Student gender stereotypes: contrasting the perceived maleness and femaleness of mathematics and language

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the gender stereotypes endorsed by elementary and high school students regarding mathematics and language. We developed a questionnaire allowing students to rate mathematics and language as either male or female domains and administered it to a sample of 984 elementary and high school French-speaking Canadian students (Grades 6, 8, and 10). Results showed that, with the exception of Grade 6 boys, students did not believe that mathematics was a male domain, or even conceived of mathematics as a predominantly female domain, suggesting that the traditional stereotype favouring boys in mathematics might have changed over the past few years. Moreover, language was clearly viewed as a female domain. Overall, our findings suggest that boys seem to be in need of encouragement in school, especially regarding language, where the advantage given to girls is particularly salient.

Boys’ and girls’ educational choices in secondary education. The role of gender ideology

“…These results are in line with recent research indicating that gender stereotypes associated with math and language are changing. Boys and girls still view language as a typically feminine domain, whereas they no longer regard mathematics as a typically masculine domain (Kurtz-Costes et al 2014;Plante, Théorêt, and Favreau 2009). If mathematics is becoming more gender neutral, then it would not fit in with either male or female gender ideology, thus explaining why we did not find that gender ideology affects boys' or girls' mathematical competence beliefs.…”

When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint Versus Separate Evaluation

“…Most studies that measure explicit gender attitudes find that females are believed to be worse at math tasks and better at verbal tasks than males (e.g., Guimond and Roussel [2000]; Perie, Moran, and Lutkus [2005]). Implicit association tests (IATs) measuring people's implicit attitudes report math and verbal skills to be associated with maleness and femaleness respectively (e.g., Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald [2002]; Plante, Theoret and Favreau [2009]). The evidence on actual performance differences between the genders is mixed and varies by country and population, sometimes finding support for a gender gap in the expected direction, sometimes finding no gender differences, and in recent years, finding a reversal of the gender gap in mathematics in several countries (e.g., Xie and Shauman [2005]; Guiso et al [2008]).…”

Fatores que influenciam a aprendizagem de conceitos matemáticos em cursos de engenharia: Um estudo exploratório com estudantes da Universidade do Minho

“…Estudos sobre o género e a performance matemática mostram que o estereótipo tradicional que favorece os homens em detrimento das mulheres na proficiência matemática diminuiu acentuadamente ao longo dos últimos 40 anos e as diferenças de género no desempenho matemático já não são uma questão relevante (Brandell & Staberg, 2008;Meelissen & Luyten, 2008;Plante, Théorêt, & Favreau, 2009 (Moenikia & Zahed-Babelan, 2010). Patterson et al (2003) referem também que o género por si só pode não explicar diferenças significativas no desempenho, quando visto no contexto de vários tipos de conhecimento matemático, havendo uma crescente necessidade de explorar outros fatores que poderão estar na origem das dificuldades sentidas na aprendizagem de conceitos matemáticos.…”