious and deliberate thought. As a consequence, responding is sensitive to social desirability, in that children may inhibit their automatic thoughts and replace them with more socially accepted thoughts. Explicit beliefs may therefore reflect children's knowledge or awareness of common stereotypes, instead of their personal endorsement of the stereotype. In contrast, implicit measures assess unconscious and automatic responses that may reflect the personal acceptance of the stereotype (Devine, 1989; Cvencek et al., 2011). Importantly, this is not to say that implicit measures are accurate or real and explicit measures are not. Rather, it indicates that explicit and implicit measures are both important to consider when studying stereotypic beliefs (Nosek et al., 2011).

The majority of extant studies on gender beliefs in children makes use of explicit measures. For the spatial domain, there is evidence for the presence of explicit stereotypic gender beliefs in both boys and girls, although the results are somewhat inconsistent. Neuburger et al. ( 2015) measured 10-year-old children's gender beliefs on spatial ability by asking questions such as "Who is good at solving mental rotation tasks?," and "Who is good at imagining spatially?." Children answered on a five-point scale (i.e., only girls-more girls than boys-as many girls as boys-more boys than girls-only boys). The results showed that both boys and girls considered mental rotation as typically male. Spatial imagery was considered typically male by the boys, but gender-neutral by the girls. In contrast, in another study with 10-year-olds, the girls did not show a male stereotype for spatial abilities, such as mental rotation, spatial orientation and line reflection. However, the boys and girls in this study agreed that building and construction activities were more typical for boys than for girls (Ruthsatz et al., 2012).

Studies with implicit measures have not yet been performed for spatial ability, but there are some studies of mathematics in children. The study of Ambady et al. ( 2001) for example investigated the presence of the implicit stereotype that "math is for boys" by telling children a story about a student that was especially good at math. The sex of the student was never mentioned. The children had to repeat the story. Boys were more likely to use the word "he" when referring to the student (i.e., congruent with the stereotype), while the girls were as likely to identify the student as boy or girl. Cvencek et al. ( 2011) measured the presence of implicit sex stereotypic beliefs on mathematics with a child version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998). The results of this study showed that both boys and girls in elementary school had stronger associations of math with boys than with girls. Interestingly, only a weak correlation (i.e., r = 0.14) between the explicit and implicit measures was found in these children (Cvencek et al., 2011), suggesting that the explicit and implicit tasks indeed assessed different aspects of gender beliefs. Together, these studies show evidence for the presence of explicit sex stereotypic beliefs on spatial ability in 10-year-old boys and girls, with boys being more male stereotyped than girls. Studies with implicit measures have not yet been performed, but from studies on mathematics it seems reasonable to assume that these stereotypic beliefs are also present at an implicit level.

Effects of gender beliefs on spatial performance

The short-term effects of gender beliefs on test performance have been studied extensively, especially in the domain of mathematics. Generally, it is assumed that positive information about the ability of the own sex promotes someone's confidence, self-esteem and self-efficacy, leading to performance increases (Shih and Pittinsky, 1999). On the other hand, negative beliefs about the ability of the own sex may cause psychological feelings of stress and lower self-confidence, leading to performance decreases-(Muzzatti and Agnoli, 2007; Nguyen and Ryan, 2008; Flore and Wicherts, 2015). It is argued that test performance is disrupted since the negative thoughts and worries occupy the capacity of working memory (Beilock et al., 2007; Schmader et al., 2008), required for fast and accurate test performance.

Whether gender beliefs also have short-term effects on spatial test performance, was firstly investigated in adults. Within a pretest-instruction-posttest design, Moè and Pazzaglia ( 2006) gave their adult participants one of the following three types of instruction: "men are better," "women are better," and neutral (no reference to sex differences). Women increased their performance in the "women better" condition, and decreased their performance in the "men better" condition. However, women who did not believe in men's superiority in spatial tasks a priori, as measured by a questionnaire, showed no decrease in performance. Having the idea that there are no sex differences in spatial ability was protective against instructions suggesting sex differences. Men in the "men better" condition had a significant increase in accuracy from pre- to posttest, and those in the "women better" condition showed a significant decrease. Men who a priori believed that men are much better in spatial ability than women, showed stronger effects of the "men better" instruction than men who believed a priori that there were few or no differences. Positive effects of instructions emphasizing the superiority of the own gender were replicated in later studies with adults (Moè, 2009; Heil et al., 2012).

Recently, two studies investigated the short-term effects of activating gender beliefs in 10-year-old children. The results are inconsistent. In contrast to findings with adults, Titze et al. ( 2010b) found no effects of instructing gender beliefs on mental rotation performance. Children's performance did not decrease or increase as a function of instruction: boys always outperformed girls; girls not even outperformed their same-sex counterparts given the "girls better" instruction. Neuburger et al. ( 2012), however, did find effects of experimentally manipulating gender beliefs. With a comparable pretest- instruction-posttest design they observed improvement in girls and deterioration in boys in the "girls better" and gender-neutral condition. In the "boys better" condition, boys and girls did not change their performance after instruction.

Taken together, studies in adults have found positive effects on spatial ability for manipulations in which the own gender was instructed to be superior, and negative effects for manipulations in which the other gender was instructed to be superior. Pre-existing gender beliefs on spatial ability interacted with the effect of the experimental manipulations. In children, the two studies performed in 10-year-olds showed inconsistent findings. One study found no effects of the manipulations at all, the other found negative effects for boys and positive effects for girls in the "girls better" instruction. These studies did not control for the effects of pre-existing gender beliefs. All in all, there is no consistent evidence for the claim that gender beliefs have direct effects on spatial test performance in late childhood.

The current study

The overarching aim of the current study was to investigate whether gender beliefs may provide an explanation for the observed sex differences in spatial performance in late childhood. The study was comprised of two parts. In the first part we investigated whether 10- and 12-year-old children were characterized by explicit and implicit stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability (i.e., "spatial is for boys") and we examined possible sex and age differences in these beliefs. The explicit gender beliefs were measured by a self-report questionnaire, assessing the degree to which children associated spatial activities with either boys, girls or both sexes. The implicit gender beliefs were measured by a child IAT (based on Cvencek et al., 2011), assessing children's implicit associations between "boy" and "spatial." On basis of previous research, we expected boys to have stronger explicit and implicit stereotypic gender beliefs regarding spatial abilities and activities (i.e., spatial is for boys) than girls (Ruthsatz et al., 2012; Neuburger et al., 2015). In addition, we expected children's gender beliefs to be stronger male stereotyped in ten- than in 12-year-olds (Muzzatti and Agnoli, 2007).

In the second part of this paper we investigated, in the same group of children, whether activating gender beliefs has short-term effects on spatial performance. We examined differences between three instructions (i.e., boys are better, girls are better, no differences) in a pretest-instruction-posttest design. Taking into account that sex differences vary by type of spatial test (Voyer et al., 1995), we administered two well-known spatial tests, one showing sex differences (i.e., the Mental Rotation Test (Peters et al., 1995), the other showing no sex differences (i.e., the Paper Folding Test, Ekstrom et al., 1976). The effects of gender beliefs on spatial abilities other than mental rotation have not been investigated before (Reilly and Neumann, 2013). Previous studies on the effects of gender beliefs in children were only performed in 10-year-olds, and showed inconsistent results. We included 10-year-olds to get a more complete view on the effects in this age group, and 12-year-olds to examine whether the effects of gender beliefs are different in older children. With age, sex differences in mental rotation become larger (e.g., Geiser et al., 2008), and children's awareness about stereotypes increases (McKown and Weinstein, 2003). Therefore, we hypothesized that gender beliefs would have stronger effects on spatial ability in 12- than 10-year-olds. We extend previous studies by controlling for individual differences in pre-existing gender beliefs on spatial ability. We used the implicit measure, as previous studies found that implicit, and not explicit, gender beliefs were a significant indicator of sex differences in spatial performance at a national level (Nosek et al., 2009). In addition, we controlled for individual differences in spatial experience, as the literature provides clear evidence that sex differences in spatial ability relate to sex differences in experiences with spatial tasks and materials (e.g., Baenninger and Newcombe, 1995; Jirout and Newcombe, 2015; Moè, 2016). In line with previous studies in adults (Moè and Pazzaglia, 2006; Moè, 2009; Heil et al., 2012) and with the study of Neuburger et al. in children ( 2012), we expected positive effects of instructing gender superiority on the two types of spatial ability. In the "boys better" condition, we expected improvement in the boys. In the "girls better" and gender-neutral condition we expected improvement in the girls.

Methods

Participants

In this study, 237 children (47% boys, 53% girls) between 7 and 13-years participated; 134 children were from grade 4 ( M age = 9.92, SD = 0.56) and 103 children were from grade 6 ( M age = 12.00, SD = 0.44). Children were recruited from six regular elementary schools from different regions in the Netherlands. Children were from 15 different classes and were divided (class by class) into one of three groups of experimental manipulation: boys better ( n = 81), girls better ( n = 83), and no gender difference ( n = 73). The distribution of children over the three conditions is presented in Table . The children in the three experimental conditions did not differ in their scores on the Raven SPM (Raven et al., 2000), a measure for non-verbal intelligence, F(2, 233) = 1.31, p = 0.27 (Table ). Parents gave written informed consent. The Ethical Committee of the Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam approved the research protocol.

Table 1

Materials

Mental rotation

The effects of the gender belief instruction on spatial ability were tested in a pretest-instruction-posttest design. To measure mental rotation ability we administered the Revised Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test (Peters et al., 1995). As the items of this test do not increase in difficulty, we split the 24 items of the test in a pretest (items 1-12) and a posttest (items 13-24). The items consisted of three-dimensional cube constructions. Each item consisted of a target object on the left and four objects on the right. The participant was required to determine which two (out of four) stimuli were rotations, and not mirror versions, of the target figure. To avoid the risk of test instructions being too difficult for the youngest age group (Hoyek et al., 2012), we used a physical example item to show that all figures of a problem had the same constellation of cubes, but were rotated around the vertical axis. The time limit was 4 min per part of 12 items. One point was given if the child identified both correct answers, with a maximum score of 12.

Paper folding

The Paper Folding Test (PFT, Ekstrom et al., 1976) required the children to predict from two, three, or four pictures how a square piece of paper would look after it had been folded, a hole had been punched in it, and it had been unfolded again. The test consisted of 20 problems in total, which we again divided in a pretest (item 1-10) and a posttest (item 11-20). We used a model paper for the instructions. The time limit was 3 min per part of 10 problems. The child got one point for each correct answer. The variable of interest was the total number of correct answers, with a maximum score of 10.

Non-verbal intelligence

We administered the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices (Raven et al., 2000) as a measure of non-verbal reasoning ability. Children were instructed to solve as many of the 48 items (only sections A-D, not E) in 10 min. The variable of interest was the total number of correct answers, with a maximum score of 48.

Spatial experience

We presented the children a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, that was adapted from the Spatial Activity Questionnaire (Dearing et al., 2012). We selected 18 spatial activities that we considered suitable for 10- and 12-year-old Dutch children. Example items are "Playing with paper airplanes," "Climbing trees," and "Using tools such as a hammer or screwdriver to make things." We added "Doing ball sports, such as soccer, tennis, hockey" and "Doing sports without a ball, such as judo, dancing, or cycling" as 19th and 20th item (see Attachment A for the complete list of items). We asked the children to indicate on a three-point Likert-scale ("never" [0], "sometimes" [1], "often" [2]) how often they participated in each spatial activity in their free time. The variable of interest was the mean of these 20 items, with a maximum of 2, and with higher scores indicating greater participation in spatial activities. The internal consistency of this questionnaire was good with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.80 for the boys and 0.81 for the girls.

Explicit gender beliefs on spatial ability

The measure for explicit gender beliefs was based on the 20 activities of the spatial experience questionnaire (see paragraph Spatial Experience). The measure comprised two parts. In the first part, the activities were presented in a randomly different order and we asked the children to answer for each activity the following question: "What do you think, is this activity more appropriate for boys [1] or for girls [-1]? Or for both? [0]" (Cronbach's α = 0.72). In the second part, the activities were shuffled again, and now the children were asked: "Who do you think are better skilled in this activity? Boys or girls? Or are boys as good as girls?" (Cronbach's α = 0.73). For both part 1 and 2 we computed the mean score on the 20 activities, with scores ranging between −1 and 1. Positive scores indicated stronger association of the spatial activities with boys, and negative scores stronger association of the spatial activities with girls.

Implicit gender beliefs on spatial ability

To measure children's implicit gender beliefs on spatial ability, we adapted the Child Math IAT for elementary school children (Cvencek et al., 2011). This computerized categorization task measures the relative strengths of associations between two concepts (i.e., sex and school subject), each presented in two categories (i.e., boy names vs. girl names and math words vs. language words). Where the Child Math IAT of Cvencek et al. ( 2011) investigated implicit associations between boy and mathematics, we investigated associations between boy and spatial ability.

The IAT started with two single discrimination "practice" blocks, each consisting of 16 trials. First, children practiced sorting boy and girl names. They responded to Dutch boy names (i.e., Bram, Tim, Bart, Stijn) by pressing a response button on the left side of the keyboard (the "A" key marked by a yellow sticker) and to girl names (i.e., Emma, Sanne, Lotte, Lieke) by pressing a response button on the right side (the "L" key, marked by a green sticker). Second, children practiced sorting spatial words (i.e., numbers, sums, constructing, measuring) and language words (letters, sentences, reading, writing), using the same response buttons. As we were not sure that all children were familiar with the concept "spatial," we labeled this category "Math and technology," which refers to familiar "spatial" subjects in their daily school program. After these two practice blocks, children completed two combined discrimination blocks, in which all four categories were used. During the combined blocks, each consisting of 24 trials, two of the four categories were mapped onto the same response key. In one block, spatial words and boy names shared one response key, with language words and girl names sharing the other (stereotype congruent). The other block was stereotype incongruent, with spatial paired to girl and language paired to boy. The IAT score (Greenwald et al., 2003) was calculated by comparing the response speed of congruent and incongruent blocks. Children with stronger stereotypic gender beliefs (i.e., boy = spatial), were expected to respond faster to the stereotype congruent than to the stereotype incongruent condition of the task (Cvencek et al., 2011).

The task was developed and administered in Inquisit version 4.0.4.0. In contrast to the Child IAT of Cvencek et al. ( 2011), the stimuli words were only written, and not spoken, as we assumed that the children were able to read them in the time frame used. Each block started with a wait trial (blank screen) for 2000 ms. Each stimulus trial started with a small asterisk in the middle of the screen to fixate children's attention. After 300 ms the stimulus word appeared. There was no limit to the response time. That is, children always had to choose between the left or right response button to proceed to the next trial. Errors were indicated to the children with the word "incorrect" appearing in red in the middle of the screen for 1000 ms. Incorrect trials were not repeated. After a correct answer, testing proceeded to the next trial without information on correct or incorrect. The intertrial interval was 500 ms. The order of the congruent and incongruent blocks was counterbalanced. We recorded accuracy and response latency per trial. IAT scores were computed using the improved scoring algorithm of Greenwald et al. ( 2003). For both sexes we subtracted the stereotype congruent block (spatial = boy) from the stereotype incongruent block (spatial = girl). Positive scores indicated stronger association of spatial with boys, and negative scores indicated stronger association of spatial with girls.

In addition to this gender belief IAT, measuring the associations between sex and spatial ability, we administered a "gender identity IAT" and a "spatial self-concept IAT" (as done by Cvencek et al., 2011 for math). As these two IATs were not related to the research questions of the current paper, no data about these measures are discussed. We did not use IAT data of participants with (a) 10% or more of their responses faster than 300 ms, (b) an error rate of 35% or greater in at least one of the three IATs, or (c) an average response latency 3 SD above the mean response latency for the whole sample in at least one of the three IATs (Greenwald et al., 2003). These criteria excluded 14 of the 237 participants (5.9%). These were seven children from grade 4 (5 boys, 2 girls) and seven children from grade 6 (3 boys, 4 girls).

Procedure

Children were tested during regular class time in mixed-sex groups of 15-25 children by female experimenters. In the first classical test session, children were informed about the research protocol (i.e., nothing was said about sex differences) and they completed the explicit gender belief questionnaire (15 min) and the Raven SPM (10 min). During the same day, we administered the children, in groups of three of four children, in a quiet room in the school, the implicit gender belief IAT at individual laptop computers. The gender identity IAT and spatial self-concept IAT were counterbalanced in the first and third position, with the spatial-gender stereotype IAT always administered in the second position. Two weeks later, the experimental manipulation took place in a classical session of about 50 min. Each child received a test booklet and sat alone at its own desk. First, children had to complete the pretest of the MRT (4 min) and PFT (3 min). The experimenters read out aloud the instructions from the test booklet. Both tasks started with a practice item. After the pretests, we presented the experimental manipulation (based on Titze et al., 2010a), which we read out aloud to the children, and was printed in their booklets. The children in the "boys better" condition were told: "This is important information. There is something we have to tell you about these tasks. Many children in the Netherlands have already completed these tasks. We have counted the number of correct answers. Boys always performed much better than girls on these tasks. Boys always had more correct answers than girls. Now we want to check whether in this class the boys are better too." The children in the "girls better" condition were told that the girls were better than the boys. The children in the gender-neutral condition were told: "Boys were as good as girls in these tasks. Boys always had as many answers correct as girls. Now we want to check whether in this class the boys are as good as girls too." After the manipulation, the children had to complete the posttests of the MRT and PFT. Afterwards, we debriefed the children on the goals of the study and answered all their questions.

Results

The analyses consisted of two steps. In the first step, we investigated the presence of explicit and implicit stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability, and sex and grade differences in these beliefs. In the second step, we examined the effects of experimentally manipulating children's gender beliefs (i.e., boys better, girls better, or no differences) on boys' and girls' spatial test performance (i.e., mental rotation and paper folding), while controlling for individual differences in pre-existing gender beliefs and spatial experience.

Explicit and implicit gender beliefs on spatial ability

Explicit gender beliefs

First, we tested the hypothesis that 10- and 12-year-old children already had explicit stereotypic beliefs on sex differences in the spatial domain (i.e., the questionnaires with boy-girl statements). In addition, we examined whether these explicit stereotypic beliefs were stronger in the boys and in the older children (see Table and Figure ). An ANOVA on part two of the questionnaire ("What do you think, are these activities more appropriate for boys or girls? Or for both?") showed a main effect of sex, F(1, 229) = 19.21, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.08 (medium effect), but no main effect of grade, F(1, 229) = 0.07, p = 0.79, and no interaction effect, F(1, 229) = 2.49, p = 0.12. Both boys and girls considered the spatial activities more appropriate for boys than girls (i.e., for both sexes scores were positive and significantly different from 0, ps < 0.001). Boys had stronger associations between spatial and boy than the girls. For part three ("Who do you think are better in these activities? Boys or girls? Or are boys as good as girls?") we found a main effect of sex, F(1, 228) = 39.61, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.15. Again there was no main effect of grade, F(1, 228) = 0.61, p = 0.44, and no interaction effect of sex and grade, F(1, 228) = 0.69, p = 0.41. Both boys and girls considered boys more skilled in spatial activities than girls (i.e., for both sexes scores were positive and significantly different from 0, ps < 0.001). Boys had stronger associations between boy and spatial than girls. The two parts of the questionnaire were strongly interrelated in both the boys ( r = 0.64, p < 0.001) and the girls ( r = 0.57, p < 0.001).

Implicit gender beliefs

Next, we tested the same hypotheses for the implicit gender beliefs (i.e., the computerized IAT). The ANOVA showed a main effect of sex, F(1, 230) = 34.07, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.13, but no main effect of grade, F(1, 230) = 0.86, p = 0.35, and no interaction effect, F(1, 230) = 0.28, p = 0.60 (see Table and Figure ). Boys strongly associated spatial activities and abilities with boys (i.e., positive IAT score, significantly different from 0, p < 0.001), while girls associated spatial abilities as strongly with boys as with girls (i.e., score not significantly different from 0, p = 0.21).

The correlations between the explicit and implicit gender belief measures were weak for part two of the questionnaire ( r = 0.07, p = 0.31) and small for part three of the questionnaire and ( r = 0.20, p = 0.002), suggesting that the implicit and explicit tasks measured different aspects of gender beliefs.

Taken together, at the explicit level, both sexes believed that boys are more appropriate for and better skilled in spatial activities than girls, with these beliefs being stronger male stereotyped in boys than in girls. At the implicit level, boys strongly associated the spatial domain with boys, while girls were gender-neutral. There were no differences in the explicit and implicit gender beliefs between children from grade 4 and 6 (i.e., between the 10- and 12-year-olds) and no interactions between sex and grade. These findings confirm the hypothesis that sex stereotypic beliefs on spatial ability are already present in 10- and 12-year-olds. These beliefs are stronger in boys than in girls, especially at the implicit level.

Effects of gender beliefs on spatial ability

In the second step of the analyses, we tested the hypothesis that instructing boys and girls that their own sex is superior in the spatial domain would have positive effects on their spatial test performance, while controlling for individual differences in pre-existing gender beliefs and spatial experience. Preliminary to the main analysis, we examined sex and grade differences on the pretest of the mental rotation and paper folding task, we examined sex and grade differences in spatial experience, and we computed correlations between the pre-existing gender beliefs and spatial performance.

Sex and grade differences in spatial ability

We examined differences between children on the pretest of the MRT (i.e., mental rotation) and PFT (i.e., paper folding; Table ). An univariate analysis of variance with scores on the MRT as dependent factor and sex (boys, girls) and grade (4, 6) as independent factors showed a main effect of sex, F(1, 233) = 8.56, p = 0.004, η 2 = 0.04 (small effect) and grade, F(1, 233) = 22.80, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.09 (medium effect), but no interaction effect of sex and grade, F(1, 233) = 0.60, p = 0.44. Boys outperformed girls and grade 6 outperformed grade 4. For the PFT, the ANOVA showed a large main effect of grade, F(1, 233) = 38.08, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.14, but no main effect of sex, F(1, 233) = 0.10, p = 0.75 and no interaction effect of sex and grade, F(1, 233) = 0.01, p = 0.91. There were no sex differences in paper folding. Grade 6 outperformed grade 4.

Sex and grade differences in spatial experience

We examined differences between children in spatial experience. An univariate analysis of variance with scores on the spatial experience questionnaire as dependent factor and sex (boys, girls) and grade (4, 6) as independent factors showed no main effect of sex, F(1, 229) = 1.06, p = 0.32, but a main effect of grade, F(1, 229) = 26.08, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.10 (medium effect). There was no interaction effect of sex and grade, F(1, 229) = 0.05, p = 0.82. No differences in spatial experience between boys ( M = 0.71, SD = 0.28) and girls ( M = 0.69, SD = 0.26) were observed. Children from grade 4 ( M = 0.78, SD = 0.24) participated more frequently in spatial activities than children from grade 6 ( M = 0.61, SD = 0.28).

Correlations between pre-existing gender beliefs and spatial ability

We computed correlations between boys' and girls' pre-existing gender beliefs and their mental rotation and paper folding scores on the pretest, separately for grade 4 and 6. Boys' gender beliefs did not relate to their spatial test scores (all rs < 0.18, ps > 0.05). Also in the girls, most correlations between the gender beliefs and spatial test scores were non-significant, with two exceptions. First, there was a positive correlation between the explicit gender belief measure "better skilled" and the paper folding scores of the girls in grade 4 (r = 0.24, p = 0.04). Stronger explicit beliefs that boys are better skilled in the spatial domain were related to higher paper folding scores. Second, there was a negative correlation between the explicit gender belief measure "more appropriate" and the paper folding scores of the girls in grade 6 (r = −0.34, p = 0.02). Stronger explicit beliefs that boys are more appropriate for the spatial domain were related to lower paper folding scores.

Effects of the experimental manipulations

With repeated measures ANOVAs we investigated pretest-posttest differences between the three experimental conditions (i.e., boys better, girls better, no gender difference) and between the sexes (boys, girls) and grades (4, 6), separately for mental rotation and paper folding (Table ). The implicit gender belief and spatial experience measure were added as covariates in the analyses.

Discussion

Spatial ability is stereotypically considered a male aptitude (Nash, 1979; Neuburger et al., 2013). Especially in late childhood, such stereotypic beliefs may provide an explanation for observed sex differences in spatial ability. Children of this age have developed awareness of stereotypes (McKown and Weinstein, 2003) and make important steps in the development of self-concepts of ability (Berk, 2013). However, the literature is inconclusive whether at this age (1) children (already) have stereotypic beliefs on sex differences in spatial ability; (2) there are short-term effects of gender beliefs on spatial test performance, as observed in studies with adults (e.g., Moè and Pazzaglia, 2006; Heil et al., 2012). We investigated these two topics in 10- and 12-year-old children, by examining with both explicit and implicit measures the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability and by examining the effects of experimentally manipulating children's beliefs about sex differences in spatial ability (i.e., instructing children that either boys are better, girls are better, or that there are no gender differences) on spatial performance.

The results showed that stereotypic beliefs on sex differences in the spatial domain were already present in 10- and 12-year old children. Boys had strong explicit (i.e., conscious) and implicit (i.e., unconscious) male stereotyped beliefs regarding spatial abilities (i.e., boys are superior to girls in the spatial domain). Girls agreed with this stereotype on the explicit measure, although they were less male stereotyped than boys. On the implicit measure however they showed gender-neutral beliefs about sex differences in spatial ability (i.e., no sex is superior). This incongruence indicates that girls, in accordance with social desirable standards, answered that "spatial is for boys" on the self-report questionnaire, but that they did not personally endorse this stereotype. The finding of girls being more egalitarian than boys is in line with previous studies with explicit measures in the spatial domain (Ruthsatz et al., 2012; Neuburger et al., 2015) and in mathematics (Muzzatti and Agnoli, 2007). The incongruence between explicit and implicit measures of girls' gender beliefs underlines the importance of further examining the interrelations and developmental sequence of these two types of beliefs. We did not observe differences between the 10- and 12-year-old children, suggesting that children's ideas about male superiority in the spatial domain do not change in this age period.

In general, children's explicit and implicit beliefs about sex differences in the spatial domain did not relate to their spatial performance on the pretest. Probably there was no relation because most children were completely unfamiliar to the mental rotation and paper folding task at pretesting. The majority of girls was therefore not aware of the fact that they were taking tests on which boys are (assumed to be) better. Therefore, in advance, the test may not have evoked any feelings of stress or lowered self-confidence. This may be different for mathematics, since children have daily experience with this kind of tasks and, as a consequence, may have strongly established beliefs about the ability of their own sex (e.g., Muzzatti and Agnoli, 2007).

In the second part of the analyses, we investigated the short-term effects of explicitly instructing children that either boys are better on spatial tasks, girls are better, or there are no sex differences, while accounting for individual differences in pre-existing implicit stereotypes. First, children were administered a mental rotation and paper folding pretest. In line with the literature (Voyer et al., 1995), boys outperformed girls on the mental rotation test, but not on the paper folding task. These findings support the growing body of evidence that sex differences in mental rotation emerge before adolescence, probably around 10-years of age (e.g., Johnson and Meade, 1987; Titze et al., 2010a; Neuburger et al., 2011; Hoyek et al., 2012).

The instructions (i.e., boys are better, girls are better, no sex differences) were given in a pretest-instruction-posttest experiment. We found no differences in progress between the pretest and posttest between the three instructions, suggesting that in 10- and 12-year-olds there were no direct effects of induced gender beliefs on spatial performance. These findings replicate the findings of Titze et al. ( 2010b), showing in a similar study no effect of induced gender beliefs on 10-year-old children's spatial performance, but are in contrast with the study of Neuburger et al. ( 2012), showing positive effects in girls and negative effects in boys of the "girls are better" instruction (same procedure, but letter rotation task as posttest).

The absence of manipulation effects may be explained in different ways. First, children may not have identified themselves with the gender beliefs we tried to activate. Results of the implicit IAT showed that there were sex differences in how strongly boys and girls associated children of their own sex with the spatial domain, but possibly there were no sex differences in how strongly the children associated themselves with the spatial domain. It is possible that the children regarded the induced gender beliefs as true for other boys or girls, but considered themselves as a member of a subgroup for which the information did not apply, a process called stereotype stratification (Steele, 2003). The last sentence of our experimental instruction (i.e., "Now we want to check whether in this class the boys/girls are better too.") may have strengthened this stratification effect (e.g., "The stereotype may apply to other girls, but not to girls in my class"). Second, the explicit priming of gender beliefs to mixed-sex groups in the natural setting of the classroom may have stimulated a "competition between the sexes," resulting in increased effort and performance boosts in both sexes, regardless of which belief was activated. In line with this hypothesis, we found for none of the sexes and for none of the instructions decreases in spatial performance after instruction. Related to this, children may not have considered the induced sex differences as fixed and immutable (e.g., resulting from genetic differences between boys and girls), but instead, they may have attributed success on the spatial tasks to personal effort. Previous research showed positive effects of such effort attributions on spatial performance (Moè and Pazzaglia, 2010). Fourth, we measured direct and very short-term effects of instruction on spatial test performance. The effects of gender belief instructions on spatial performance may be stronger when the instructions are repeated multiple times, when children get more time to think about the instructed sex differences, or when children are asked to reflect on the instructions, for example by repeating them in their own words (e.g., Ambady et al., 2001).

Further, studies are necessary to clarify the direct and indirect effects of gender beliefs on spatial performance in children. First, studies might investigate, ideally with longitudinal studies, developmental changes in explicit and implicit stereotypical beliefs during the course of elementary school (as done for math by Cvencek et al., 2011). Relations between these beliefs and children's spatial self-confidence and interest for the spatial domain are important topics of investigation. Second, studies might examine why manipulating gender beliefs seems to have strong direct effects on spatial performance in adults (Moè and Pazzaglia, 2006; Moè, 2009; Heil et al., 2012), but not in children (this study, Titze et al., 2010b). Previous studies finding effects of gender beliefs in adults were administered individually (Heil et al., 2012) and in same-sex groups (Moè, 2009). To investigate the developmental determinants of stereotypic effects, different age groups should be included in a mixed-sex study design. Levels of self-confidence and working memory could be measured before and after instruction. Self-confidence and working memory have combined effects on spatial performance: confidence reduces stress and the need to suppress negative thoughts, thereby liberating working memory capacity for use on mental rotations (Schmader et al., 2008).

In conclusion, this study demonstrated that 10- and 12-year-old boys had both explicitly and implicitly the belief that their ability and performance in the spatial domain is superior to girls. Girls agreed with this stereotype when asked explicitly, but implicitly, they endorsed gender-neutral beliefs. There were no relations between these internalized gender beliefs and children's spatial test performance. In addition, test performance was not directly affected by explicit instructions that either boys were better, girls were better or there were no sex differences on the given spatial tests.

Although children's gender beliefs did not have short-term effects on spatial performance yet, we should watch for the long-term effects. For example, studies in adults showed significant associations between implicit stereotypic beliefs and women's plans to pursue science-oriented academic programs and careers (e.g., Lane et al., 2012). The stereotypic gender beliefs that we found to be present in 10- and 12-year-olds may affect boys' and girls' feelings of confidence and comfort in gathering relevant spatial experiences. These differences in spatial experience may result in performance differences between the sexes and ultimately to different educational and occupational choices (Bussey and Bandura, 1999). We therefore encourage teachers and caregivers to promote spatial confidence in girls by engaging them in a variety of spatial activities inside and outside school. The period around 10-years of age may be an important time window for such initiatives, as we observed that girls of this age were aware of the common belief that men are better in the spatial domain than women, but did not have personally endorsed this belief yet.

Author contributions

KV, NV, and MH contributed to the development of the study hypotheses. KV and NV contributed to the study design. KV performed the data analysis and drafted the manuscript with input from NV. Critical revisions were contributed by MH and JJ. All authors discussed the results, implications, and literature, and approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank Kiki Haring, Rinske Keizer, Tanisha Joemmanbaks, and Frank Schwering for their assistance in collecting and administrating the data.

Appendix A

Items of the spatial activity questionnaire

1

Playing with toy soldiers, action figures, cars or trains

2

Folding paper airplanes

3

Doing arts and crafts projects (such as making jewelry, or using play dough/clay)

4

Coloring, painting, or drawing free hand

5

Using tools (such as hammer or screwdriver) to make things

6

Taking things apart to see how they work

7

Building a city with toy buildings, train tracks or building blocks

8

Searching for plants, bugs, or animals outdoors

9

Racing with toy animals or cars

10

Building with construction toys (such as building blocks, Legos)

11

Playing with puzzles

13

Drawing houses, forts, castles, or other buildings

14

Playing in parks or green spaces

15

Using model building kits

17

Playing with flying toys (such as kites, paper planes)

18

Building dams, forts, tree houses, or snow tunnels

19

Doing ball sports (such as football, tennis, hockey)

20

Doing sports without a ball (such as judo, dancing or cycling)

Footnotes

1 Inquisit (Version 4.0.4.0). [Computer Software]. Seattle, WA: Millisecond Software.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Implicit and Explicit Gender Beliefs in Spatial Ability: Stronger Stereotyping in Boys than Girls

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sex differences in spatial ability are a seriously debated topic, given the importance of spatial ability for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and girls' underrepresentation in these domains. In the current study we investigated the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability (i.e., "spatial ability is for boys") in 10- and 12-year-old children.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Men aren't born with better spatial reasoning than women are, a new meta-analysis suggests.

It is well-established that, on average, men outperform women on a spatial reasoning task known as mental rotation-imagining multi-dimensional objects from different points of view.

The new research, however, indicates that males gain a slight advantage in mental-rotation performance during the first years of formal schooling, and this advantage slowly grows with age, tripling in size by the end of adolescence.

"Some researchers have argued that there is an intrinsic gender difference in spatial reasoning-that boys are naturally better at it than girls," says lead author Jillian Lauer, who is set to graduate from Emory in May with a PhD in psychology.

It takes most of childhood and adolescence for the gender gap in spatial skills to reach the size of the difference seen in adulthood.

"While our results don't exclude any possibility that biological influences contribute to the gender gap, they suggest that other factors may be more important in driving the gender difference in spatial skills during childhood."

The meta-analysis included 128 studies of gender differences in spatial reasoning, combining statistics on more than 30,000 children and adolescents aged three to 18 years. The authors found no gender difference in mental-rotation skills among preschoolers, but a small male advantage emerged in children between the ages of six and eight.

While differences in verbal and mathematical abilities between men and women tend to be small or non-existent, twice as many men as women are top performers in mental rotation, making it one of the largest gender differences in cognition.

Mental rotation is considered one of the hallmarks of spatial reasoning. "If you're packing your suitcase and trying to figure out how each item can fit within that space, or you're building furniture based on a diagram, you're likely engaged in mental rotation, imagining how different objects can rotate to fit together," Lauer explains.

"We're interested in the origins of gender differences in spatial skills because of their potential role in the gender gap we see in math and science fields."

Prior research has also shown that superior spatial skills predict success in male-dominated science, technology engineering and math fields, and that the gender difference in spatial reasoning may contribute to the gender disparity in these STEM fields.

"We're interested in the origins of gender differences in spatial skills because of their potential role in the gender gap we see in math and science fields," Lauer says. "By determining when the gender difference can first be detected in childhood and how it changes with age, we may be able to develop ways to make educational systems more equitable."

It takes most of childhood and adolescence for the gender gap in spatial skills to reach the size of the difference seen in adulthood, Lauer says. She adds that the meta-analysis did not address causes for why the gender gap for mental rotation emerges and grows.

Lauer notes that previous research has shown that parents use more spatial language when they talk to preschool sons than daughters. Studies have also found that girls report more anxiety about having to perform spatial tasks than do boys by first grade, and that children are aware of gender stereotypes about spatial intelligence during elementary school.

"Now that we've characterized how gender differences in spatial reasoning skills develop in children over time we can start to hone in on the reasons for those differences," Lauer says.

Meanwhile, she adds, parents may want to be aware to encourage both their daughters and sons to play with blocks and other construction items that might help in the development of spatial reasoning skills, since evidence shows that these skills can be improved with training.

"Giving both girls and boys more opportunities to develop their spatial skills is something that parents and educators have the power to do," Lauer says.

The research appears in the Psychological Bulletin.
Source: Emory University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Boys aren't born with better spatial reasoning - Futurity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Men aren't born with better spatial reasoning than women are, a new meta-analysis suggests. It is well-established that, on average, men outperform women on a spatial reasoning task known as mental rotation-imagining multi-dimensional objects from different points of view.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Only 3 per cent of the UK's early years workforce is male - a figure that has hardly improved for the past 20 years.

Blame for this is often laid at men's door.

But the early years sector should be doing much more to welcome men.
Quick read: Quick listen: 'No school is immune from gender stereotypes' 'Why it's hard being a male primary teacher'
Want to know more? Early warning: we need more men

Here are some top tips for what those in the sector can do:

How to get more men into EYFS

Be clear on why you want men

If you do this, you're more likely to create a successful recruitment campaign. Lots of nursery owners and managers approach this by emphasising gender difference, saying they want male staff to act as role models or make up for fathers absent from children's (especially boys') lives.

You would never load such expectations on to a female staff member - you would just want her to be an excellent practitioner, doing the job to the best of her ability.

It makes much more sense to focus your strategy on improving representation; you want more men because you want your workforce to better represent the community it serves, not because you want men to bring some special, gendered ingredient.

This way, you open your team to the many, diverse skills and perspectives that men, like women, offer.

Put yourself in men's shoes

"Feminised" job titles such as "nursery nurse" are old-fashioned and may be off-putting (or at least not encouraging) to potential male recruits. "Early years practitioner" and "early years educator" sound much more gender-neutral and professional.

Think about what a man's motivations might be for wanting to work in your setting. Many male practitioners like not working in a traditional 9-5, and value the ability to make their mark by changing children's lives.

Some may enjoy outdoors play, creative aspects of the job and the sense of playing a part in shaping children's minds. Use these as the hooks to pull men in.

Prepare your team

Ideally, you should offer unconscious bias or other gender-sensitivity training, and at the very least you should keep any eye on sexist workplace "banter": loose talk about men being "useless" with children or women being better at caring and multi-tasking should be challenged, for example.

Take positive action

In many fields it is standard practice for employers to include a clear statement in job advertisements saying that they welcome applications from people in under-represented groups - usually women and/or people from black and minority ethnic communities.

In the UK this is permitted under the Equality Act, but while there can be little doubt that men are under-represented in early years education, it is almost unheard of for employers in this sector to include such statements in their advertising. In fact, equality law allows you to take positive action before or during the job application stage.

Steps you can take include encouraging the under-represented group (in our case, men) to apply; you could even offer them extra help (like training or other support) not available to other applicants - to help them perform to the best of their ability at interview, for example. Holding an open day targeted at men could be a good place to start.

Reach out

We need to start having conversations with men and boys in which we actively encourage their interest in taking up careers in early years education, to increase the chances of gender diversity now and in the future.
Dr Jeremy Davies is project lead for Men in the Early Years (Mitey) and head of communications at the Fatherhood Institute
Start with the males your setting comes into regular contact with: dads dropping their children off, and the children themselves. Invite them to consider what they could bring to early years work, and be prepared to challenge any stereotyped negativity they might throw your way.

The Mitey (Men in the Early Years) Guide to Recruiting Men into Early Years Education is available as a free download to members of the Mitey network.

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Only 3 per cent of the UK's early years workforce is male - a figure that has hardly improved for the past 20 years. Blame for this is often laid at men's door. But the early years sector should be doing much more to welcome men.

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From even the early stages of pregnancy, boys and girls are often treated differently. From different colours for gender reveals through to the type of toys they are typically bought, parents treat their children differently based on their gender. However, parents aren't the only adults that children learn from. How does a teacher's perception of gender influence a student's achievement levels?

It can be uncomfortable to talk about boy/girl differences, especially in schools, because of the fear of being unfair or stereotyping. The classroom is a highly influential place for a young child, it being where they spend the majority of their time, and so the language they are exposed to in there is a vital part of their learning. In order to create environments that nourish all children and guide them to success, it is important to open up the conversation and explore whether there is a problem.

So, do teachers teach boys and girls differently? If yes, how does this influence achievement levels?

Is There a Gender Problem in Classrooms?

Research suggests that, subconsciously, teachers may be more likely to associate boys with underachievement and girls with high achievement. This can create misconceptions about the expected behaviours and characteristics of the respective groups, which may lead to these students being treated differently.

Here are a few ways in which teaching may differ:
The Language Used
Using gender stereotypes such as "boys don't like writing" and "girls settle down and get on with it" may not relay a positive message to students. This could lead to a tendency where boys are seen in terms of things they cannot, will not and do not do, whereas girls are seen in terms of the things they have achieved and their compliant behaviour.

Being aware of our own gender biases will allow educators to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Saying something like "girls are better writers" - a comment made by more than 8 teachers in a survey carried out at the English Department in a high school - can have more of an impact on students than it may seem.

Girls who are underachieving may feel extra pressure to do well, and high achieving boys may feel that their efforts have gone to waste. Teachers are in a unique and privileged position to vocally challenge common stereotypes and show their students that they can be successful in every subject, regardless of their gender.
Compliments in the Classroom
Research on observations in the classroom have shown that teachers in that study gave 54 positive comments towards girls, and only 32 towards boys. Over the course of 36 classes, the girls received 22 negative comments with their male counterparts receiving 54.

These figures are an indication of the type of support and responses students receive from their teachers on a day to day basis. Girls are praised much more often for their good work and behaviour, contributing to the continuation of it. If boys do not receive this same feedback, it is fair to expect them to be less likely to exhibit these behaviours. A fascinating report by the Department of Education, in 2009, suggested that positive interaction with the teacher in whole-class sessions kept students, especially boys, motivated and involved. That is one of many examples of the importance of good teacher-students relationships.
Asking questions in class
The under-achieving girl is the least likely to be invited to answer a question in class, and the under-achieving boy is the most likely to be called on to respond. This creates a hurdle in the path to improvement for girls as they may well be overlooked in the classroom.

Due to the perceived norm of boys underachieving, the majority of the focus tends to stay on them. There is almost a whole branch of research dedicated to supporting boys in schools, whilst underachieving girls are often invisible. Not getting the same opportunities for improvement can have long-lasting detrimental effects.

In order to combat these effects and get students more involved, teachers could divide the questions up equally or introduce a traffic light system which has shown to enhance learning. It is a simple and effective technique that gets students to use the colours of the traffic light to indicate their level of understanding. For more tips, check out our blog on how to help students raise their game.

Pull, Don't Push

Achievement levels are a good predictor of behaviour and interaction in the classroom, even more significant than gender. High-achieving students are often focused and disciplined, and underachieving students can fall into one of two groups: they are either quiet and disengaged, or loud and attention-seeking.

This sometimes-disruptive behaviour can have negative effects on the other students and may hinder their learning. But remember: pull, don't push. This means creating an environment that fosters motivation and entices students so that they feel a pull towards a goal, instead of using the pressure of looming deadlines and fear of failure to push them into something. If teachers aim to get students engaged and interested, they will be better in the classroom in every possible way, from completing tasks to interacting with their peers.

Final Thoughts

In order to boost achievement levels and sustain those already outstanding ones, it is important to create equal opportunities that allow all students, regardless of their gender, to succeed and feel supported. It is the subconscious biases that are often the hardest to break, but they are also the ones that can yield the best results if broken.

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Given how important the classroom environment is to a child's development and learning, it's important to be aware of our own biases for equal opportunity.

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No, men aren't better at reading maps: the best books exposing gender myths

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Cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon picks five books that set the record straight on gender, including Frances Hardinge and Cordelia Fine

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Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

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The Disney Corporation has been entertaining families with animated films since the 1930s. Disney princesses have gained notoriety over the years and even received their own line of products in the 1990s. Disney princess movies and related products have brought in billions of dollars through sales.

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Last year I went on holiday with my young daughter. Just as we were disembarking from the plane, she asked me: "Where is the pilot, Mum?"

"I guess he must be up in the cockpit," I said without thinking, a bit stressed by the squash of humans around us.

"Are all pilots boys?"

I felt time stop for a moment. Despite constantly attempting to champion gender equality in my everyday life as a teacher and mum, I had used blatantly gender-biased language. And this was just one tiny exchange between a parent and child. If it was so easy for me to make a misstep, what effect might a teachers' unconscious bias be having on the hundreds of children they encounter at school every day?

Apparently, I am not alone in these concerns. This same question has led my senior leadership team to create a new position in our school: gender champion.

The role has been supported by a grant from the Improving Gender Balance team at the Institute of Physics.

Challenging gender inequality

When I first heard about this, my curiosity was piqued. What would the role entail? And how would the person who stepped into it make the most of their new position? To find out, I spoke to our school's very first gender champion, Lorien Joyce.

"The first step will be to provide whole-school CPD on promoting gender equality by helping staff to address unconscious bias and stereotyping in their own language," says Joyce.

"The school currently has a thriving equality and diversity working party made up of interested volunteers, with representation from across the subject areas and senior leadership team. The aim will be to promote and support teachers to embed equality into their own teaching and learning, and the wider school community."

Joyce hopes that the working party will be able to review any discrepancies in the balance of genders within subject option groups, and in instances where there is a significant imbalance, discuss actions to redress this.

There has already been a significant increase in the numbers of girls taking physics at A level and continuing on to study this at university as part of a "girls into physics" initiative. The initiative has included running a targeted lunch club to encourage more girls to engage with the subject, and improving how physics is being "sold" to primary pupils through the use of student ambassadors.

The working party is also looking at how gender is represented across the school in teaching resources, displays and the content of lessons.

This might mean encouraging staff to choose a picture of a female surgeon rather than a male one in a teaching resource on medicine through history; it might take the form of making a display that celebrates successful women in science; it might even mean starting to teach students directly about the gender gap via tutor times and PSHE sessions.

The overall aim is to support students in understanding, questioning and challenging gender inequality and bias by opening up discussions that will move us towards creating a school environment that promotes equal opportunities for all.

"We are all biased in the language we use, the way we mark, the examples we cite, even the pictures we choose to support our teaching resources," says Joyce. "Only once we have acknowledged that, can we begin to address it."

The role of gender champion is still new and it remains to be seen how effective it will be to have a member of staff dedicated to considering whole-school approaches to gender. However, my personal feeling is that this appointment is a hugely positive step for all students and staff and that - by having open discussions around gender and raising awareness about gender bias - we can continue the fight for a more equal society.
Katie White is an English teacher in Devon

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'Why every school needs a gender champion'

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Last year I went on holiday with my young daughter. Just as we were disembarking from the plane, she asked me: "Where is the pilot, Mum?" "I guess he must be up in the cockpit," I said without thinking, a bit stressed by the squash of humans around us.

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How can I make sure media doesn't ruin my daughter's self-esteem?

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How can I make sure media doesn't ruin my daughter's self-esteem? Get expert advice and tips from Common Sense Media editors.

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By any definition, Gwen Pearson is pretty smart. She's got a Ph.D in entomology from North Carolina State University and she is now a science writer and education coordinator at Purdue University.

But she remembers how often she was told she wasn't good enough, simply because she was female.

"As a graduate student, a fellow male student said, to my face, that he had no idea how I was admitted to the program because I clearly wasn't smart enough to be there," Pearson recalls.

"He said having me as a fellow graduate student 'lessened the value of his degree.' Direct quote. He seemed to think that I should leave for the good of the other students. It was pretty devastating."

Women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers have countless similar stories. A new study published Wednesday adds to a growing body of hard evidence to back up those stories.

It finds that men in STEM subject areas overestimate their own intelligence and credentials, underestimate the abilities of female colleagues, and that as a result, women themselves doubt their abilities - even when hard evidence such as grades say otherwise.

Katelyn Cooper, a doctoral student in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences and her adviser, assistant professor Sara Brownell, studied the effect in an undergraduate biology class.

The average grade in the class was a 3.3. But when they asked students to ask if they were smarter than their classmates, "the average male student thinks he is smarter than 66 percent of the class, while the average female student thinks she is smarter than 54 percent of the class," Brownell said.

Statistically, about half of people in any group should be above the average, and half below it.

The students worked in groups and as partners and when asked to rate themselves compared to their closest workmate, the men thought they'd be smarter than 61 percent of their colleagues. Women put the number closer to 33 percent.

"This echoes what has been previously shown in the literature; a review of nearly 20 published papers on self-estimated intelligence concluded that men rate themselves higher than women on self-estimated intelligence," Cooper and Brownell wrote in their report, published in Advances in Physiology Education.

"More and more of these studies are painting similar pictures," Brownell said.

"Females are not participating as much in science class. They are not raising their hands and answering questions." It's not that they are less able, but that they see themselves as less able - and so do their teachers, classmates and, eventually, employers.

It's no secret that STEM is dominated by men, and that for decades educators, medical professionals and the general public believed that males were somehow more adept at math, science and similar subjects.

The notion has been disproved, but the attitudes persist, Cooper and Brownell said. Women in STEM fields report a persistent hostile atmosphere fueled by the belief that they do not belong.

Cooper and Brownell said their experiment is notable because it took place in a biology class.

"Unlike the more male-dominated fields like engineering and physics, biology is seen as a safe place for women," Brownell said.

Ilana Seidel Horn, a professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University, says it's been shown that girls and women doubt their own mastery of a subject more than boys and men do.

"Really bright girls often don't feel like they know something unless they very much understand it, whereas boys are more comfortable saying they understand something without having an actual deeper understanding," Horn said.

Teaching methods, especially in mathematics, reinforce this. Success doesn't necessarily require a deeper understanding, and this can frustrate men and women alike who want to really understand why a formula works, Horn said.

"What helped me was understanding that my way of learning wasn't worse. It was just different," said Horn, who said she was often the only female in an advanced mathematics class.

"But I definitely had crises of confidence."

The attitudes do not stay inside people's heads. Pearson said she felt the disdain of her male classmates regularly.

"I can't even tell you how many of my early successes (awards and grants) were attributed to my being the only girl, and 'they had to' give the award to a woman," Pearson said.

"I am reasonably successful by a variety of measures, but I still doubt everything I do. And it's because a lifetime of being told I don't belong and I'm not good enough that got into my head."

Even the most confident girl or woman might begin to doubt herself when confronted with such attitudes from fellow students, teachers and colleagues, Brownell said.

"I had someone take my photo off the departmental board and write 'boy are you ugly' on the back," Pearson recalls.

"I have a fair idea who did these things; and I suspect they thought they were being funny. What I really heard though was 'You Are Not One Of Us'," she wrote.

"It's probably a bunch of little cuts," Brownell said. "One of these events probably isn't what stops someone from going on into science." But they add up.

"Boys who are drawn to STEM fields often are not the humanities-focused, artistic boys who might have a higher social IQ," said Horn. "Often you have a concentration of socially awkward people who do socially inept things."

That can scare off girls, and many boys, as well.

What helps? Having a mentor, said Horn. "Finding people in authority who can support your own sense of confidence and validate your way of learning," she said.

And speaking up helps, too. Cooper recalls a seminar where she made important points, which were echoed, in louder and more confident voices, by men in the audience. They got the credit for her ideas.

"I needed to think more confidently about how I present myself, so that those ideas don't get attributed to another person," Cooper said.

Pearson has started an anti-bullying network in her field, called EntoAllies, to help not just women but also professionals and students from ethnic minorities.

Brownell said teachers and professors need to take these differences into account, also. "We encourage them to be explicit about the importance of hearing from every student," she said.

"Even the quietest student can have the best ideas."

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Men think they're smarter than women do in college experiment

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By any definition, Gwen Pearson is pretty smart. She's got a Ph.D in entomology from North Carolina State University and she is now a science writer and education coordinator at Purdue University. But she remembers how often she was told she wasn't good enough, simply because she was female.

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Kids aren't biased at age 6. And then this happens

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Over five decades, researchers asked children to draw a scientist - and the results reveal a lot about gender stereotyping.

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"Draw a scientist."

It's a simple request that has been put to school kids for more than five decades. And finally, the results are starting to show something very good.

From 1966 to 1977, 5000 primary school students' drawings of scientists were collected. Typically, the scientists were male, often wearing lab coats, with glasses and "abnormally long sideburns", according to the researcher. In fact, out of the 5000 drawings, only 28 showed a female scientist. That's less than one per cent.

But since then, things have changed, in a big way.

Studies from more recent decades show that more than a quarter of kids asked to draw a scientist will draw a woman.

When girls are asked to draw a scientist, 42 per cent will make her female. Even better, with girls below the age of eight, the majority of them will draw a female scientist.

Of course, there's a still a long way to go. It's frustrating to see that as girls get older, they're more likely to associated science with men and draw male scientists. But it's a big shift from five decades ago.

"Given the underrepresentation of women we observe in several science fields, we shouldn't expect equal numbers," says lead researcher David Miller from Northwestern University in the US.

"Encouragingly, though, we can see that children's stereotypes change over time."

Recent US figures show that women make up 49 per cent of biological scientists, 35 per cent of chemists, and 11 per cent of physicists and astronomers.

One thing that's helped is that books and TV shows are far more likely to show female scientists than they once were. A 2008 study of science textbooks for school kids found more than 40 per cent of the scientists in photos were female. Another study of popular TV shows in 2006, such as CSI, showed a similar percentage of female scientists. Then there are movies like Hidden Figures, and Lego minifigures such as women of NASA.

Every time a girl sees a female scientist in her book, on her screen or in her box of Lego, it makes it easier for her to imagine herself as one. It's all about opening up those options.

LISTEN: Kids these days don't want to be fireman or nurses, they just want to be YouTube famous. Post continues after audio.

US ecologist Jane Zelikova thinks these latest research findings are not good enough.

"One hundred per cent of children should be able to draw a woman scientist," she tells the Washington Post.

Zelikova is the co-founder of 500 Women Scientists. The group has started a database called Request A Woman Scientist, with thousands of qualified women prepared to talk to the public or the media.

Sometimes, meeting one scientist is all it takes to change perceptions. UK science journalist Quentin Cooper told New Scientist that in the 1980s, someone came up with the idea of introducing kids to a real scientist after they'd been ask to draw one.

"One of my favourite examples is of the schoolgirl who initially drew a man with frizzy hair and a white coat, but afterwards depicted a smiling young woman holding a test tube. Above it is the word 'me'. I still find myself choking up when I show it."

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Kids were asked to draw a picture of a scientist. The results were, actually, wonderful.

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"Draw a scientist." It's a simple request that has been put to school kids for more than five decades. And finally, the results are starting to show something very good. From 1966 to 1977, 5000 primary school students' drawings of scientists were collected.

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Women make up less than a quarter of the UK workforce in industries involving science, technology, engineering and medicine. BBC News spoke to three people with bright ideas for breaking stereotypes.

The industry leader

As a young girl Avideh Nazeri wanted to be an air hostess to fulfil her dream of seeing the world. However, an inspirational teacher encouraged her to use her love of science to study for a career in medicine.

She says she remembers the words of her mother, who used to say: "As an Iranian girl, you have to work four times more; two times because you're a girl and two times more because you're a foreigner in a new country."

Dr Nazeri is now a director at the global pharmaceutical company NovoNordisk. Born in Iran, she trained to be a hospital doctor at King's College London. She later moved to the pharmaceutical industry, where she runs a department that develops new medicines.

Given the lack of women in science, particularly at higher levels, she says we need to champion and showcase the success of women.

This process starts, she says, with women themselves doing more to expand the talent pool by spreading the message that science is interesting, creative and a good career.

The second part, involving progression, is more complex, she says.

"We can see still in different societies girls do come to science, they even excel at it, but they just don't want to go to the higher level."

NovoNordisk has a network of professional women in science across the business to share both dilemmas and success stories.

She was blessed with many good managers who raised her aspirations. And young people considering a career in science need to hear the success stories, she says.

"We are now living in the most exciting time for science and in my field - drug discovery - it's the most exciting time that anybody could have been part of history."

The professor of engineering

One university that is making inroads into encouraging more women to study engineering is the University of Southern California (USC) in the US.

Yannis Yortsos, Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering, has set out to "change the conversation" about what engineers do, who they are, and what they look like.

This year 44% of engineering students entering the school were women.

"How do you shatter stereotypes about what scientists and engineers do?" he asks. "Fundamental change that has to happen."

A key part of the solution, he says, is changing perceptions of engineering as "a very dry profession, a nerdy profession" to a career that has important societal benefits.

He cites the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the US as an example of how engineering can be a force for societal good, with challenges ranging from reverse-engineering the brain to securing cyberspace.

He believes engaging more women in engineering is essential in a changing world where technologies like AI and quantum computing will become ever more important.

"It's an economic imperative," he says. "To be competitive as a nation you need to engage all of your resources in that competition."

His drive comes from his upbringing on the Greek island of Rhodes. He studied in Athens, then went to the US to study for a PhD in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, before joining USC.

The engineering apprentice

Helen Brindley is starting out on an engineering career as a second-year apprentice at Siemens, which has set a target for 20% female apprentices by 2020. (Currently, only 8% of engineering apprentices in the UK are female.)

The 19-year-old developed an interest in engineering at the age of seven when her older brother went to study aeronautic engineering at university.

"I remember being fascinated by the drawings he used to bring home for the summer and for holidays," she says.

"He used to take me plane spotting at the airport because he was really into aeroplanes. And that ignited an interest and curiosity into how things work and why things work the way they do."

She says her high school in Liverpool was supportive and put her in touch with industry. She was able to do placements at a local engineering firm and then Jaguar Land Rover.

"I actually spent a day alongside an apprentice fixing one of their mechanical robots," she recalls.

At first she thought university was the only option for an engineering career, but her brother, who went into industry from university, convinced her parents that an apprenticeship was a good idea.

"He was telling them about the value that apprentices hold in the company he worked for, the usefulness of them and the fact that they've had all the hands-on experience," she says.

During her college placement as a first-year apprentice, she was one of only four women in a class of 20.

"It's definitely growing in numbers but it's not as much as it should be," she says. "Apprenticeships should definitely be promoted more in school, even if they're not in engineering because there are so many opportunities."

She says she enjoys what she does and wouldn't want to do anything different.

"In respect to engineering I just love getting my hands dirty and just getting involved, but it's not all about that, a lot of engineering jobs are sat behind a desk 90% of the time," she says. "It's all about solving the manufacturing problems that are going to occur in the next 10 or 15 years and creating more lasting solutions."

2018 is the Year of Engineering, a government campaign to address the engineering skills gap and widen the pool of young people who join the profession.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

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Breaking the mould in a male-dominated industry

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Women make up less than a quarter of the UK workforce in industries involving science, technology, engineering and medicine. BBC News spoke to three people with bright ideas for breaking stereotypes. As a young girl Avideh Nazeri wanted to be an air hostess to fulfil her dream of seeing the world.

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The majority of Early Years practitioners we've spoken to have outlined the importance of encouraging all children to play with a range of toys.

Many felt that stereotypes were being learnt outside of settings and that parents, marketing and other children were impacting on children's understanding of gender norms.

"Playing for a child can be compared to their 9-5 job. Through play and using and exploring a range of different toys, children practice and learn the skills they need for growing up. These include: social interaction, empathy, understanding relationships, cause and effect. Toys that are crucial for make-believe and social development may be seen as generally for girls eg kitchen, dress up, dolls etc but boys need this experience too. Similarly toys that can help children focus and those that support physical development may be thought of by some as mainly for boys (eg Lego, blocks and tool kits). It is vital that children have opportunities to use a wider range of toys and adults can sometimes limit the choice available based on their child's gender. Regardless of gender children of both sexes need opportunities to play with toys such as Lego to develop skills including construction, symmetry and colours, and toys such as a tea set to build on their interactions and sharing skills." Imelda, Speech & Language Therapist working in the Early Years.

"We make it our mission to not be sexist! And we have open conversations with parents... helping them to understand the impact on children." @lalulami

"I am passionate about children having a free choice of toys and resources to support their learning in a way that interests them, and this doesn't always match what is 'given' to them. Unless they have a personal interest of curiosity about their toys they won't hold interest long enough for any deep learning or exploring; the wider range available the more likely to hit a personal spark in each child." Kate, Early Years Lead Teacher

"At the Lloyd Park Children's Charity we believe that one of the best ways of promoting learning in the early years is to focus on children's individual interests. This is motivating, interesting, and helps children to expand their thinking." Wendy Fields, Integrated Services Manager, Lloyd Park Children's Charity

"Children learn so much through playing, it is vital to their development. We, as adults, and especially early years practitioners, need to ensure that all children get the opportunity to experience all different types of play, all different types of toys and all different types of situations, to allow them to grow into all different types of people, not pigeonholed into gender stereotypes." Leanne, Early Years Practitioner

You can read more from Leanne in her blogposts about toys and the EYFS and her experience as an Early Years practitioner.

Parents
Practitioners

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Many felt that stereotypes were being learnt outside of settings and that parents, marketing and other children were impacting on children's understanding of gender norms. "Playing for a child can be compared to their 9-5 job. Through play and using and exploring a range of different toys, children practice and learn the skills they need for growing up.

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Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children's interests

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The distribution of women and men across academic disciplines seems to be affected by perceptions of intellectual brilliance. Bian et al. studied young children to assess when those differential perceptions emerge. At age 5, children seemed not to differentiate between boys and girls in expectations of "really, really smart"-childhood's version of adult brilliance.

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How Teachers' Hidden Biases Are Hurting Our Girls

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Two new reports have found teachers are unintentionally steering girls away from math and penalizing young black girls for being assertive.

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Sweet experiment shows children doing same job but girl's awarded less

Young children don't understand why the girl's are getting less for the same job

Financial trade union Finansforbundet launch video to highlight issue

A Norwegian financial trade union have created a simple and incredibly moving video highlighting the gender pay gap issue.

The footage was made in honour of International Women's day and shows children taking part in an experiment illustrating how they react when introduced to the idea of gender inequality.

Put into groups of two, they participate in an exercise together that sees them pick up plastic balls from the floor and place them into containers.

When the task is done the children are told to close their eyes and hold out their hands for their reward but react with confusion when their team member doesn't get the same reward for doing the exact same job.

The children give unscripted responses after they were told that the reason for the uneven share was because of their gender.

'That is so weird', said one little girl as she examines her glass.

Another said: 'We did the same job but I got a smaller amount'.

A little boy also shared his thoughts on the matter: 'She was just as good as me so we should get the same reward, said one of the boys as he shares his larger glass of sweets with his female team mate'.

The gender pay gap is a hot topic of debate that has livened up in the last year following the BBC's gender pay gap scandal.

The film was to highlight the issue that inequality is still rife between men and women especially in high-profile sectors like finance.

Finansforbundet communications manager Anne Greva said that the specific goal for Finansforbundet , as a trade union, is to show financial workers that the issue is a priority.

She said: 'The aim of the film was to show young people on their way into the industry that someone is standing up for them'.

'We can't have these inequalities, so we want to take a clear stand.'

The video, which is captioned 'Why do these kids understand that your boss doesn't?', has received over 600,000 views on social media and over 170,000 views of the English-subtitled version.

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'But... we did the same job?': Children REJECT gender pay gap

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Sweet experiment shows children doing same job but girl's awarded less Young children don't understand why the girl's are getting less for the same job Financial trade union Finansforbundet launch video to highlight issue A Norwegian financial trade union have created a simple and incredibly moving video highlighting the gender pay gap issue.

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The NASUWT is committed to the challenge of securing equal rights for women and girls at home and around the world and believes that governments, education bodies and other organisations have a key role to play. The Union is fully committed to a set of Gender Equality Challenge Principles that supports and champions equality for women and girls.

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Members of Preston Ladies' Football Club (formerly Dick, Kerr's Ladies) pose while carrying out leg exercises during practice, March 1937. (Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Women's football in Britain has deeper roots than might be expected. In 18th-century Inverness, Scotland, single women played an annual match against their married counterparts, though the motives behind the contest were not purely sporting. Some accounts say that the games were watched by a crowd of single men, who hoped to pick out a potential bride based on her footballing ability. It represents the sport's earliest - and by far the strangest - form of scouting.

This curious courtship ritual took place in the century before the modern sport was codified. When women took up football as we know it today, they did so against the backdrop of the suffrage movement and calls for greater gender equality.

Women's first steps in the modern game

By the late 19th century, with the men's game spreading across Britain like wildfire, women also began to take up association football. Early pioneers included Nettie J Honeyball, who founded the British Ladies' Football Club (BLFC) in 1895. Honeyball was an alias: like many of the middle- and upper-class women who played in the late 19th century, she was not overly keen to publicise her involvement with a contact sport played on muddy fields. We know more about Lady Florence Dixie, who was appointed president of the BLFC in 1895. The daughter of the Marquess of Queensberry, Dixie was an ardent believer in equality between the sexes, and worked as a field correspondent for the Morning Post during the First Boer War.

The BLFC arranged games between teams representing the north and the south of England, where money would be raised for charitable concerns. The matches attracted healthy crowds, with thousands of people often on hand to see their encounters. Early newspaper reports were not particularly generous, however, with a Manchester Guardian reporter suggesting "when the novelty has worn off, I do not think women's football will attract the crowds".

While these games were more than mere novelty acts, crowds did drop off as the growing popularity of the men's game came to dominate public interest. In a world where women were not yet allowed to vote, it would take extraordinary circumstances for their efforts on the football pitch to attract widespread attention; those circumstances arose in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War.

Dick, Kerr's Ladies and the munitions teams

The Football League was able to complete its 1914-15 campaign as planned, but suspended competition at the season's end as the nation's men signed up to the war effort.

Women across Britain did the same. Though they undertook a wide range of roles during the conflict, the most enduring image is that of the munitions girl. An estimated 700,000 women took up work as "munitionettes", producing the bulk of the weaponry used by the British army during the war.

Workers in a munitions factory, 1915. From The Manchester Guardian History of the War Vol. III - 1915. (Photo by Print Collector/Getty Images)
Just as men had done before them, women working in factories began to play informal games of football during their lunch breaks. After some initial trepidation, their superiors came to see these games as a means to boost morale and thus increase productivity. Teams soon formed and friendly matches were arranged.

At Dick, Kerr & Co, a Preston-based locomotive and tramcar manufacturer that had converted to munitions production at the outbreak of war, the female workers showed a particular aptitude for the game. Watching from a window above the yard where they played, office worker Alfred Frankland spotted their talent and set about forming a team.

Dick Kerr's ladies' football team (in white) from Preston take on the French Ladies International team at Herne Hill, London. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Led on the pitch by founding player Grace Sibbert and under Frankland's management, they soon drew significant crowds to see their games. Known as Dick, Kerr's Ladies, they beat rival factory Arundel Coulthard 4-0 on Christmas Day 1917, with 10,000 watching at Preston North End's Deepdale stadium.

The team's popularity grew rapidly and they enjoyed sufficient longevity to dispel any suggestions of being a novelty. Over the following years, Dick, Kerr's Ladies played numerous friendly matches to raise money for the National Association of Discharged and Disabled Soldiers and Sailors, winning the majority of their encounters.

Though the war had ended in 1918 the Dick, Kerr's side and other women's teams continued to draw large crowds. By 1920 there were around 150 women's sides in England, with more still in Wales and Scotland. That year Dick, Kerr's Ladies packed 53,000 into Everton's Goodison Park; incredibly, an estimated 14,000 were left outside the ground unable to get in.

They later played what is considered to be the first women's international, against a French side led by the pioneering Alice Milliat, and toured the country with stops in Paris, Roubaix, Le Havre and Rouen.

May 1925: The French women's football team, complete with berets, line up before their match against Dick, Kerr's Ladies at Herne Hill, London. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The remarkable Lily Parr

The team had always fielded gifted players, but by 1920 they had unearthed their one true genius: Lily Parr.

Parr grew up playing football with her brothers in St Helens, north-west England, and began her career with the local ladies' team at the age of 14. When they played against the Dick, Kerr's side, she caught Frankland's eye and was offered a job at the factory - as well as a spot on the team. No money changed hands, but this could be called the first meaningful transfer in the women's game.

Parr was the exceptional player of her time and a remarkable character to boot. Openly gay, close to six-feet tall and with jet-black hair, she was a chain-smoker with a ferocious appetite and a fierce left foot. The National Football Museum credit her with 43 goals during her first season playing for Dick, Kerr's Ladies and around 1,000 in total. At Parr's request, her payment was supplemented by packets of Woodbine cigarettes.

By 1921 the popularity of Dick, Kerr's Ladies was at its peak. Headlined by goal-scoring phenomenon Parr, they regularly attracted crowds in the tens of thousands and contested more than 60 games over the course of the year. Women's football more broadly seemed in robust health. Having grown up alongside the suffrage movement, it seemed appropriate that the sport was booming at a time when around 8.4 million women had recently gained the vote.

But 1921 ended in catastrophe for the women's game. The Football Association (FA) - ostensibly the governing body for the sport as a whole, but really only concerned with men's competitions - had always taken a dim view of female participation. Women's football was tolerated during the war, with the men's game largely shut down and money being raised for servicemen. But in the years that followed the conflict, the FA sought to assert itself. With crowds for Dick, Kerr's Ladies and others remaining healthy, there was a genuine fear that the women's game could affect Football League attendances. The FA felt compelled to act.

A decisive ban

Their solution was decisive and brutal. On 5 December 1921, the FA moved to ban its members from allowing women's football to be played at their grounds, effectively killing the women's game overnight. While they could still play the sport, women were reduced to doing so at a recreational level. The FA also forbade its members from acting as referee or linesman at women's games, creating another major hurdle. To all intents and purposes, the edict outlawed women's football in England.

Explaining their decision, the FA released a statement in which it concluded that football was "quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged". Several doctors agreed that the sport posed a serious physical risk to women. Not for the last time, a group of men were legislating on what a woman was allowed to do with her body.

The FA also suggested that "an excessive proportion of the [gate] receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects". No such obligation to donate profits to charity existed for men's clubs and no proof of financial impropriety was presented, but there was little the women's clubs could do in response.

There was outrage from players, with the captain of Plymouth Ladies remarking that the FA were "a hundred years behind the times" and calling their decision "purely sex prejudice".

If any club could survive the ban it was Dick, Kerr's Ladies, and in 1922 they set sail for a tour of North America. Under instruction from the English FA, Canada's Football Association prevented the team from playing, but they were able to take to the pitch in the United States. Dick, Kerr's Ladies played nine men's teams in the US, where women's football had yet to gain a foothold, and drew crowds of up to 10,000 spectators.

May 1939: Members of the Preston Ladies Football Club listen to their captain as she discusses tactics with the aid of a cloth pitch diagram. Following the FA ban, the football club drew strong crowds, but couldn't emulate what they had achieved before the ban. (Photo by Harry Shepherd/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The Dick, Kerr's side continued to play at non-FA grounds, becoming Preston Ladies FC in 1926 after Frankland fell out with the factory owners; Parr remained with them until her retirement in 1951, aged 46. They drew good crowds given the circumstances, but could not hope to emulate what they had done before the FA's ban. They were among the fortunate few: many clubs did not have the profile to continue and simply ceased to exist.

It was not until England's men won the World Cup in 1966 that serious efforts to revive the women's game began. The Women's Football Association was founded in 1969, but progress remained painfully slow as the FA still refused to lift their ban. It took pressure from the governing body of European football, UEFA, to finally force the FA to end restrictions on women playing at its grounds in 1971. By this time, half a century of progress had been lost.

It is difficult to quantify the effect that the FA's 1921 ban had on women's football, but it is clear that it significantly restricted the sport's development in England and, by association, throughout Britain. Women's football might not have rivalled the men's game, but it would have been considerably closer without an enforced 50-year exodus from FA grounds.

It is worth recalling that when the Dick, Kerr's Ladies side visited the US in 1922 they played men's teams. Women's football simply hadn't caught on across the Atlantic. When it did, and without the restrictions imposed in England, the United States emerged as the benchmark for women's football during the second half of the 20th century. The US team has since won three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals; England have no major honours in the women's game.

In 2002, Lily Parr was inaugurated into the Hall of Fame at the National Football Museum. (Gordon Marino / Alamy Stock Photo)
In 2002 the great Lily Parr was the only woman named among the inaugural inductees to the National Football Museum Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore. Finally, in 2008, the FA issued an apology for the 1921 ban. Without it, perhaps she would not have been the sole female representative among some two-dozen men.
Jim Weeks is a writer and editor with a particular interest in the historical and cultural dimensions of sport. Though currently based in south London, his heart resides in his native west Wales.

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1921: the year when football banned women

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In the early 20th century, women's football grew almost as quickly as the men's game, and reached new heights when the nation's men left for the First World War. However, in 1921 the FA took the decision to ban women's football, essentially outlawing the game in England.

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In the ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes, there is just one woman - tennis star Serena Williams.

She's in position 51 and has an income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo's, the world's top earning sportsman according to Forbes.

For the US women's football team, their win in the 2015 World Cup got them a $2m (£1.5m) reward.

Meanwhile in the male version of the tournament, the winners were handed $35m (£26.5m) just a year earlier.

These are just a few examples of a massive gender pay gap in the world of global sports that has been the standard for decades.

Recent research, however, suggests that income disparity between female and male athletes has narrowed vastly over the past few years.

A total of 83% of sports now reward men and women equal prize money, according to a study of 68 different disciplines published by BBC Sport, last June.

Women's remunerations have been on the rise over the past three years, and 35 out of 44 sports that award prize money are paying equally.

It seems like good news, especially compared to previous years - in 2014 only 70% of sports had closed the gender prize gap, and as recently as 1973 not one sport rewarded both genders equally.

"Women are far more visible in sports today than at any previous point in history," says UN Women in a statement.

Yet the pace of change is so slow that it will take "a long journey" to reach pay parity at the top level, experts say.

"We are making progress, but it is happening at a glacial pace," says Fiona Hathorn, managing director of advocacy group Women on Boards.

"The sport world is very, very male dominated still and the disparities in some sports are shocking."

Cricket, golf and football are among the worst offenders, as well as darts, snooker and squash.

The global sport business - worth $145.3bn (£110bn), according to a PwC estimate- is far from a level playing field for both genders.

"I cannot think of any other industry that has such a wage gap, really. Depending on country context and sport, a man can be billionaire and a woman [in the same discipline] cannot even get a minimum salary," says Beatrice Frey, sport partnership manager at UN Women.

Worst offenders

Differences are striking at every level of the multi-billion industry of professional football.

A recent study by Women on Boards highlighted that not only did the US women's team received prize money that is a fraction of the amount the men's game gets, female US footballers also received four times less than their fellow nationals in the male version of the tournament, even though the men lost in their first knockout match.

The gap becomes even bigger if the total payout is considered. The prize money in both tournaments is determined by a single body, Fifa, that handed out $15m (£11m) for the women's World Cup and $576m (£437m) for the men's - an amount almost 40 times larger.

And while former England captain Wayne Rooney took home a massive $400,000 a week (£300,000), the wages of his female counterpart, Steph Houghton, were meagre in comparison - around $1,600 (£1,200) a week, according to Ladbrokes Sports.

Similar pay gaps can be observed across other professional sports. In golf, men in the US Open compete for a chance to take home almost $1.5m (£1.1m), twice as much the prize money for the female champion.

Take the case of Lydia Ko, from New Zealand, who in 2015 became the youngest player of either gender ever to be ranked number one in professional golf.

That year, she pocketed less money than the golfer in position 25th in the male ranking of the PGA Tour, estimates by Newsweek reveal.

Meanwhile, in cricket a victorious male team at the World Cup can make almost seven times more than the women's side.

And the pay gap is replicated also in the world's most prestigious male and female basketball leagues - the NBA and WNBA.

"The highest-paid player in the WNBA (the Women's National Basketball Association) makes roughly one-fifth that of the lowest-paid player," in the super-rich NBA, calculates Newsweek.

'A boys' club'

To achieve equality, experts say, it is not enough that the governing bodies of each sport establish gender-blind prizes - sponsorship and endorsements, as well as contractual conditions, have become some of the main forces perpetuating the imbalance.

In tennis, for instance, the Grand Slams - the four most important events in the global calendar- have already introduced equal pay for men and women from 2007, yet the top male players consistently earn more yearly due to better sponsorship deals.

That is why Serena Williams is alone in the Forbes' list of the 100 richest.

"The top 100 athletes are a boys' club more than ever", wrote Forbes' sports reporter Kurt Badenhausen when the list was released, in June.

"Mainstay Maria Sharapova failed to make the grade after reductions in her endorsement contracts."

Those extras make up 29% of the total pie for the top 100 athletes, according to Forbes.

Ronaldo earned $58m (£44m) in salary and bonuses, but topped that up with some $35m (£26.5m) from sponsors, endorsements and appearance fees.

For golfer Tigers Woods and track star Usain Bolt, sponsorship account for over 90% of their earnings.

"Sexism is widespread from grassroots level to elite level in the sport industry," says Frey.

"At grassroots level it may mean that girls are not able to participate in a sport that is not traditionally considered to be for girls, creating bias at an early age which then follows them through youth and on to elite sport practice."

Then, she says, it translates into uneven opportunities in sponsorships and personal marketing, to the extent that most female athletes around the world are "unable to secure a livelihood from their athletic practice".

And the trend persists after retirement.

"For retired sportswomen it is particularly problematic. Not only have they not ever earned very much money, they've probably got no pension, no house, no security," says Hathorn.

"And that's an issue for girls' aspirations: why would they want to become athletes if that's what the future holds?"

Understanding the gap

The roots of this discrepancy could perhaps be traced back to the origins of modern sport itself.

Different societies viewed physical training as an activity intrinsically linked to the "muscular male", defined against an idea of softer and more physically vulnerable femininity.

The father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, described women's sport as an "unaesthetic sight" for the human eye and considered their participation would make the competition "impractical, uninteresting" and "improper" (although a few female athletes were allowed to take part after 1900).

Women were only competing in races up to 1,500 metres, because they were deemed physically unprepared to cope with the demands of longer events.

In terms of representation, it took until the 2012 London Games to have at least one female athlete in every country's delegation.

So the sport pay gap may well be linked to a wider imbalance - that of female participation in sport, perpetually lower than that of males.

"The participation is a problem that goes back to the school years: that's when it starts," says Ruth Holdaway, chief executive officer at advocacy group Women in Sport.

It has to do with their awareness of the body, with how they are perceived and the gender stereotypes they encounter, says Holdaway.

UN Women statistics show that a striking 49% of girls drop out of sport by the time they reach puberty, and this has ramifications in professional and elite training later in life, research shows.

Turn on the TV

There is a general acceptance that the breadth of the gender pay gap is also a by-product of the increasingly commercial nature of sport, where media rights play a big part.

According to a study by the University of Minnesota's Tucker Centre for Research on Girls and Women in Sport in 2014, only up to 4% of sports media coverage went to female sports, despite the fact that 40% of all participants were female.

And within the small amount of airtime received, the coverage of women's athletics is also more likely to be sexualised, portraying athletes off court and out of uniform, with an emphasis "on their physical attractiveness rather than their athletic competence", says Tucker Centre's director Mary Jo Kane.

Hence, many would argue that women earn less because the market dictates so, as female sports are "less popular" and "not as good to watch", and as a result they generate less media revenue.

What is 100 Women?

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we're challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport.

With your help, they'll be coming up with real-life solutions and we want you to get involved with your ideas. Find us on Facebook , Instagram and Twitter and use #100Women

It is a self-perpetuating, "chicken and egg" cycle, equity advocators argue - audiences will not get excited about women's sport as it gets minimal exposure in the media, and the media would justify the lack of coverage by saying that female athletics do not generate enough audience engagement.

"That is not a fair argument, you have to invest first at many levels, including marketing and promotion, to get the general public more involved, and then the return of the investment will be better," says Frey.

"Had our culture been used to seeing women rather than men playing rugby or football for generations, we would find the idea of men playing sports rather novel," adds Hathorn.

Sport gaps are in fact a manifestation of wider gender inequality, says the expert, that also translates into other more subtle forms of sexism.

For example, women footballers in international tournaments were required until recently to play on artificial turf, which is often regarded as of lesser quality than the natural grass on which male teams play.

And then there's the language: "the World Cup is assumed to be for men, while women require the qualifying 'Women's' to describe their event", says a UN document on women in sport.

Good record

Despite the "glacial" pace, change is nonetheless advancing and indicates that the gap is getting narrower.

Tennis is usually celebrated as a shining example of this, after all four Grand Slam tournaments established equal prize money to the men and the women in 2007.

In fact, the process started in 1973 at the US Open, thanks to world champion Billie Jean King and other female players, who founded the Women's Tennis Association to fight for gender equality.

Athletics have also become a case study for good practices, particularly over the past five years, with the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Championships and annual Diamond series offering gender-blind rewards.

Other sports that have reportedly been paying equivalent prizes include skating, shooting, volleyball, diving, sailing, windsurfing and taekwondo, as well as some cycling events.

The appetite for televised female sports is also growing, evidence suggests, with social media playing a part to increase the global popularity of athletes regardless of gender.

And sportswomen themselves have repeatedly stood up against sexism.

Last year, for instance, five of the biggest names in the very popular US women's football league filed a complaint against their employer, the US Soccer Federation, for gender pay discrimination, while the hockey team attempted a boycott in search for fair wages.

But a lot more work needs to be done, advocacy groups say.

To begin with, more women are needed in decision-making positions.

A Women on Boards report found a widespread problem across disciplines, with fewer than 30% of board seats held by women in many governing bodies.

Women are just 18% of all board members across the 28 International Sports Federations assessed. In the 129 National Olympic Committees, the figure is even lower and has actually fallen - women are 16.6% of the board, down from 17.6% in 2014.

The root of the problem lies with how women engage with sport at an early age, experts say, and any attempt to tackle gender disparity in earnings and participation should seek improvements at school level.

Gender-neutral and non-segregated sport practice in school may have a positive impact on the way girls embrace physical activity in the long term and go on to consider a career as professional athletes.

"I would promote that boys and girls play the same sports from primary school, because at that stage there are no major physical differences between them. If within the education system children start to play sports together, it would make a real difference in society," says Hathorn.

"If we are closing the gap in the long term, we should really be working with young girls to help them change their behaviour, understand that sport is fun and it's something they are entitled to just as much as the boys," says Ruth Holdaway.

A change in the model of commercial endorsements and sponsorships is also an important step in the path to pay parity.

There is an untapped market for the promotion of women's events and experts believe it is actually not just fair in principle, but also a good investment.

"It is not a matter of charity, it is a matter of smart business decisions," says Frey.

"Corporations are now very interested in gender equality, if I were a company sponsoring for example the Premier League I would be asking myself 'is this the right image for my company?', 'is being too bloke-y dangerous for my brand?'", says Hathorn.

"'We have 50% of our clients who are women but we spend 99% of our money on sponsoring men's sports, is that right?' It clearly isn't".

Ultimately, experts agree, a cultural shift is needed - in which women are not seen as "second class athletes" as much as they should not be considered second class citizens in society.

"Even with Billie Jean King pushing for equality more than 40 years ago, we still do not have real equality in sport," says Hathorn.

"We are moving, but we are still not there."

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100 Women: Is the gender pay gap in sport really closing?

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In the ranking of the 100 highest-paid athletes, there is just one woman - tennis star Serena Williams. She's in position 51 and has an income that is $66m (£50m) lower than Cristiano Ronaldo's, the world's top earning sportsman according to Forbes.

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Good sex education is vital in schools to counter the way that technology is shaping boys' expectations of women, a senior Ofsted official has said.

Addressing a discussion about the role of sex education in schools, Roary Pownall, Ofsted national lead for personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, said: "The availability of technology is shaping boys' attitudes to women, and boys' expectations of what women can and should do."

Mr Pownall went on to discuss many of the ways in which social media places additional pressure on modern pupils.

"I often ask people: 'If you had to choose, would you rather grow up today or when you grew up?'" he said. "I've yet to meet someone who'd say: 'I'd rather grow up today.'"

Mr Pownall was addressing a seminar held by the Westminster Education Forum, discussing the government's plans to introduce statutory relationships and sex education from September 2019.

'Taught not to rape'

His comments about boys' attitudes to women were backed up by a speaker from the University of York, who quoted a 14-year-old boy saying: "It's all in nature, isn't it? Like, throughout the animal kingdom, it's always males who fight over the female. I think it's just, you know - it's inside us."

By contrast, a 13-year-old girl told researchers: "It is the guys essentially raping the girls, so they should be taught not to do it. Because...you should, like, kill it from where it starts."

To complement the introduction of statutory sex education, the government will be updating its guidance on delivery of the subject. The current version of the guidance was issued in 2000, and does not tackle 21st-century issues such as pornography, sexting and online grooming.

'Healthy, positive relationships'

The government has issued a call for evidence, asking for teachers, campaigners, parents and pupils to say what they would like to see included in this new guidance.

Addressing the Westminster Education Forum seminar, Ian Bauckham, the government's adviser on improving relationships and sex education, said that 7,300 submissions had been received so far.

The largest group of contributors - making up 44 per cent of total submissions - was parents. And 1,500 submissions received were from pupils.

Mr Bauckham said: "What young people seem to be saying across the country is, actually, that what they want to know about are the characteristics and qualities of healthy, positive relationships above all."

Earlier today, school standards minister Nick Gibb visited a school in South London to discuss why it was important for pupils and teachers to submit their views on sex education.

He said: "We have committed to update relationships and sex education to meet the needs of young people today. Our call for evidence closes next week, and we want as many people as possible to have their say on what the new curriculum should include."
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and Instagram, and like Tes on Facebook

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Ofsted: Technology is shaping boys' attitudes to women

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Good sex education is vital in schools to counter the way that technology is shaping boys' expectations of women, a senior Ofsted official has said. Addressing a discussion about the role of sex education in schools, Roary Pownall, Ofsted national lead for personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, said: "The availability of technology is shaping boys' attitudes to women, and boys' expectations of what women can and should do."

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When it comes to discussing self-confidence in children and teens, the focus is typically on girls. After all, they're battling expectations that they should be impossibly thin and unfailingly nice. But experts say boys' self-confidence is also at risk because of gender stereotypes, which leave them, too, feeling inadequate when they believe they don't meet expectations, and gives them few outlets to express their feelings. "There's this myth that boys don't have as many feelings or they're not as emotional," says Rachel Busman, PsyD, a senior clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. "These are misperceptions. We need to be more nurturing of our boys, as well."

But how do the adults in boys' lives do that? We examine some of the challenges facing boys and experts' advice on how to address them. Our panel includes Dr. Busman; Michael Thompson, PhD, coauthor of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys; and Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD, a clinical psychologist and school consultant.

School is harder for young boys

Boys are more impulsive and have a more difficult time sitting still and paying attention than girls do, says Dr. Steiner-Adair. Meanwhile, many schools aren't designed for short breaks throughout the day that would help them - that would help all kids, in fact. "So when boys can't sit and wait their turn and the class is too big, what happens is they become disruptive; they shout out the answer," she says. "And because they are disrupting, the fact that they got the answer right and just couldn't hold on to it and wait their turn, doesn't count."

What does count is that they interrupted, and when they're criticized repeatedly about it, it diminishes their self-esteem. Not only that, "it also diminishes their love of academics and learning," Dr. Steiner-Adair says.

Dr. Thompson agrees, pointing out that many school tasks can shame a boy, and that shame often turns to anger. "And then everybody says, 'We've got such an angry little boy,' as if there's nothing to set off his anger," he says. Then, if a boy can't read in kindergarten, "He says, 'I hate this. I hate reading.' What he means is, 'I am ashamed that I can't read better."

How to help

Give praise. If a child is struggling in school, teachers should go out of their way to look for opportunities to compliment him when he does do something right, even if it's something small. Not only does a steady influx of praise make kids feel happier and more confident at school, but psychologists say that "catching kids being good" can help positively shape their behavior, too.

Challenge boys and allow them to develop skills. Dr. Thompson used to teach at Outward Bound, which instills survival skills. "You throw boys as a group into a very challenging situation, and let them figure it out and find their own leadership," he says. "They'll come back thinking, 'We did it. We did it.' You'll see a ton of confidence." But it doesn't have to get as extreme as that. While boys may be behind girls, they can and should be expected to learn skills, right down to making their own sandwich. "It involves creating a situation in which they can develop a skill and as a result will have self-esteem," Dr. Thompson says.

Constant competition

Boys are forced into a strict hierarchy in which they compare themselves mercilessly to other boys. "Boys are always asking themselves 'Who's the tallest? Who's the fastest? Who's the biggest? Who's the king of the hill?'" Dr. Steiner-Adair says. "And within that come some real struggles. What if you're not? What if you're not athletic? I think that is a huge vulnerability for boys."

How to help

Talk about different, not better. It's important to emphasize the child's unique qualities, Dr. Busman says. Boys need to know that we all have different abilities and grow and learn at different rates.

Make your kid media literate. Busman suggests watching TV with your child or discussing what they're doing on the internet. "Maybe you see something on TV that's portraying boys in stereotypic way," she says. "Then you can say, 'Wow, that's interesting, not all boys are like that. Some boys are really great at sports and some aren't.' And if you see a particularly good role model, that's also a nice opportunity to call out his attributes: 'That guy's so great. He's super smart, well-respected by the people around him, and he's kind."

More varied role models. Thompson notes that showcasing alternatives to the athletic culture with male role models - say, artists, teachers, chefs, musicians - shows boys there are different, legitimate ways they can follow their talents and still be valued. "If you want to give boys confidence, then you give them the feeling that the skills they have are going to win them the respect of other men and boys."

Boys are expected to "buck up"

Even today, societal norms often dictate that boys aren't supposed to cry. "So what boys are taught is when you are sad, when you are upset, do not get sad but get mad," Dr. Steiner-Adair says. "We're making some progress, but by and large the situation is still such that by the age of 8, a boy has to learn how not to cry."

She notes that we ask this of boys just at the age where they're developing the capacity for "really deeper, more meaningful emotions and empathy to disconnect from their own sadness and vulnerability." Later, these boys-turned-young men have to learn how to communicate their thoughts and emotions "without feeling that it's somehow a violation of their masculinity."

How to help

Let them cry. You can let boys know that they shouldn't be ashamed of tears - you're not embarrassed if they cry - and that expressing feelings doesn't mean they're weak.

Be open about feelings. Parents can also validate their boys' sadness or anger by encouraging them to talk about their emotions. Bedtime can be a great chance to check in with younger kids, and with teens you can often get them to open up in the car. "It doesn't even have to be a deep conversation, just taking stock," Dr. Busman says. "It's about opening dialogue."Parents should also support their boys' emotions, telling them that they're okay and that everyone has them. She adds that books can be helpful in that department. For example, she has one for her son called Tough Guys Have Feelings, Too, with characters like a losing wrestler and a homesick astronaut feeling sad. Books like this show boys that sad or negative feelings are normal and nothing to be embarrassed of.

Modeling. "I would hope that we would also model a more healthy view of being a boy who can express emotions," Dr. Busman says. "I think the father and the other men in boys' lives can model being expressive about emotions and showing boys how they handle disappointments."

Teasing or bullying

Bullying isn't healthy for either the bully or the victim. "When you have a gender code that says there is only a spot for one at the very, very top, then boys define themselves and make themselves better by pushing somebody else down," Dr. Steiner-Adair says. "So we see a lot of subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, lateral aggression and we see a lot of teasing." Any sign of weakness is fair game, including not being good at sports or even being too smart.

How to help

Encourage friendships and activities with girls. Playing with girls and interacting with them in school and in co-ed activities can cut down on competitiveness with other boys and give boys a chance to develop interests that are not traditionally masculine with less fear of ridicule.

Emphasize empathy. From a young age, parents can encourage boys to be aware of how others think and feel, and take those feelings into account. Busman says that a lot of elementary schools have some sort of social emotional curriculum, which teach conflict resolution, and she notes that it's good for parents to know about them so that they can follow through.

Don't allow trash talk in your home. Let boys know that insulting other kids by calling them weak or wimps or losers (or worse) is not acceptable from them, or their friends, and make sure the adults in your family don't do it, either.

Teach kids to advocate for themselves. While adults may need to intervene when bullying happens, Dr. Busman says kids should be taught to try to handle these situations for themselves. Parents can talk to their sons about bullying in advance and role-play strategies for handling it. For instance, it can help to come with a few lines a child can say if someone targets him to deflect what's going on. You can also strategize together to make a list of a few adults or friends he could go to for support.

Read More:
12 Tips to Raise Confident Kids
How to Help Kids Learn to Fail
13 Ways to Boost Your Daughter's Self-Esteem

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How to Build Boys' Self-Confidence|Child Mind Institute

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When it comes to discussing self-confidence in children and teens, the focus is typically on girls. After all, they're battling expectations that they should be impossibly thin and unfailingly nice. But experts say boys' self-confidence is also at risk because of gender stereotypes, which leave them, too, feeling inadequate when they believe they don't meet expectations, and gives them few outlets to express their feelings.

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Research by the Observer newspaper shows how picture books present children a worryingly lopsided view of the world: with males outnumbering females 2:1 among significant speaking characters, and male villains in 89% of books with 'baddies'. Jess Day takes a look at the results.

The Observer's research looked at 2017's 100 top selling picture books: non-human characters (animals and monsters) were nearly twice as likely to be male, while you were twenty times more likely to come across an all-male book, than an all-female book.

Not a surprise - bias across the board

These results are troubling, but not surprising. It's consistent with what we see in films and children's TV programming, with research showing that just 31% of speaking characters in films are female, and similar findings from previous research into gender bias in children's literature.

The subject is certainly under the spotlight with publishers, and there's a noticeable rash of books specifically raising the profile of girls and women, such as Goodnight stories for rebel girls or Great women who changed the world, making the most of the suffragette centenary as a marketing hook. But overall, progress seems glacially slow.

Many of the books on the bestseller list are not new titles - parents understandably return to the books they remember enjoying, from the Gruffalo to The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But worryingly, books published more recently didn't come out noticeably better in the research.

Teaching inequality

Kids learn about the world through play, and through reading and media. This kind of skew prepares kids for a real world where males get most of the speaking parts. We're all coached to see a situation where males are dominating as normal, and this is likely one of the reasons change is slow. Even to an adult who's aware of the issues, a very male-dominated situation may seem fairly equal.

An example: the zoo in 35-year-old best-seller Dear Zoo doesn't feature a single female animal. Speaking personally, what's even odder is that I'd read it to my small daughter about 200 times before I noticed. We've all been surrounded by this bias all our lives, and it's hard sometimes even to see it.

And of course, once you look a little closer you'll notice something else: when it comes to human representations in children's books, white boys and men overwhelmingly get to drive the narrative and have most of the dialogue. Women and girls, and black and minority ethnic characters, are relegated to sidekick roles, recede into the background in non-speaking parts, or are absent altogether.

A cumulative effect

As with the findings of Let Toys Be Toys toy catalogues and TV ads research, the problem is not one ad/book. The problem is with how the message builds into a wider picture. An image of a girl playing with a doll - great. A catalogue with 16 pages of girls and dolls and no boys - more of a problem.

A book with a male protagonist and villain, fine. A whole bookshelf where males do most of the doing and the talking... maybe time to consider whether this is really what we want to tell our children about who matters and how the world works?

Boys do read about girls

The assumption that boys won't read about girls, or watch programming about girls is very embedded in the media and publishing industries, but the evidence is weak, and overdue for challenging, as author John Dougherty entertainingly outlines in this blogpost Why do we believe these things?

For starters, it just isn't true - boys can of course take an interest in stories about girls, as our ' Boys read girls' gallery, and contributions to this Guardian Witness project showed. Authors such as Rob Biddulph tell how boys and girls have loved their girl-led stories.

Sadly though, all too often, boys are made to feel that they're not allowed to show an interest in girls' stories. And the research done by media organisations or publishers doesn't necessarily dig into this, often researching with children in single-sex groups, or asking them their opinions in front of peers.

An anecdote told at the Children's Media Conference a couple of years ago by PBS exec Linda Simensky is telling: in a focus group she asked a set of eight boys how many of them watched Power Puff Girls, a cartoon show about girl superheroes. Only one boy raised his hand. Later the question was asked again, but this time they were asked to look down at their laps, knowing the other boys could not see their response - and seven out of the eight said that they did watch the programme.

But most importantly, if boys are unsure of whether they're allowed to identify with a female character, this is concerning, and something we need to work out how to overcome, not just passively accept. It's not OK for the adult world to reinforce the idea that it's somehow demeaning for a boy to take an interest in what a girl might do, think or feel.

The main target audience for picture books is too young to have any strong opinions about whether the main characters are male or female, so a gender bias in books and media at this age is likely a key factor in setting this up.

Villains and monsters

Story book baddies were overwhelmingly male in the Observer's research - this matches the findings of a recent piece of research by bloggers Hannah and Leo Garcia, who looked at the animals featured on children's clothing.

The animals on boys' clothing were predominently fierce, dangerous animals - lions, crocodiles, dinosaurs, dragons, while the girls' clothing featured rabbits, horses, unicorns and mice. Bluntly, the boys are set up as predators, the girls as prey, boys as wild creatures, girls as domesticated.

What's the harm?

The harm to girls is obvious - they learn that they're not really meant to take up space in the world, that their voices don't matter as much. They're coached to expect little. The publishers may say, 'Boys won't read about girls, girls don't mind,' but girls do notice, and they mind very much, if my daughter is anything to go by. However, they learn very quickly that it's just tough. I minded a lot that there were no female characters in my childhood favourite, The Hobbit. Should I have written to the publisher to tell them just how much it bothered me?

But what on earth are boys meant to take from this? That fierce and wild are the only way to be, that villainy is somehow linked to maleness? And that they are entitled to expect a world where men get to talk more than women do?

Research by Australian academic Dale Spender found that male students consistently overestimated how much the women spoke in class, considering 30% female speech as over half. And efforts to even out male and female contributions provoked protests from the men - equal representation felt unfair to them. It's not hard to see how we end up with certain Star Wars fans yelping in protest at yet another film with a female lead.

If you've been raised to expect the whole cake, seeing someone else get a slice might feel shockingly unfair.

Parents want something different

The change in the best seller lists may be slow, but it's certainly the case that parents are starting to demand better when it comes to gender balance. A recent survey of Australian parents found that 92% of parents of 0-3 year olds felt that it was important that boys and girls should be treated the same, and that 79% wanted to take action to challenge traditional gender stereotypes. Another international survey of parents found that a majority thought that children should be raised in as gender neutral a way as possible to guard against stereotypes.

My own son is a gentle, thoughtful character, who as a little one refused to wear clothes with dinosaurs or sharks on - too scary. He went through a phase of worrying about whether it was OK for him to read stories about girls. He just needed a little reassurance, and left that phase behind.

But what if I'd just accepted it? Or told him that it was normal to reject half the planet as beneath his notice? I'd like my son to be ready for a world where a woman is his equal, and a woman may well be his boss, without him feeling like something's gone very awry.

What can we do?
As parents and book-buyers:

Do a 'ten book test' on your bookcase - pick ten books at random and take a look at the gender balance. How many male and female characters? Who gets to speak? Act? What are male and female characters shown doing?

If the balance isn't as good as you'd like, look for, share and give as gifts books with better gender balance: our friends @GenderDiary have crowdsourced a fantastic kids book list

Don't just seek out girl-led stories as 'great for girls'. Boys need to read about girls too.

Kids quite often notice what adults don't. Use questions as a chance to discuss balance and inclusion - children have a strong sense of what's fair!

Teachers and educators

Take a critical look at your bookshelves, and think about whether you can improve the range and balance on offer. Specialist suppliers like Letterbox Library can help.

Books can be a great starting point for group discussions about stereotypes - check out the suggestions in the NUT's It's Child's Play resource.

Publishers

Think critically about the received wisdom that boys won't read about girls - what research is this based on? Is it self-perpetuating? Is it more about adult book-buyers than children's real interests? Is it something that ought to be reinforced, or undermined?

Commission, promote and market more balanced books. Support authors who are trying to provide more balance, and nudge those who perhaps haven't considered the issues. Seriously - would that story be so different if the wolf were female? Might it even be better?

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Constructing bias - the wonky world of picture books

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The Observer's research looked at 2017's 100 top selling picture books: non-human characters (animals and monsters) were nearly twice as likely to be male, while you were twenty times more likely to come across an all-male book, than an all-female book. These results are troubling, but not surprising.

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Boys' Writing' is a priority in school improvement plans across the country; the gap is there, it's indisputable and there isn't a single LA in the country without a gender gap.

It came up in conversation at a conference I attended this week and I listened, waiting for the conversation to follow its inevitable course. 'Boys just do not like it as much, they are just not as inclined as girls and it will always be a priority' - or words to that effect. And for some there is the 'blue' approach to fixing it - boys writing groups with an emphasis on engaging boys with 'boy stuff'.

From what I've read (and I'm no medical expert) most recent evidence suggests that there is very little difference between the brains of boys and girls. There is a growing wealth of evidence to suggest it is not the sex of a child that impacts on their literary achievements but the socially constructed gender stereotypes that we heap upon them.

The flawed concept that 'boys', as a homogeneous group, need different treatment to achieve as well as 'girls' leads to interventions such as boys' writing groups. By the time boys arrive in nursery or primary schools it's probable that their likes and dislikes have already been influenced by gender stereotypes. The boys who arrive at school having had less opportunity or encouragement to write than girls or have not spent as much time on activities that develop fine motor skills will need extra support. If we address this with a boys' writing group that panders to the 'masculine' interests they've already been steered towards then surely we only serve to deepen the divide. Putting writing materials in the construction area is all well and good but it won't fix the problem.

Perhaps we need to focus more effort into challenging gender stereotypes from the moment children enter our schools and actively teach children that they can and should enjoy a much wider choice of activities, free from gender constraints.

I'm particularly fired up about this because my 15 year old son was told by a teacher last week that he had 'girls handwriting'. He laughed when he told me as he knew I'd hit the roof. His handwriting is beautiful and much more pleasing to read than his sister's!

Personally I don't believe we should be tracking 'boys' - we need to look at which boys are struggling but not all of the boys. We should expect all our children to write well and if they can't then support them to practise the skills they need regardless of gender or anything else. Quality first teaching that engages everyone and extra support for all those who need it.

I'm not going to go into detail on how to teach writing but if you haven't read this I've found it to be a brilliant book in terms of ideas for slowing writing down and practising the skills in a variety of ways.

Let's concentrate our efforts on challenging the stereotypes that perpetuate the belief that boys are less capable or less inclined to write than girls.

Get men and women into school who love writing. We've been lucky enough to have several male authors in this year who divulged the joys that writing has brought them. To hear men talking about why they write and what inspires them to write created a real buzz about writing across school.

Make sure that the children, parents, governors and teachers are aware that scientific evidence suggests boys and girls have the same capabilities as writers and that you have the same expectations of them - so should they. Don't focus on them being different because they are boys or girls but that they are different because they are all fabulous human beings.

Show the children examples of beautiful handwriting from men and if you don't know any men who can write beautifully then find examples of beautiful handwriting and lie!

e.g. 'Here's a newspaper report by one of our Year 5 boys. There are a few spelling errors but does it grab the reader? Give the reader what they need? Is it lovely to read? Why aren't newspapers handwritten?' You don't need to make a big thing of the fact a boy has written it but lots of subliminal messages that boys write well will go a long way.

If children are exposed to beautiful and perhaps sensitive writing from men then hopefully by challenging the stereotype they will begin to realise the power of writing and that they too are potential writers, authors and journalists or that they can just enjoy the process of writing.

Our Year 2 teachers have been trialling 'Free write Friday' and allowing the children to write about whatever they like for their own pleasure. They love it. Walk into that classroom and ask a previously reluctant group of writers if they love writing and they all beam. Not because of any special treatment but because their teachers ooze a love of writing and have huge expectations of all of them to see the joy in it too. Lots of high quality picture books and texts, that appeal to all the children, have also been integral to the literacy lessons. A real focus on being clear about the audience and the purpose has helped too. Whether the audience is the writer themselves and the purpose is pure entertainment or informing a parent it's important for the children to be clear about who and what they are writing for.

The message that writing is a girl thing is everywhere. If you want to buy a child a diary there are lots of lovely pink lockable diaries to choose from but a very limited range for boys despite the enormous popularity of Diary of Wimpy Kid. You'll struggle to find a boys top with a book or a diary on it as boys clothing is often more likely to point boys in the direction of outdoors or physical activity whereas girls clothes indicate their role is to appreciate beauty and engage in the arts.

This is why it will 'always be a problem'. So let's get these conversations going in the staffroom and the classroom. @grahamandre is doing some stirling work on this #nomoreboysandgirls and @moffat_andrew has some really useful resources to use in school to ensure there are 'No more outsiders'.

If boys' writing is one of your school priorities, perhaps you need to consider placing more effort on challenging gender stereotypes as well as offering support to all your writers that need it.

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Boys' Writing' is a priority in school improvement plans across the country; the gap is there, it's indisputable and there isn't a single LA in the country without a gender gap. It came up in conversation at a conference I attended this week and I listened, waiting for the conversation to follow its inevitable course.

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Girls start to see themselves as less innately talented than boys do when they are only six years old, a group of US researchers has said.

They said the "disheartening" results suggested the problem could snowball to affect future careers.

The study on 400 children, in the journal Science, initially found both five-year-old boys and girls thought their own gender was "brilliant".

But then only one year later, gender differences had emerged.
Girl Power: How can books empower young girls?
The team from Princeton University, New York University and the University of Illinois said it appeared stereotypes were starting to show.

Suspected influences include exposure to media, teachers, parents and other children.

The study put sets of five, six and seven-year-olds through different experiments.

In one, the children were read a story about someone who is "really, really smart" but it is not clear who the story is about.

They then had to guess the protagonist from four pictures - two of men and two of women.

At age five, boys pick men and girls pick women around 75% of the time. But fast-forward a year to age six and boys are still picking men while girls are now slightly more likely to pick men too.

In another scenario, groups of children played a new board game.

But for some it was branded as "for children who are really, really smart" and for others it was described as "for children who try really, really hard".

Six and seven-year old girls were as likely as boys to enjoy the game for those who try, but much less likely to say they enjoy the game for smart children.

Prof Andrei Cimpian, one of the researchers, told the BBC News website: "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."

His research has previously looked at academic careers associated with needing innate brilliance in order to succeed.

It argued that the higher people rated the need for genius - such as in physics or philosophy - the lower the number of women involved.

Prof Cimpian added: "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."

Fellow researcher Dr Lin Bian advised parents and teachers to emphasise the importance of hard work.

She told the BBC: "[Studies suggest] that everyone does better when hard work is believed as the key to success.

"In our studies, girls might be particularly impacted by the messages focusing on 'hard work' - they became equally interested in playing the game as boys.

"Thus conveying the importance of hard work to success could protect and even promote young girls' interests."

The UK's Fawcett Society campaigns on the gender pay gap and argues early differences - blue and superheroes versus pink and princesses - is part of the problem.

Sam Smethers, the organisation's chief executive, said: "This is a massive issue and it is holding us all, but particularly girls, back.

" Our research found that young women experienced gender stereotypes at school and from an early age."

Follow James on Twitter.

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Girls start to see themselves as less innately talented than boys do when they are only six years old, a group of US researchers has said. They said the "disheartening" results suggested the problem could snowball to affect future careers.

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Step into the classroom to help the next generation discover exciting and diverse career opportunities

sk a seven-year-old "what do you want to do when you grow up?" and you'll get an answer built on very limited experience. But unless children are exposed to a wide range of options how can they know what opportunities exist that might interest them?

The lack of awareness of primary school children of the full spectrum of careers is highlighted in a new study, Drawing the Future. Carried out for the organisation Education and Employers, the conclusion is that more of us need to go into primary schools to share our experiences of the world of work.

When I was a child, the boys would typically answer that they wanted to be train drivers, and the girls would say nursing. Those were the expected answers and I'm sure I (briefly) complied. Such answers also highlight another problem: even by the age of seven gender stereotyping has kicked in. Few girls, even now, would probably admit to wanting to be astronauts, or boys to be nurses.

Judging by this survey, it seems to be a global phenomenon. Children don't know enough about the world of work to have realistic ideas of what jobs exist, but they have absorbed enough to believe there is "men's work" and "women's work". The study asked children aged seven to 11 years old to draw and describe what they wanted to be when they grew up. Their free text descriptions were coded into one of 69 possible occupations.

The results are illuminating if slightly depressing. By the age of seven it was clear that the jobs chosen reflected standard gendered ideas. In the UK, in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), four times as many boys wanted to become engineers as did girls. Twice as many boys as girls saw science as their chosen future, while girls were four times more likely than boys to want to be vets, and more than twice as likely to want to be doctors.

Perhaps those of us in the sector should be encouraged by the finding that STEM careers in general were viewed favourably, with vet being the third most popular choice, and scientist seventh. Nevertheless, nothing in STEM was as well regarded as sport, with boys and girls most likely aspiring to be a sportsman or woman - the most popular option by more than ten percentage points.

Regardless of the likelihood of nearly a quarter of our primary school children going on to be sports personalities, these results suggest that genuine diversity across the STEM sector is not likely to be fixed anytime soon. The current situatuion in engineering, for instance, is neatly summed up in the Institution of Engineering and Technology's phrase " 9% is not enough " - the percentage of women in the engineering workforce. If this is to be changed, active steps must be taken.

As last summer's BBC programme No more Boys and Girls: can our Kids go Gender Free? demonstrated, thinking hard about the teacher-pupil interaction can quite rapidly make a difference. Let the girls get their hands on puzzles to encourage their spatial awareness and, unsurprisingly, their ability mentally to rotate shapes increases.

But if the teacher chooses to give them dolls or water-play instead, they will remain less competent at such puzzles than boys who get to do the practice. And, if the girls consequently end up less able to visualise things in three dimensions, by the time they make genuine career choices they may well feel engineering is beyond them - a view encouraged by a teacher who spots their weakness in this direction.

The main thrust of this most recent report, though, isn't to have a go at teachers - or parents, nor even the media - for imposing stereotypes. The report's constructive solution is to enable children to meet people from very different careers. So if, for instance, a female engineer - or a male vet - walks into the classroom and talks about their own work, it can have a very positive effect, changing awareness and expectations.

Education and Employers operates both the Inspiring the Future and Inspiring Women initiatives that bring people from all walks of life and at every level of seniority into the classroom, to share their experiences and concrete facts. Such activities can only have a beneficial impact on children's knowledge and awareness. As a bonus, it may help familiarise teachers with a broader range of career opportunities. If we are to ensure all children get better informed about careers and opportunities from an early age, more such initiatives are needed.

You can help by signing up to get involved. Whatever your level of educational attainment, Education and Employers would love to hear from you. The only commitment is a single school visit a year: not a big ask for most of us, but it could make a the world of difference to a future engineer ... or astronaut.
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Diversity starts in schools - children need to see a wider range of careers

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Step into the classroom to help the next generation discover exciting and diverse career opportunities sk a seven-year-old "what do you want to do when you grow up?" and you'll get an answer built on very limited experience. But unless children are exposed to a wide range of options how can they know what opportunities exist that might interest them?

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We are the only UK organisation running multi-week equality and leadership development programmes for girls in schools. Download our brochure WhyBecause despite 20 years of academic success our society does not afford girls and women the status opportunities, representation or power that they deserve. Read More WhatInnovative equality and leadership development programmes for girls ...

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t five preschools in Stockholm you won't find the usual designated areas for dressing up, building blocks, toy cars and dolls houses. All the toys are purposefully jumbled up together as part of a gender-neutral policy.

The concept began in 1998 when an amendment to Sweden's Education Act stipulated that all schools must work against gender stereotyping. As a result, Lotta Rajalin, the head of five state preschools for children aged one to six, introduced gender-neutral policies in her preschools. In 2011 she opened Egalia (equality in Latin), a school that specialises in gender equal teaching - an approach that does not assume that different genders have different characteristics, wants and needs. "It's all about democracy," says Rajalin. "We want to give all children the same opportunities the same rights."

"We don't say, 'Come on boys, let's go and play football,' because there might be girls who want to play football," says Frida Wikström, the schools' coordinator. "We say 'friends' instead because it puts yourself on an equal level."

The children can use whatever language they like but if one of them says something like: "You can't play that, it's a boys' game," the teachers use open questions to discuss why the child feels like that. They use "hen" as a gender neutral alternative to he or she because they feel that it discourages stereotyping. "For example, if a firefighter is coming in and we don't know if they are a man or woman we would call them 'hen'," says Wikström. "We assume it's a 'he' because we get that image in our head." They also use "hen" in songs where they've noticed that more assertive or aggressive animals tend to be called "he" and sweeter ones "she". "A bear is nearly always a he. Why is that?" asks Wikström.

When Rajalin started out, she filmed teachers to see if how they treated boys and girls varied. "We discovered that there is a big difference," says Wikström. "For example, we would take a lot more time to comfort girls. Boys were just told, 'Off you go, you're fine.'"

The next step was developing guidelines. They include not assuming that different genders play in a certain way. For example, the building blocks, cars, dolls and dressing-up play areas are mixed together, opening up more interaction between the boys and girls.

"It's had a really positive effect. Boys and girls play a lot more together. It's very rare that you hear a boy say, 'I only want to play with boys'. It's important to us to really work on the idea that we're friends and a group, not separated by gender."

It's not all been smooth sailing, however most of the challenges have come from adults. First, changing deeply-ingrained attitudes to gender from staff is not easy, says Wikström. "We assume we treat everyone the same, but we don't," she says. "It's very difficult to change behaviour." Asking staff to analyse their behaviour has also been difficult. "To look at oneself in a critical way is not always that pleasant, but that is the starting point."

The schools have a policy of recruiting staff members with a diverse range of backgrounds, from 20-year-old Swedish women just out of university to a 50-year-old man from Iran (they have a much higher proportion, about 40%, of male teachers compared with other schools). The staff members have a lot of discussion and training, and they all agree on the guidelines before they start.

Although some parents chose the schools specifically for their gender-neutral policies, accepting the approach can be challenging for others. The staff show parents a circle separated into two with gender stereotypes in each half. "We explain, 'Do you want your child to have half a life or a whole life?'" says Wikström. "Everyone wants the most for their children. Even fairly traditional parents get it when they see that it's not about taking anything away from the child."

Spaces where children can be whatever they want to be are important, says Pippa Hodges, a child counsellor at schools in north London. But there could also be risks with a gender-neutral environment. "There might be a danger of children identifying strongly with a particular gender and not being supported in that; the risk of confusion and shame is high at this developmental stage," she explains.

Genevieve Passamonte, a nursery school teacher in north London, also has her reservations: "Every good nursery has equal opportunities and anti-bias policies. It's absolutely fine if a little boy wants to wear a dress, but... it's important for the children to learn language correctly."

Neuroscientist and director of educational space Science Gallery, Daniel Glaser, says studies support the idea that language is vital to defining behaviour. "Very subtle changes in language can have dramatic effects," he says. "Psycholinguistics, or the use of different words, is very influential on teachers' behaviour."

It will also be vital for changing children's perceptions. "If you think that the way that children perceive gender is important, then making an early intervention to equalise between the genders is a good idea. It's definitely too late by the time they get older," he adds.

Ideas of how each gender should behave are also becoming less rigid with each new generation. Hodges says children and young people are far more accepting of the fluidity of gender and sexuality than older generations.

Rajalin describes her school's approach as preparing children for this new world. "We must work against our traditional way of thinking," she says. "The world that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore. The children are going to be adults in 15 or 20 years' time. They are going to live in another sort of society. We have to prepare them for that."

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'It's all about democracy': inside gender neutral schools in Sweden

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t five preschools in Stockholm you won't find the usual designated areas for dressing up, building blocks, toy cars and dolls houses. All the toys are purposefully jumbled up together as part of a gender-neutral policy. The concept began in 1998 when an amendment to Sweden's Education Act stipulated that all schools must work against gender stereotyping.

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Research by the Observer newspaper shows how picture books present children a worryingly lopsided view of the world: with males outnumbering females 2:1 among significant speaking characters, and male villains in 89% of books with 'baddies'. Jess Day takes a look at the results.

The Observer's research looked at 2017's 100 top selling picture books: non-human characters (animals and monsters) were nearly twice as likely to be male, while you were twenty times more likely to come across an all-male book, than an all-female book.

Not a surprise - bias across the board

These results are troubling, but not surprising. It's consistent with what we see in films and children's TV programming, with research showing that just 31% of speaking characters in films are female, and similar findings from previous research into gender bias in children's literature.

The subject is certainly under the spotlight with publishers, and there's a noticeable rash of books specifically raising the profile of girls and women, such as Goodnight stories for rebel girls or Great women who changed the world, making the most of the suffragette centenary as a marketing hook. But overall, progress seems glacially slow.

Many of the books on the bestseller list are not new titles - parents understandably return to the books they remember enjoying, from the Gruffalo to The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But worryingly, books published more recently didn't come out noticeably better in the research.

Teaching inequality

Kids learn about the world through play, and through reading and media. This kind of skew prepares kids for a real world where males get most of the speaking parts. We're all coached to see a situation where males are dominating as normal, and this is likely one of the reasons change is slow. Even to an adult who's aware of the issues, a very male-dominated situation may seem fairly equal.

An example: the zoo in 35-year-old best-seller Dear Zoo doesn't feature a single female animal. Speaking personally, what's even odder is that I'd read it to my small daughter about 200 times before I noticed. We've all been surrounded by this bias all our lives, and it's hard sometimes even to see it.

And of course, once you look a little closer you'll notice something else: when it comes to human representations in children's books, white boys and men overwhelmingly get to drive the narrative and have most of the dialogue. Women and girls, and black and minority ethnic characters, are relegated to sidekick roles, recede into the background in non-speaking parts, or are absent altogether.

A cumulative effect

As with the findings of Let Toys Be Toys toy catalogues and TV ads research, the problem is not one ad/book. The problem is with how the message builds into a wider picture. An image of a girl playing with a doll - great. A catalogue with 16 pages of girls and dolls and no boys - more of a problem.

A book with a male protagonist and villain, fine. A whole bookshelf where males do most of the doing and the talking... maybe time to consider whether this is really what we want to tell our children about who matters and how the world works?

Boys do read about girls

The assumption that boys won't read about girls, or watch programming about girls is very embedded in the media and publishing industries, but the evidence is weak, and overdue for challenging, as author John Dougherty entertainingly outlines in this blogpost Why do we believe these things?

For starters, it just isn't true - boys can of course take an interest in stories about girls, as our ' Boys read girls' gallery, and contributions to this Guardian Witness project showed. Authors such as Rob Biddulph tell how boys and girls have loved their girl-led stories.

Sadly though, all too often, boys are made to feel that they're not allowed to show an interest in girls' stories. And the research done by media organisations or publishers doesn't necessarily dig into this, often researching with children in single-sex groups, or asking them their opinions in front of peers.

An anecdote told at the Children's Media Conference a couple of years ago by PBS exec Linda Simensky is telling: in a focus group she asked a set of eight boys how many of them watched Power Puff Girls, a cartoon show about girl superheroes. Only one boy raised his hand. Later the question was asked again, but this time they were asked to look down at their laps, knowing the other boys could not see their response - and seven out of the eight said that they did watch the programme.

But most importantly, if boys are unsure of whether they're allowed to identify with a female character, this is concerning, and something we need to work out how to overcome, not just passively accept. It's not OK for the adult world to reinforce the idea that it's somehow demeaning for a boy to take an interest in what a girl might do, think or feel.

The main target audience for picture books is too young to have any strong opinions about whether the main characters are male or female, so a gender bias in books and media at this age is likely a key factor in setting this up.

Villains and monsters

Story book baddies were overwhelmingly male in the Observer's research - this matches the findings of a recent piece of research by bloggers Hannah and Leo Garcia, who looked at the animals featured on children's clothing.

The animals on boys' clothing were predominently fierce, dangerous animals - lions, crocodiles, dinosaurs, dragons, while the girls' clothing featured rabbits, horses, unicorns and mice. Bluntly, the boys are set up as predators, the girls as prey, boys as wild creatures, girls as domesticated.

What's the harm?

The harm to girls is obvious - they learn that they're not really meant to take up space in the world, that their voices don't matter as much. They're coached to expect little. The publishers may say, 'Boys won't read about girls, girls don't mind,' but girls do notice, and they mind very much, if my daughter is anything to go by. However, they learn very quickly that it's just tough. I minded a lot that there were no female characters in my childhood favourite, The Hobbit. Should I have written to the publisher to tell them just how much it bothered me?

But what on earth are boys meant to take from this? That fierce and wild are the only way to be, that villainy is somehow linked to maleness? And that they are entitled to expect a world where men get to talk more than women do?

Research by Australian academic Dale Spender found that male students consistently overestimated how much the women spoke in class, considering 30% female speech as over half. And efforts to even out male and female contributions provoked protests from the men - equal representation felt unfair to them. It's not hard to see how we end up with certain Star Wars fans yelping in protest at yet another film with a female lead.

If you've been raised to expect the whole cake, seeing someone else get a slice might feel shockingly unfair.

Parents want something different

The change in the best seller lists may be slow, but it's certainly the case that parents are starting to demand better when it comes to gender balance. A recent survey of Australian parents found that 92% of parents of 0-3 year olds felt that it was important that boys and girls should be treated the same, and that 79% wanted to take action to challenge traditional gender stereotypes. Another international survey of parents found that a majority thought that children should be raised in as gender neutral a way as possible to guard against stereotypes.

My own son is a gentle, thoughtful character, who as a little one refused to wear clothes with dinosaurs or sharks on - too scary. He went through a phase of worrying about whether it was OK for him to read stories about girls. He just needed a little reassurance, and left that phase behind.

But what if I'd just accepted it? Or told him that it was normal to reject half the planet as beneath his notice? I'd like my son to be ready for a world where a woman is his equal, and a woman may well be his boss, without him feeling like something's gone very awry.

What can we do?
As parents and book-buyers:

Do a 'ten book test' on your bookcase - pick ten books at random and take a look at the gender balance. How many male and female characters? Who gets to speak? Act? What are male and female characters shown doing?

If the balance isn't as good as you'd like, look for, share and give as gifts books with better gender balance: our friends @GenderDiary have crowdsourced a fantastic kids book list

Don't just seek out girl-led stories as 'great for girls'. Boys need to read about girls too.

Kids quite often notice what adults don't. Use questions as a chance to discuss balance and inclusion - children have a strong sense of what's fair!

Teachers and educators

Take a critical look at your bookshelves, and think about whether you can improve the range and balance on offer. Specialist suppliers like Letterbox Library can help.

Books can be a great starting point for group discussions about stereotypes - check out the suggestions in the NUT's It's Child's Play resource.

Publishers

Think critically about the received wisdom that boys won't read about girls - what research is this based on? Is it self-perpetuating? Is it more about adult book-buyers than children's real interests? Is it something that ought to be reinforced, or undermined?

Commission, promote and market more balanced books. Support authors who are trying to provide more balance, and nudge those who perhaps haven't considered the issues. Seriously - would that story be so different if the wolf were female? Might it even be better?

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Constructing bias - the wonky world of picture books

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The Observer's research looked at 2017's 100 top selling picture books: non-human characters (animals and monsters) were nearly twice as likely to be male, while you were twenty times more likely to come across an all-male book, than an all-female book. These results are troubling, but not surprising.

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A thieving duck in Peppa Pig is one of the few female villains in the 100 most popular picture books. An Observer study shows that, from hares to bears, females are mostly sidekicks

Male characters are twice as likely to take leading roles in children's picture books and are given far more speaking parts than females, according to Observer research that shines a spotlight on the casual sexism apparently inherent in young children's reading material.

In-depth analysis of the 100 most popular children's picture books of 2017, carried out by this paper with market research company Nielsen, reveals the majority are dominated by male characters, often in stereotypically masculine roles, while female characters are missing from a fifth of the books ranked.

The 2017 bestseller list includes perennial favourites The Gruffalo, Guess How Much I Love You and Dear Zoo, in which all the animals are referred to by a male pronoun, as if by default. This approach to gender is equally present in more recently published bestsellers such as You Can't Take An Elephant on the Bus, The Lion Inside, Supertato, The Day The Crayons Came Home, The Lost Words, The Koala Who Could and There's A Monster in Your Book - none of which contain any female characters.

The lead characters were 50% more likely to be male than female, and male villains were eight times more likely to appear compared to female villains. Only one book, Peppa and her Golden Boots, portrayed a sole female villain, acting alone: a duck who steals Peppa Pig's boots and takes them to the moon. Over the course of each book, the characters who got an opportunity to speak were 50% more likely to be male than female, and male characters outnumbered female characters in almost half the stories that made it into the top 100.

Twice as many of the characters who were given a speaking part and a main role in the story were male - and, on average, there were three male characters present in each story for every two females featured. Sometimes this ratio can be far higher; Mr Men in London, for example, has 13 male characters and just two female. It was published in 2015.

"The research doesn't surprise me," said children's laureate Lauren Child, author and illustrator of the Charlie and Lola picture books. "We see it in film and TV as well. But it gives out a message about how society sees you. If boys get the starring roles in books - both as the good and bad protagonists - and girls are the sidekicks, it confirms that's how the world is and how it should be. It's very hard to feel equal then."

The research shows only 40% of characters given a gender were human - the rest were, for example, animals, birds, crayons, vegetables and skeletons. Among these creatures, the gender bias was even more marked. Whenever an author revealed a creature's sex, it was 73% more likely to be male than female.

Furthermore, males were more typically embodied as powerful, wild and potentially dangerous beasts such as dragons, bears and tigers, while females tended to anthropomorphise smaller and more vulnerable creatures such as birds, cats and insects.

Deirdre McDermott, picture books publisher at Walker Books, said many of their new titles do feature strong female characters but unfortunately did not make the bestseller list. Out of the top 100, only half the titles were published in the past five years. "Parents go back to books they know and trust from their own childhood. They should seek out recommendations for new titles. If anybody wanted to put a weak girl in one of our books, I'd whack them over the head."

New titles which break with tradition can certainly sell well: Julia Donaldson's The Detective Dog, in which a brave female dog helps out a male sidekick and a male teacher, was the No 1 bestseller last year. Yet the Observer analysis shows that even modern bestsellers are not exempt from stereotyping. Authors and illustrators have continued to exclude all female characters from nearly 20% of the bestsellers published over the past five years.

Nick Sharratt, bestselling children's author and illustrator of books such as Shark In The Park and Don't Put Your Finger In the Jelly, Nelly said he thought that fact was "incredibly surprising to hear in this day and age". "I do think about the ratio of male to female characters - I see it as part of the job. You never forget the picture books you enjoyed as a child. They stay with you for the rest of your life.

"Authors and illustrators have fantastic opportunities to break down stereotypes. We need to tackle these issues and at the moment it seems not enough is being done."

The Observer research chimes with the results of a survey of 1,444 clothing items in 12 high street chains published by gender equality campaigners Hannah and Leo Garcia last week. It found that the animals on boys' clothing are more likely to be fierce predators such as lions and sharks, while girls' clothing usually features small, harmless, domesticated animals - effectively, their prey.

Jess Day, who campaigns to end gender stereotyping with the Let Toys Be Toys movement, found the research troubling. "If a wolf or a T. rex were a 'she' the story would be just as good. We hear from a lot of parents who change the pronouns in books as they read aloud.

"It is preparing children to see male dominance as normal, so that when women do less than half of the talking, that feels like too much to some people. And wWith so few female roles, there's also not enough space for the female characters to be multi-dimensional. I think the lack of female villains reflects a wider cultural discomfort with women who are not well-behaved and good."

Female adults undertaking caring roles were common in the stories, and there were twice as many female as male teachers. Mothers were also present almost twice as often as fathers. By contrast, fathers barely featured at all unless accompanied by a co-parent, appearing alone in just four books. "This reflects a skewed version of the world which is bad for boys as well as girls. The lack of fathers, for instance, steers them away from an interest in nurturing and caring behaviour," said Day.
Topics

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Must monsters always be male? Huge gender bias revealed in children's books

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A thieving duck in Peppa Pig is one of the few female villains in the 100 most popular picture books. An Observer study shows that, from hares to bears, females are mostly sidekicks Male characters are twice as likely to take leading roles in children's picture books and are given far more speaking parts than females, according to Observer research that shines a spotlight on the casual sexism apparently inherent in young children's reading material.

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Even at times when discrimination was much more common, catalogs contained more neutral appeals than advertisements today.

Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

That is not to say that toys of the past weren't deeply infused with gender stereotypes. Toys for girls from the 1920s to the 1960s focused heavily on domesticity and nurturing. For example, a 1925 Sears ad for a toy broom-and-mop set proclaimed: "Mothers! Here is a real practical toy for little girls. Every little girl likes to play house, to sweep, and to do mother's work for her":

Such toys were clearly designed to prepare young girls to a life of homemaking, and domestic tasks were portrayed as innately enjoyable for women. Ads like this were still common, though less prevalent, into the 1960s-a budding housewife would have felt right at home with the toys to "delight the little homemaker" in the 1965 Sears Wishbook:

While girls' toys focused on domesticity, toys for boys from the '20s through the '60s emphasized preparation for working in the industrial economy. For example, a 1925 Sears ad for an Erector Set stated, "Every boy likes to tinker around and try to build things. With an Erector Set he can satisfy this inclination and gain mental development without apparent effort. ... He will learn the fundamentals of engineering":

However, gender-coded toy advertisements like these declined markedly in the early 1970s. By then, there were many more women in the labor force and, after the Baby Boom, marriage and fertility rates had dropped. In the wake of those demographic shifts and at the height of feminism's second-wave, playing upon gender stereotypes to sell toys had become a risky strategy. In the Sears catalog ads from 1975, less than 2 percent of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls. More importantly, there were many ads in the '70s that actively challenged gender stereotypes-boys were shown playing with domestic toys and girls were shown building and enacting stereotypically masculine roles such as doctor, carpenter, and scientist:

Although gender inequality in the adult world continued to diminish between the 1970s and 1990s, the de-gendering trend in toys was short-lived. In 1984, the deregulation of children's television programming suddenly freed toy companies to create program-length advertisements for their products, and gender became an increasingly important differentiator of these shows and the toys advertised alongside them. During the 1980s, gender-neutral advertising receded, and by 1995, gendered toys made up roughly half of the Sears catalog's offerings-the same proportion as during the interwar years.

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Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were 50 Years Ago

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Even at times when discrimination was much more common, catalogs contained more neutral appeals than advertisements today. That is not to say that toys of the past weren't deeply infused with gender stereotypes. Toys for girls from the 1920s to the 1960s focused heavily on domesticity and nurturing.

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Stereotyped ideas about what's suitable for boys or girls can limit children's opportunities to learn and develop. Here are ten things teachers can do to help create an environment which encourages children to think of themselves as individuals, rather than editing their choices through a gender filter.

See our schools pages for lesson plans for different age groups, more information on why stereotypes matter in school and links to other useful resources.

1/ Create a safe space

School should be a safe environment to learn and explore - you can help children by affirming unconventional choices, reassuring them that it's OK to be different and encouraging a culture of acceptance.

"Boys [in Reception] sometimes want to wear the Princess dresses. This bothers one or two of the staff and sometimes parents object. One boy wanted to wear the Mummy Bear outfit, an apron, and mum questioned this. We encourage staff to support the children's choices - our role is to accept what comes out of the role play." Teacher

2/ Challenge stereotypes when you hear them

'Why can't a boy wear pink? My Dad does.' 'Why can't a girl like football? My wife plays for our local women's team.' Children are often very keen to 'police' one another and make sure their peers follow the gender 'rules' they've learned. You can set the example by questioning them, and offering counter-examples from your own experience.

@LetToysBeToys My daughter got teased at school for wearing "boys' clothes." Her favorite shirt is blue and has a car. Now won't wear it. 🙁

- I. D. (@DanicaIgrutin) September 8, 2014

3/ Talk about stereotypes

The Let Toys Be Toys lesson plan activities for Reception/ Year 1, lower KS2, upper KS2 and KS3/lower secondary are designed to help pupils start to question stereotypes about boys and girls, and we've pulled together links to more resources and ideas.

4/ Provide a range of role models

Give children real-life examples that counter stereotypes, both in your own activities, and in topic work and external visitors.

"My daughter pointed out to me recently that all the science groups in her Y2 class are named after men. And politicians bemoan the lack of women in science without seeing any connection!" Caren

"When I heard the new topic was 'superheroes' I was concerned this would be full of aggressive beefcakes 'to get the boys interested', but it was great. The staff made sure to include female heroes, and they looked at of different sorts of 'heroism' - eg a nurse, plumber." Jane, Cardiff

"I tell the kids that I'm the person who cooks in our house. I didn't think of this as breaking down stereotypes until now." Teacher

"Where possible we also try to get visitors who challenge stereotypes so we always ask if we can have a female firefighter or police officer or a male nurse... We're also trying to get some of our male staff to help with things like knitting club (they're willing but need to learn the basics!) and more women playing football." Teacher

5/ Make the most of books

Take a look at the stories and factual books in your classroom. Are there examples of working women, caring fathers, active girls and creative boys? Are all the animals in the stories male?

Carefully chosen books can be very helpful in challenging stereotypes - the It's Child's Play report from the NUT's Breaking the Mould project has suggestions of books with additional notes and ideas for discussion. Inclusive book retailer Letterbox Library has a great selection, including themed book packs for schools and nurseries.

"We picked William's Doll on purpose partly because the father is in charge at home [William's mother is not mentioned in the story - only his Grandmother]. But we also wanted the boys to see that they can make their own choices - and to try and stop the other boys telling each other what they should be doing." Teacher

Labelling a bookshelf 'Boys' Books' might seem like a good way to encourage reluctant boy readers, but this can be counterproductive, reminding boys of the stereotype that they are supposedly less interested in reading, and encouraging the idea that only certain interests are allowed.

6/ Look at who uses which spaces and equipment

Do certain areas get dominated by certain groups, or by one gender or the other? Are there changes or movements you could make to encourage children to feel equally free to use the home corner, the reading corner, the bikes, the Lego...

"The colour of things is very significant - often children would play with anything unless it was pink - in which case the boys wouldn't touch it and, sometimes, the girls would be quite proprietorial about it. Perhaps we should just get rid of anything pink..." Teacher

7/ Make sure there aren't 'girls' jobs and 'boys' jobs

Who gets asked to do what? Is it always 'three strong boys' who move the chairs? Or 'two trustworthy girls' who take a message? It's easy to fall into a pattern - mix it up and try asking someone different.

"EVERY assembly I've attended has had all major parts performed by girls even when they don't need to be. Drives me CRAZY." Jenny, London

"I asked some Year 4 girls to put out the chairs. They said 'great - we never get asked to do that' - so I think they do notice the different ways in which genders are treated." Teacher

8/ Pick other ways to divide up the children

Are girls' and boys' coat pegs labels or lunchbag shelves coloured pink or blue? Do boys and girls line up separately? Using gender to divide the children up can be quick and convenient, but it gives them the constant message that being a boy or a girl is the most important thing about them and reinforces stereotypes. Getting the children to line up a different way - by age, birthday, alphabetically - can be a subtle but effective way of encouraging them to think about their identity in different ways.

Encouraging children to work in mixed pairs or groups can have benefits too.

"Working in mixed pairs and groups challenges them - they have to be more adventurous about talking and learning from each other. They stay on task more and talk in full sentences. It keeps them on their toes because it is different from the playground where they tend to play in single sex groups. Some children object but we usually find they are the ones it's most effective with!" Teacher

9/ Use inclusive language

Small changes, like saying 'children' instead of 'girls and boys' or 'parents and carers' or 'families' rather than 'Mums and Dads' can help to affirm the things we have in common rather than our differences.

10/ Think about rewards and sanctions

Are boys and girls rewarded differently, or given different sanctions for similar behaviour? Do rewards imply that you think boys and girls can't like the same things?

"My daughter was quite upset when ALL the boys were punished for a rowdy game that SOME of the boys had been playing. She could see it was unfair to just assume they all behave the same way. What are they supposed to learn from that?" Jane, Cardiff

"My son's teacher gave out end of term books, which was really nice of her, but they were wrapped in pink/blue and labelled 'Boy' or 'Girl'. The boys got a dinosaur or pirate book and the girls got princesses and glitter. On the other hand my daughter's teacher also gave out books; my daughter (7) got a science one as she loves science and the teacher had chosen them books based on their own interests, which was just brilliant. Shows how it can be done!" Jennifer, Essex

"I thought they would complain but they didn't [when I handed out pink and blue reward stickers randomly]. I realised that I was the one who, unconsciously, had been affirming stereotypes about pink and blue." Teacher

This material draws on the NUT's . Quotes are drawn from the project report and supporters of the Breaking the Mould project resources. These contain more ideas and examples of how to challenge gender stereotypes in the classroom, particularly the report Boys' Things and Girls' Things Let Toys Be Toys campaign.

See our schools pages for a lesson plan, more information on why stereotypes matter in school and links to other useful resources.

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Ten ways to challenge gender stereotypes in the classroom

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See our schools pages for lesson plans for different age groups, more information on why stereotypes matter in school and links to other useful resources. School should be a safe environment to learn and explore - you can help children by affirming unconventional choices, reassuring them that it's OK to be different and encouraging a culture of acceptance.

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Young people in developing countries often have more aspirational career ambitions than boys in the UK, an international survey suggests.

While boys in the UK aimed to be footballers or YouTube stars, their counterparts in Uganda and Zambia wanted to be doctors or teachers.

The findings are from a survey of 20,000 children by the Education and Employers careers charity.

The results are to be presented to business leaders at Davos next week.

The study asked primary school children in 20 countries to draw pictures of the jobs they wanted to have when they grew up.

Gender roles

The careers charity said the results showed how much gender stereotypes were established from an early age.

In the UK, girls were much less likely to want to become engineers or scientists.

But jobs such as nurse, dancer and hairdresser were among their top 10 ambitions.

And boys were more likely to want to have jobs such as airline pilot and mechanic.

Girls' top choices were more focused on academic success - with jobs such as teacher, vet and doctor among the most popular.

By contrast, boys seemed to be much more influenced by popular culture, with jobs such as sportsman, working in social media or the police.

Social mobility

In terms of social mobility, the charity said the survey showed young people needed to be introduced to different types of careers at an early age.

Girls in more deprived schools were more likely to want to be shop workers and beauty therapists, while better-off boys wanted to be managers and lawyers.

Outside of the UK, the drawings often showed high aspirations despite hardship.

In Uganda and the Philippines, girls most want to be teachers.

In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Colombia and Indonesia they want to be doctors.

In China, the most popular career ambition for boys is a scientist.

But across both the UK and international findings, there was a huge mismatch between the reality of the jobs market and the expectations of young people.

'Break the mould'

And the charity said this misalignment remained a problem for older pupils, with a lack of advice available about what skills were really going to be in demand.

"Careers counselling in secondary schools comes far too late," said the OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher.

"It is clear from the drawings that children arrive in school with strong assumptions based on their own day-to-day experiences," said Mr Schleicher.

"The findings have implications for all of us seeking to improve social mobility," said David Cruickshank, global chairman of Deloitte and chair of trustees for Education and Employers.

"Children's career aspirations are most influenced by who they know," he said.

Anne Lyons, president of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it showed how hard it was for young people to "break the mould" of their families' expectations.

Nick Chambers, chief executive of Education and Employers, said it showed the need for children in primary school to hear about the "vast range of career options open to them and are not ruling things out at an early age".

Top 10 most popular jobs for girls in the UK

Top 10 most popular jobs for boys in the UK

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Children draw their future job ambitions

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Young people in developing countries often have more aspirational career ambitions than boys in the UK, an international survey suggests. While boys in the UK aimed to be footballers or YouTube stars, their counterparts in Uganda and Zambia wanted to be doctors or teachers.

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Despite a few positive signs, our new research shows that the promotional images used in toy catalogues represent children's play along highly stereotyped lines, with only a handful of boys shown with dolls, and boys four times as likely to be seen playing with cars or other vehicles.

These tired stereotypes don't reflect the breadth of real children's play, and limit children's freedom to choose their interests for themselves.

Children take messages about what's 'for girls' and what's 'for boys' very literally, so when they see a catalogue spread featuring only girls or only boys, it reinforces the idea that certain activities or interests are not for them. It's hardly surprising then if children grow up thinking that certain interests or jobs are more for men or for women. These limiting stereotypes, learned early, are hard to shake off. and do real harm to children's learning and development.

Marketing and advertising - not to mention the toy industry itself - are supposed to be creative industries; we'd like to see a lot more creativity and diversity in the way toys are promoted to children.

What we found

Volunteers reviewed Christmas toy catalogues from Argos, Toys R Us, Tesco, Entertainer, Early Learning Centre and Smyths toys to produce our research. While there were some individual examples of inclusive images, particularly in Tesco and Toys R Us own brand/exclusive products, Early Learning Centre's catalogue was the only one where children were shown in a balanced way. Download full report.

The bad news

Most of the imagery provided by manufacturers to promote their toys seems to stick to a pretty limited script.

Most catalogues had areas that were 'no go zones' for one gender or the other, eg whole spreads of vehicles or Nerf blasters featuring only boys, or whole spreads of baby dolls, collectibles or art/craft materials featuring only girls The Smyths catalogue had 16 solid pages of dolls without a single boy to be seen.

Boys were 4 times as likely to be shown playing with cars

97% of children shown with guns and war toys were boys

Girls were nearly twice as likely to be shown with kitchens or other 'domestic' play.

Girls were nearly 7 times as likely to be shown in caring/nurturing play

Girls were 12 times as likely to be shown playing with baby dolls (rising to 50x excluding the ELC catalogue)

Boys were almost twice as likely to be shown with construction toys

Girls were twice as likely to be shown with art and craft toys

Signs of change

It might be slow, but we're seeing progress compared with 2016's catalogues.

In 2016 just 11% of children shown with toy vehicles were girls, mostly shown with pink versions of toys. This year it was 19%, with far fewer 'also comes in pink' versions.

Last year only one catalogue featured a boy with a baby doll (ELC). This year three catalogues out of five did (though Tesco and Toys R Us included only one each).

Tesco, Toys R Us and Early Learning Centre all included more inclusive photography for their own brand toys - retailers seem to be leading the way on this.

Why do catalogues matter?

While paper catalogues might seem a bit old hat, toy retailers still distribute them in their thousands in the run up to Christmas.

We know that children take very seriously the cues and nudges from marketing about what's suitable for a boy or a girl, and may be put off asking for a toy that interests them if catalogue imagery make them feel they're not 'meant' to want it.

"I know that's the girls' section because of all the pictures of girls... Mr Frosty is for boys, because there are boys in the advert." Ted, age 4

"The catalogues make it look like caring toys are not for boys." Charlie, 7

Why does the toy industry need to change tack?

A wide range of play is important for children's learning and development, and parents are increasingly recognising the importance of allowing children to follow their interests without fear of choosing the 'wrong' thing.

A recent survey of Australian parents found that 92% of parents of 0-3 year olds felt that it was important that boys and girls should be treated the same, and that 79% wanted to take action to challenge traditional gender stereotypes. Another international survey of parents found that a majority thought that children should be raised in as gender-neutral a way as possible to guard against stereotypes.

Toy retailers and manufacturers who rely on outdated ideas about what boys and girls are meant to like risk falling out of step with what parents want for their children.

Consumer attitudes are changing, and the toy industry is starting to recognise that developing and marketing toys according to rigid gender categories is not the future.

President of Hasbro, John Frascotti, said in Fortune magazine this year: "We want to be inclusive in our approach across gender and ethnicity. Instead of thinking, that's a boy brand or a girl brand, we see them as dual-gender... Star Wars, My Little Pony, Transformers - all of them have fans that don't fall into the legacy gender splits that occurred when those brands were launched. Our approach is we build brands for consumers."

Research suggests that girls in particular are increasingly fed up with a patronising reliance on stereotypes in marketing, which can actively put them off.

According to GirlGuiding Girls' Attitudes Survey, 2017:

When asked what makes people think gender stereotypes are true, 74% of young women aged 11-21 said toys and clothes made 'for girls' and 'for boys'

85% of young women aged 11-21 think the advertising industry should stop using gender stereotypes to sell toys

New guidance on stereotypes in advertising

The Advertising Standards Authority's 2017 report Depictions, perceptions and harm signalled the intention to develop much tougher standards on gender stereotypes in advertising to children and adults.

The ASA report did not shy away from the effects of ads: "advertising is one of many factors that contribute to unequal gender outcomes, alongside the role played by some parents, schools and employers, and aspects of particular cultures, communities and demographics. ...

The ASA is due to report on progress towards new guidelines before the end of 2017.

What we would like to see

We'd like to see more innovation and creativity from a creative industry!

More mixed-gender groups - this is a great way to signal to children and adult buyers that this toy is fun for boys and girls.

More examples of children playing outside of narrow stereotypes.

Avoid 'all-boy' or 'all-girl' spreads (eg Nerf, dolls, art/craft, vehicles) Retailers need to be mindful of the overall effect of a catalogue spread or section. If only girls or only boys are shown in a particular section, children will draw their own conclusions.

Download the full report PDF - Who's in the picture? Gender stereotypes and toy catalogues

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Most toy catalogues still play to stereotypes - new research

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These tired stereotypes don't reflect the breadth of real children's play, and limit children's freedom to choose their interests for themselves. Children take messages about what's 'for girls' and what's 'for boys' very literally, so when they see a catalogue spread featuring only girls or only boys, it reinforces the idea that certain activities or interests are not for them.

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That was the subject of a huge Pan-European research project conducted by Microsoft and the subject of a recent webinar they held.

As someone who is passionate about encouraging more girls into STEM and reducing the inequality around STEM in the workplace I was also interested to see if there were any insights that I could incorporate into my own work. I work within a team that produces free STEM resources for girls and boys in schools, and runs a teacher training programme.

11,500 girls aged 11-30 from 10 different countries including the UK took part, the top insights are below.

Interesting isn't it? Good for us to see that ' girls crave creativity and hands on experience'. Our STEM challenges in particular give them the opportunity to do that, so according to the research will help convert their interest into a passion...so we're on the right track!

The report also stated that the closer work around STEM was to real life the more helpful it was for girls. They really like to understand how STEM can be applied. This backs up something else I heard at a presentation from Raspberry Pi...that in the main boys like tech for tech's sake, whereas girls like it as a tool to achieve something. Again this support how our STEM challenges and other materials that focus on real life applications of STEM in the developing world.

Other points that got my interest were that the teachers were actually more influential than parents, and it didn't matter if that teacher was male or female. Mentors also hugely influential, which support the UK STEM Ambassadors programme. One slightly quirky finding was that whilst for some girls approval of peers to go into STEM was important, others quite liked that it was seen as a bit unusual, it was that that attracted them! A breakdown of the most important factors can be seen below.

At Practical Action we will continue to work with partners to ensure our materials are inspiring to girls as well as boys.

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Why aren't more girls in Europe studying STEM? What can we do to change this?

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That was the subject of a huge Pan-European research project conducted by Microsoft and the subject of a recent webinar they held. As someone who is passionate about encouraging more girls into STEM and reducing the inequality around STEM in the workplace I was also interested to see if there were any insights that I could incorporate into my own work.

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A leading Independent girls' school in North West London has launched an initiative to ban 'Princess culture' and replace it with a Superhero campaign in a concerted effort to address gender inequality and ultimately empower its pupils.

Jacqualyn Pain, Head Mistress of Northwood College for Girls GDST said: "Anyone who read about the recent controversy concerning Clarks children's shoes may have wondered if this highly reputable company realises we are actually in the twenty first century. To the uninitiated, they recently had to withdraw girls' school shoes, entitled 'Dolly Babe' from sale. The comparable boys' shoe was called 'Leader'.

The everyday sexism, embodied in the names of these two pairs of shoes, that does not see an issue with the notion that boys are doers, are powerful and set the agenda for the future (for surely this is what "leader" means) yet that little girls are defined by their looks, their sexual availability, their desirability (for surely this is what "Dolly Babe" means; it doesn't mean someone who is at the cutting edge of human advancement) is startling. It might have been acceptable in 1957, when gender stereotypes were the norm but it really isn't ok in 2017."

Northwood College for Girls takes challenging stereotypes very seriously. "We want our girls to be empowered to see that they can be whoever they want to be and not to feel limited in how they view their potential" adds Miss Pain.

Zara Hubble (pictured above, left), the Head of the Junior School, has devised a radical way to challenge limitation. "No more will we entertain the "Princess Culture"" explains Miss Pain. "When one of our Junior School pupils does something amazing (and they do so most of the time) whether that is in a Maths test, or in Sport, or in being kind to another, or making a speech, her reward will be to become a Superhero for the day. Not a passive Princess waiting to be brought to life by her Prince, but a Superhero, with all that suggests: power, self-affirmation, strength and independence."

Mrs Hubble has ten Superhero capes and the nominated girls can choose which cape they want to adorn for the day. Their Superhero's persona can be whatever they want it to be. They are free to invent themselves, however they choose and girls and staff at Northwood College will enjoy asking the heroes to tell them about their individual super powers.

"It is not just shoes where such crass expectations of the sexes still obtains." comments Miss Pain.
"Look round any toy shop and you will still see pretty delicate toys for girls, all pink and frothy and not too well made, mostly connected with the age old traditional female roles of child rearing and household chores. The boys' toys, by contrast are more robust and are more likely to be construction kits, or cars, or weapons. Boys do have dolls, but they are called 'action figures' with all the connotations this suggests and that are missing from the moniker "doll".

And what little girl doesn't love pink? Interestingly enough, pink in the past was associated with boys and it was blue that was the little girls' colour. Blue was the colour for the Virgin Mary and was therefore deemed to be the colour of female perfection, with pink being a muted shade of red, the colour of the god Mars, the god of war and all things masculine and therefore suitable for small boys.

Everyone at Northwood College strongly believes that the girls should be empowered to see that they can be whoever they want to be and not to feel limited in how they view their potential. "We all know, after all, that girls do just as well in exams as boys (actually usually better - more girls go to university than boys these days) and that girls can be engineers and astronauts just as boys can be nurses and dancers." said Miss Pain. "Schools like ours were set up because pioneering people (usually women) saw inequality and they literally put their money where their mouths were and their vision and inspiration was the beginning of the journey to a more equitable society, votes for women, equal pay and equal rights under the law. We all know men and women are equal these days, despite few women being in charge of FTSE 100 companies."

The recent TV series "No more Boys and Girls: Can our Kids go Gender Free" featured Year 3 children making the following statements: "I think boys are cleverer than girls... because they get in to be president easily, don't they", "Men are better at being in charge", "Men are better because they are stronger and they've got more jobs", "If a woman has a child, the men have to go to work and earn some money" and "I would describe a girl as being pretty, lipstick, dresses, love-hearts". They are seven years old and they hold rigid stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and, rather alarmingly, describe a world where men must repress their emotions and where a woman's worth is bound up with her looks.

Exploring the subject of 'Princess Culture' Miss Pain comments: "Princesses often have qualities we'd like everyone to possess. Snow White and Cinderella, for example are kind, having suffered as children from loss and cruel treatment. Their empathy skills are second to none. Most Princesses have had to put up with considerable setbacks and are incredibly resilient.

However, both Snow White and Cinderella are passive young women, waiting for their prince to rescue them; this is true also of Sleeping Beauty. The Princes are the assertive ones who take the lead and save the day. The females are powerless until liberated by the Prince. All three Princesses are loved and valued for their looks. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are in fact comatose when the Prince rescues them with his kiss and each Prince is smitten by her looks. Not her brains, or her personality: she is after all unconscious. In Cinderella, the protagonist is subjugated by other (ugly) women, who are jealous of her beauty. In Snow White the wicked step mother wants her dead because she is "the fairest of them all". So much for girl power. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is captured and imprisoned because she is beautiful and she eventually falls in love with her abuser, who is then transformed from a monster to a Prince."

These are really rather strange messages to be sending to our daughters and although the stories end happily and on one level are, of course, quite charming, how far are the girls absorbing some of the messages found therein?

At Northwood, we lead the way. No passive stereotypes for us. Our girls are the FTSE 100 CEOs of the future, or whatever else they want to be." Miss Pain concludes.

Northwood College for Girls is an Independent girls' day school for girls aged 3 - 18 in Northwood. A member of the Girls' Day School Trust network, Northwood College for Girls, was rated 'excellent in all areas' in the last Education Inspection and has 840 pupils on roll.

For more information about Northwood College for Girls, please go to:
www.northwoodcollege.gdst.net and follow us on Twitter @NorthwoodGDST

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From Princess to Superhero at Northwood College for Girls!

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A leading Independent girls' school in North West London has launched an initiative to ban 'Princess culture' and replace it with a Superhero campaign in a concerted effort to address gender inequality and ultimately empower its pupils.

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Anyone who has shopped for children's clothes lately will know the horrors that await in many high-street stores. For girls, the palette is overwhelming pink and purple, dripping with unicorns and sappy slogans about the need to find one's inner goddess. For boys, trucks and spaceship motifs are splattered across tops which typically come in blue, green, and dirty brown.

But complaints are not just aesthetic. Shoe shop Clarks was taken to task by one mother, Jem Moonie-Dalton, whose recent (viral) Facebook post complained that boys were offered shoes which were "sturdy, comfortable and weather proof with soles clearly designed with running and climbing in mind". In contrast, she said: "girls' shoes have inferior soles, are not fully covered and are not well padded at the ankle." (Last week, Clark's announced its 2018 range will be designed with an "entirely unisex approach".)

No wonder many youngsters (and their parents) are utterly frustrated at the lack of non-stereotypical options. You might think the solution would be to make all clothing sections and changing rooms gender neutral: let children pick and mix their clothes like sweets. But plenty of parents and children find that idea problematic. When John Lewis became the first UK retailer to ditch separate "boys" and "girls" labels from its children's clothing range earlier this month, some parents threatened to boycott its stores.

Credit: Paul Grover

Naomi Isted, a stylist and blogger, does not believe merging clothing departments or ranges is the answer. "There should be clear boundaries between [boys' and girls'] sections," says the 38 year-old, who lives in Harlow, Essex, with her husband Haydn, a property developer, and their two children, eight-year-old Fleur and Rocco, two-and-a-half. "It is not practical for parents and can be confusing for children," she explains.

However, Isted can see a place for additional unisex sections - whether online or in store - so that all children can feel represented. "My children are very different personalities and are both very much the stereotypical boy and girl. However, if either one wanted to experiment with clothes from the opposite sex I would 100 per cent encourage them to express themselves.

"There's no reason why a girl can't wear black/blue and grey colours - and there's also no reason why boys can't wear pink. My son has long blond hair which he sometimes wears in a ponytail or topknot and he is always called a girl - even though he is wearing typically boyish styles. So I don't think there's a need to over-analyse things."

When Isted shops with her daughter, she says they head online for the most part. "It's easier to sit down and look at clothes together without the distraction of going to shops. We can be very systematic." Fleur already knows her own mind, Isted says: "When she needs something new like a winter coat, she's clear on what she wants."

This experience informs her opinion. "Online shopping would become a nightmare if all boys' and girls' ranges were merged. It would take ages to find the products you need."

Jo Baldwin Trott, a stylist and mother of 12-year-old twin girls, agrees it's time for stores to be more expansive in their ideas. "I feel high street stores need to develop new ranges offering teenage clothing which can appeal to both genders. My youngest twin is a 'tomboy' but gets a lot of grief from her sister when she is browsing the boys' section. So an area which was attractive and 'cool' for both my girls to shop in would solve the problem."

She points out too that as adults have embraced fashionable, unisex sports-style clothing, and feels it would make sense to offer this type of clothing to children. "Athleisure has become a staple of today's adult wardrobes, so why not offer clothes that comfortable, stylish and able to be worn by boys and girls of a younger age, too?"

Credit: SWNS.com

Many retailers would argue they are engaging with the issue already. "It's important to challenge gender stereotypes," says Andrew Sharp, CEO of baby and toddler shoe store Bobux. "Who are we to determine which style or colour of shoe should be worn based on a child's gender?

"We recently changed how we work and nearly every shoe is now in both girl and boy categories. We keep the boy and girl structure because that's how the majority of our customers like to shop, and while it can sometimes be tricky providing the right separate searches for girls and boys we try our best to provide a diverse range of colours and styles for both."

But in our collective enthusiasm to make clothes gender neutral, are we in danger of turning all kids' ranges into - effectively - boys' ranges? Earlier this month, many parents at the Priory School in Lewes, East Sussex, were left frustrated by a new gender-neutral school uniform which insisted all students wear trousers - meaning girls lost the right to wear skirts. (It generated almost as much press as a recent story about ISCA College in Exeter, where boys wore skirts after being told they couldn't wear shorts in hot weather.)

This is an issue Jennie Miller, a psychotherapist, thinks we'd be wise not to ignore: "On one hand, gender-neutral clothing is a great idea. Anyone who saw the recent BBC series No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? will have been struck by how all the kids behaved the same until gender-conscious adults intervened and treated or dressed them differently.

Credit: Brighton Argus/Solent News & Photo Agency

"But we have to be careful not to push girls and boys towards the 'masculine' ideal of dark coloured clothing with slogans about adventure."

She adds: "It is OK for children to enjoy pastel colours, be interested in dance and wildlife, and wear messages around being gentle and kind. We need to be mindful that we don't perpetuate the idea that these children are weaker and less important because of their so-called 'feminine' taste."

It's also impossible to ignore biology, says Jo Baldwin Trott: "As girls develop into the female body shape, we need to be encouraging teenage girls to be confident, no matter what their size, and help them to embrace this change.

"For clothing to become gender-neutral many items would need to eliminate female hip and waist shapes as well as allowance for chest size. I feel that it would be a backward step."

Naomi Isted agrees: "Boys and girls have different shapes, just as men and women do. Retailers aren't merging all men's and women's wear - so why merge boys and girls?"

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Is gender-free kids' clothing the way forward?

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Anyone who has shopped for children's clothes lately will know the horrors that await in many high-street stores. For girls, the palette is overwhelming pink and purple, dripping with unicorns and sappy slogans about the need to find one's inner goddess.

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Gender divisions remain in the classroom with boys preferring maths and sciences and girls favouring arts and humanities, a survey shows.

Half of boys (49 per cent) aged 7 to 15 said that IT or computing was one of their favourite subjects at school, compared with 26 per cent of girls, the poll by analysts Mintel shows.

Some 47 per cent of boys said they liked PE and 41 per cent enjoyed maths, while 43 per cent of girls said that art was one of their favourite subjects, followed by English (32 per cent) and music (23 per cent).

Only 26 per cent of girls said IT was one of their top three favourite subjects, while less than a third (29 per cent) favoured maths and 30 per cent liked sport.

Just 19 per cent of boys said art was one of their favourite subjects, followed by English (16 per cent) and music (12 per cent).

Beyond the classroom, 44 per cent of children said that being a plumber, builder or electrician was "for boys", while just 5 per cent said this is was a job "for girls".

But being a doctor was equally likely to be associated with boys and girls.

Parents 'reinforce stereotypes'

Within the home, UK parents seem to be treating their boys and girls differently. In the survey, 65 per cent of parents with girls said they were confident in their daughter baking without any adult help or supervision - but this proportion dropped to just 46 per cent for those with boys.

Some 44 per cent of parents said they would be confident with their daughter's ability to cook a meal without supervision, falling to 37 per cent for those with sons. While 34 per cent said they would be confident in their daughter's ability to wash clothes, compared with 25 per cent of parents with boys.

Jack Duckett, senior consumer lifestyles analyst at Mintel, said: "While the UK has taken huge steps in terms of equality over the last 50 years, gender stereotypes remain apparent among today's children and teens, as shown by their continued belief that certain subjects and professions are more suited to one gender or the other.

Lightspeed surveyed 1,500 internet users aged 7 to 15 and 1,500 internet users aged over 16 who were parents of children aged 7 to 15 in March.
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook

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Gender stereotypes are alive and kicking in the classroom, poll shows

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Gender divisions remain in the classroom with boys preferring maths and sciences and girls favouring arts and humanities, a survey shows. Half of boys (49 per cent) aged 7 to 15 said that IT or computing was one of their favourite subjects at school, compared with 26 per cent of girls, the poll by analysts Mintel shows.

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Girls Attitudes Survey.

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Manifesto for Inclusive Physical Education | LEAP Sports Scotland

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The Manifesto for Inclusive Physical Education is a set of commitments developed by school pupils in Scotland, which builds upon those pupils' lived experiences of taking part in school sport as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI) young people.

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USA Research on the impact of media on gender.

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Whether children live in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi or New Delhi, by the time they are 15, boys are told to go outside and have adventures, while girls are told to stay indoors and do housework. Furthermore, most girls are told that if they are raped or have sex, they are the ones at fault.

A new study by adolescent-health specialists interviewed 450 poor children and their parents about gender expectations in a total of 15 high-, low- and middle-income countries. The children included in the study, the first of its kind, were between the ages of 10 and 14.

"When we started this work, there was no research at all, no understanding at all of young adolescents," said Robert Blum, director of the Global Early Adolescent Study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. "There was an assumption that these were young children, and they aren't cued into gender-based violence, gender messages, rape and things of that nature.

"What we see is that around the world, young people have keen awareness, and they're very cued in to what's going on."

The key finding was that rigidly held and enforced gender expectations are linked to increased lifelong health risks - everything from HIV and depression to violence and suicide.
Messages internalized
"We found children at a very early age, from the most conservative to the most liberal societies, quickly internalize this myth that girls are vulnerable and boys are strong and independent," Blum told VOA. "And this message is being constantly reinforced at almost every turn, by siblings, classmates, teachers, parents, guardians, relatives, clergy and coaches."

The researchers found that in most cultures, by the time girls are 10 years old, they have been taught that their key asset is their physical appearance.

Lead researcher Kristin Mmari said no matter where they are, girls are concerned about their bodies, and others' attitudes to them. "In New Delhi, the girls talked about their bodies as a big risk that needs to be covered up, while in Baltimore, girls told us their primary asset was their bodies and they need to look appealing, but not too appealing."

Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli of the World Health Organization said violence against women is so pervasive that one in three women experience violence from their husbands or other sexual partners. "Social norms accept that a woman has to be beaten," Chandra-Mouli said.

He and other researchers involved in the study of adolescents' gender norms discussed their findings at the National Press Club in Washington.
Pressure on boys
The researchers found that boys do not emerge unscathed from gender expectations. They found that the pressure boys face to become physically strong and independent make them more likely to be victims of physical violence and homicide, and more likely to take up unhealthy habits like tobacco, drug and alcohol use.

The study was a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. The Journal of Adolescent Health has published a supplement to its October issue incorporating a number of articles on the subject, along with commentaries by Blum, Chandra-Mouli and others.

Adolescents are torn between opposing expectations, the study showed, especially girls.

In Shanghai, for example, girls are told they should be economically independent, and that they should not rely on men for financial support. At the same time, girls are told their husbands will divorce them if they don't do housework.

The goal was to understand the factors in early adolescence that predispose young people to subsequent sexual health risks and promote healthy sexuality.

The conclusion was that societies wishing to have healthier adolescents and young adults, free of gender stereotypes, must intervene, where necessary, before children reach age 10. Chandra-Mouli said WHO hopes to use the data from the study to shape programs to change misunderstandings about gender norms.

Blum said the researchers will measure changes in their subjects three times over five years to see how perceptions of gender affect individuals' lives and how programs change the outcome.

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голос америки

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Study Finds Stereotypes About Boys, Girls Begin at Early Age

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Whether children live in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi or New Delhi, by the time they are 15, boys are told to go outside and have adventures, while girls are told to stay indoors and do housework. Furthermore, most girls are told that if they are raped or have sex, they are the ones at fault.

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Prissy girls and macho boys. jodigreen

Gender-based violence is a deeply embedded problem in many societies and cultures. Despite this, efforts to challenge it are rarely seen at a primary school level. There is a perception that children aged 11 and 12 are too young to "know" about violence, or to offer opinions on it. But this is something that has to change if we are ever going to combat the attitudes and behaviour that can lead to this type of violence.

Recently, I have been conducting research in this area with children in five primary schools across Glasgow. I wanted to look into how young children viewed and defined violence, and thereby confront what I discovered was an everyday acceptance of, in particular, male violence against women.

I found that young people understood and made sense of violence in a way that was always framed by gender. They tended to naturalise violence as an integral part of male identity. They justified male violence using expectations of inequality in gender roles. Violence that occurred amongst peers and siblings was normalised, and therefore not labelled as violence.

My research indicated that actions were only defined as "violent" under some fairly stringent conditions. They understood a "violent" situation to involve an adult male fight taking place outside the home, which would be followed by injury and official sanctions. This kind of violence is replicated by the media in films and in newspapers. When hypothetical examples followed this linear route the children were more likely to judge them as violent.

Incidents that were experienced by the young people themselves were therefore less likely to be labelled as violence. This was compounded by the way in which the girls often found that their own experiences of violent peers, particularly when boys, were invalidated by the lack of adult recognition.

Authority figures such as teachers are more likely to turn a blind eye to boys being violent towards girls. When the girls told teachers that a boy had hit or pushed them teachers normalised the behaviour by saying that it was the boys way of trying to get attention, or "that's just what boys do." If the violent actions of men towards women are normalised, girls may grow up to minimise abuse as part of their everyday gendered interactions with men rather than be encouraged to challenge it as behaviour that is wrong.

Stereotypical gender roles are evidently pertinent in young people's understandings of men's violence against women.

This is seen in the way that young people access a discourse of difference when talking about men and women. Most children judged adult gender difference as symbolised by heterosexual relationships where they expected men and women to have different roles. They also used age as a signifier in their constructions of gender, judging that the more adult somebody was, the more fixed and restricted their gender identity became.

This can be best illustrated with girls' future ambition. Girls in particular see their futures as limited, and their ambitions restricted because of their understanding of anticipated gender roles. Whilst viewing their identities as evolving and fluid at a younger age, girls saw these identities as more rigid, and less plural, as they got older. For example, currently the girls had a wide range of ambitions, doctor, astronaut, scientist, dancer. However they saw these ambitions and opportunities as being curtailed by marriage and children. Boys' ambitions, and their belief in achieving them, did not change.

This gendered invalidation of their own experiences of violence and their understanding of identity demonstrate that the promotion of gender equality and the reduction of gender divisions is a necessity for dealing with this social problem.

Violence against women is rooted in the structural inequalities between men and women. It is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. When gender divisions and stereotypes are perpetuated, young people are less likely to challenge men's violence against women.

As adults we need to examine our role in this. We can teach them that all violence is wrong but we also need to scrutinise how we may be limiting what children can be or become. Boys and girls are continuously told that they are "different" from each other, or this is implied by lining them up in different lines at school, having gender specific sports, toys or activities, by speaking to them in different ways or by expecting different things from them.

The promotion of gender equality would mean violence against women was no longer normalised or endorsed by gendered stereotypes. As such, gender segregation and division needs to stop, and all members of society need to challenge all forms of violence against women. Until they do so, women will never achieve an equal status.

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Violence against women starts with school stereotypes

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Gender-based violence is a deeply embedded problem in many societies and cultures. Despite this, efforts to challenge it are rarely seen at a primary school level. There is a perception that children aged 11 and 12 are too young to "know" about violence, or to offer opinions on it.

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Girls as young as seven feel they cannot say or do what they want because of gender stereotyping, according to a survey highlighting the impact of expectations of young females.

Related: Children are straitjacketed into gender roles in early adolescence, says study

A poll of nearly 2,000 young people by the UK charity Girlguiding found that 55% of girls aged seven to 21 said they did not feel they could speak freely because of their gender.

A further 57% said this affected what they wore, and nearly one in two said it made an impact on how much they participated at school.

Sophie Wallace, a member of Girlguiding's advocate panel, said the results were disgraceful, and that girls and young women were "being denied a basic right because of their gender". She added: "Society needs to understand that gender stereotypes aren't just harmful but a barrier to progress."

The research found that gender stereotypes were reinforced by different sources, and arose from teachers, parents, social media, TV and other media.

One girl, quoted in the report, said that a physical education teacher told pupils to do "a girl press-up". She said: "I stood up and told him that he was being sexist and that he was being offensive."

Another girl said: "Sometimes when girls want to play sports in school, boys make fun of you. I want to play football but I can't because I feel uncomfortable and boys stare at you." The poll also found that 26% of girls aged seven to 21 thought PE was more for boys than for them.

A third respondent said: "My mum told me that I should not be playing video games because that's a boy thing, and I said that everyone has the right to gaming because it's a hobby and if I like it then I like it."

The findings also showed that girls believed certain subjects, such as science and maths, were more suitable for boys. Additionally, 42% of girls aged seven to 10 thought boys were better than girls at "being strong".

Those surveyed called for more to be done to challenge preconceptions. According to 95% of girls aged 11-21 the advertising industry should make sure adverts show more positive, diverse representations of their sex.

Natasha Devon, an author and campaigner who works in schools throughout the UK said it was disheartening to hear how stereotypes were limiting girls' options. "We teach girls that pleasing others is the most important virtue and that being well-behaved is contingent upon being quiet and delicate," she said.

Maria Miller, the Tory MP for Basingstoke, and chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, said the results showed that outdated stereotyping was damaging to confidence and needed to be tackled from an early age.

She said: "The government has to show more urgency. There must be clear guidance for schools that leaves them in no doubt about their responsibilities to keep girls safe and tackle gender stereotypes, as well as [give] support for those experiencing harassment and abuse. We will be keeping a close eye on government action on this issue over the coming months."

Wallace said the report showed "glimmers of hope" and most girls said they felt confident in their ability to protect themselves online and were unfazed about entering a male-dominated area of work.

Tricia Lowther, from the campaign Let Toys Be Toys, said: "It's not surprising that so many girls feel strongly affected by gender stereotypes. When we look at the messages children receive from from toys, books, clothes and media, we can see that gender stereotypes are widespread.

Related: Gender pay gap starts early with 20% disparity in pocket money - study

"Take toy catalogues for example, even in 2017 the majority of images show us that girls are expected to be interested in dolls and beauty toys, while boys prefer building, fighting and racing. Children learn more quickly during their early years than at any other time in life and these repeated messages help form deep-seated beliefs that can be very hard to shake off later.

"To tackle gender equality we need to ensure that childhood is free of stereotypes that have a negative effect on how children feel about their place in the world."

Case study: Suzie, 19, student, from Scotland

"I thought about doing physics at school but decided not to in the end. I did an arts subject. It was where my interests lay but I do wonder sometimes whether it was a path decided for from me at a younger age - due to stereotypes.

"We need to make sure we don't put genders on subjects and jobs, and make sure girls see women working in science. Gender stereotypes are insidious and affect us in lots of ways we don't realise. For example, girls being stopped from saying what they want to. I guess in terms of speaking out in class. I know I would rather not come across as pushy and loud, and that is partly something you learn through school about how girls should behave. That still affects me a bit at university. Sometimes I would hesitate to put my hand up.

"I am studying politics but I am not sure what I want to do after university. People always ask me if I want to be an MP, but one of the reasons I don't is because of the way female MPs are treated in politics. When you see women like Theresa May and Diane Abbot - put under so much pressure to be amazing at their jobs but also to present and look lady-like. They are under so much more scrutiny then male politicians and it's not something that is appealing.

"I do my best to challenge gender stereotypes whenever I can with my younger cousins. I challenge them to look outside the box a bit and encourage other women to do the same."

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Girls as young as seven in UK boxed in by gender stereotyping

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Girls as young as seven feel they cannot say or do what they want because of gender stereotyping, according to a survey highlighting the impact of expectations of young females.

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In a textbook for students in Tanzania, boys are strong and athletic, while girls just look proud of their pretty frilly dresses.

In a primary school reader in Haiti, pupils learn that mothers "take care of the kids and prepare the food" as fathers work "in an office".

There's a Pakistani illustrated book where all politicians, authoritative and powerful, are male.

In Turkey, a cartoon of a boy shows him dreaming of becoming a doctor.

Meanwhile a girl imagines herself as a future bride in white gown.

The list goes on - and knows no geographical boundaries.

Gender bias is rife in primary school learning books and can be found, in a strikingly similar form, on every continent, various experts say.

It is a problem "hidden in plain sight".

"There are stereotypes of males and females camouflaged in what seems to be well-established roles for each gender," says sociologist Rae Lesser Blumberg.

Prof Blumberg, from the University of Virginia, has been studying textbooks from around the world for over a decade, and says she has seen women systematically written out, or portrayed in subservient roles.

"Gender bias is a low-profile education issue, not one that makes headlines when millions of children remain unschooled," she says.

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Although school enrolment has increased dramatically since 2000, Unesco estimates that over 60 million children still never set foot in a classroom - 54% of them are girls.

"These books perpetuate gender imbalance," says Prof Blumberg. "We cannot educate the children of the future with books from the past."

Invisible or stereotyped

Last year, the UN's education agency Unesco issued a stark warning.

Sexist attitudes are so pervasive that textbooks end up undermining the education of girls and limiting their career and life expectations, Unesco says - and they represent a "hidden obstacle" to achieving gender equality.

Whether measured in lines of text, proportion of named characters, mentions in titles, citations in indexes or other criteria, "surveys show that females are overwhelmingly underrepresented in textbooks and curricula", says University of Albany's Aaron Benavot, former director of Unesco's 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report.

The problem is threefold, experts say.

The most evident aspect is the use of gender-biased language, as often male words are chosen to mean all of humanity.

Then there's an issue of invisibility, as women are often absent from the texts, their roles in history and everyday life subsumed by male characters.

"There was one textbook about scientists I particularly remember, and the only woman in it was Marie Curie," says Prof Blumberg.

"But was she shown discovering radium? No, she was timidly peeking over her husband's shoulder as he spoke to somebody else, a man who looked elegant and distinguished."

Thirdly, there are traditional stereotypes in use about the jobs that men and women perform, both in the household and outside, as well as cliched social expectations and traits assigned to each gender.

An Italian textbook provides a striking example in a chapter that teaches vocabulary for different occupations, with 10 different options for men, from fireman to dentist, and none for women.

Meanwhile, women are often portrayed in domestic tasks, from cooking and washing to caring for the children and elderly.

"The concern is also that women are portrayed as passive, submissive, fulfilling these gender stereotypical roles," says education specialist Catherine Jere, a lecturer at the University of East Anglia who was also involved in the GEM report.

'If aliens came to visit...'

The problem is far from new. Textbooks have been under scrutiny since the 1980s, following a feminist push for reform mainly in developed countries.

A 2011 US study, often described as the largest-scale research ever conducted in this field looking at over 5,600 children's books published during the 20th century, estimated that males were represented almost twice as often in titles and 1.6 times more as central characters.

Since the problem was first identified, there has been progress in reducing sexism - but it has been "very slow", experts claim.

Some of the textbooks under scrutiny were published long ago, yet many remain in use - particularly in low-income countries and in schools that do not have a budget to replace them.

"It is getting worse by the year, because the world is progressing, women are entering new occupations and household roles are changing," says Prof Blumberg. "And books are not improving at the same pace, so the gap is widening."

"If aliens came to visit us, they would have no inkling as to what women actually do, occupationally and personally, by reading our school textbooks."

Universal concern

Research also shows that the problem is nearly universal. With differences in frequency and intensity, sexism is pervasive in schoolbooks from low- and high-income nations alike.

Data is scattered, but a sample of studies published over the last decade provides the evidence.

A history book for third graders in India, for instance, doesn't show any career women.

An English language reader in use throughout Kenya portrays active men having "interesting ideas", while women and girls cook meals and plait dolls' hair.

Men made up 80% of characters in books designed by the ministry of education in Iran. India had only 6% of illustrations of women portrayed by themselves, and it was 7% in Georgia.

Maths textbooks in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Togo and Tunisia had a proportion of female to male characters lower than 30%, as measured in a 2007 comparative study.

A survey of science books in the United Kingdom and China also revealed that a massive 87% of characters were male.

In Australia, a study carried out in 2009 found that 57% of the characters in textbooks were men - despite there being more women than men in the country.

"One would think that textbooks in high-income countries would be a bit more forward-looking, yet in Australia twice as many men were portrayed in managerial roles and four times more in politics and government," says Prof Jere.

"There's an extreme case in a Chinese book, where there's only one heroine of the 1949 Communist Revolution", says Prof Blumberg.

"And she is not depicted fighting for legislation or on the frontline with Mao, she is shown giving an umbrella to a male guard standing under the rain."

Influential teaching aid

Part of the problem, experts highlight, is that books construct a sense of what is normal in a society in the eyes of school children.

As they help establish a country's curricula, readers are a sanctioned educational tool - and a powerful one at that.

A pupil is estimated to read more than 32,000 pages of textbooks from elementary to high school levels, research shows. Around 75% of the class work and 90% of the homework is done from them, as well as a large proportion of teachers' planning.

Even though access to the internet and other digital resources expand the array of learning tools, "textbooks remain central especially in poor countries," says Aaron Benavot.

"When the textbooks show very narrow expectations about what boys and girls should be, then school children are socialised into that," says Prof Jere.

The impact that these books may have on children's views of the world has already been mapped by academic research.

An Israeli study on first graders, for instance, showed that those who were exposed to the portrayal of men and women as equals tended to think that most careers were appropriate for both girls and boys, while those learning from gender-biased textbooks were prone to find the stereotypes acceptable.

Also, a link has been suggested between the poor portrayal of female scientists on textbooks and the lower numbers of girls that go on to study STEM academic disciplines - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - in vast parts of the world.
Signs of progress
Yet some progress has been made over the past decade.

Unesco's GEM Report shows that content relating to gender equality has increased in textbooks across the world, with more frequent references to women's rights and gender discrimination, particularly in textbooks in Europe, North America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Some countries are spearheading change - and perhaps not surprisingly given its overall attitudes to gender, Sweden ranks at the top.

Some of the books in the national curricula incorporate gender-neutral characters and pronouns, as well as a more egalitarian portrayal of everyday lives.

"If you see somebody stirring a pot and wearing an apron in a Swedish book, there is a high chance it'll be a male," says Prof Blumberg.

In Hong Kong research has documented an equal number of male and female characters in English language textbooks.

And progress has also been made in Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Argentina and China.

But a comprehensive review of textbooks at national level is a lengthy and expensive process - which often becomes engulfed in budget cuts and red tape.

"Some of the changes have been superficial and the commitment of governments is not sustainable if there is a change of regime", says Mr. Benavot.

So experts suggest alternative methods to counterbalance ill texts in the classrooms.

Attempts in India and Malawi have been made, using the contested readers, to challenge students to identify gender bias and question stereotypes in group discussions.

"The problem can be compensated by calling attention to it and students tend to enjoy the 'detective work'," says Prof Blumberg.

"But we need to train teachers first and ultimately we need to rewrite these books if we want better education."

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'We can't teach girls of the future with books of the past'

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In a textbook for students in Tanzania, boys are strong and athletic, while girls just look proud of their pretty frilly dresses. In a primary school reader in Haiti, pupils learn that mothers "take care of the kids and prepare the food" as fathers work "in an office".