essay on gender stereotypes in education

How our education system undermines gender equity

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, and why culture change—not policy—may be the solution, joseph cimpian jc joseph cimpian associate professor of economics and education policy - new york university.

April 23, 2018

There are well-documented achievement and opportunity gaps by income and race/ethnicity. K-12 accountability policies often have a stated goal of reducing or eliminating those gaps, though with questionable effectiveness . Those same accountability policies require reporting academic proficiency by gender, but there are no explicit goals of reducing gender gaps and no “hard accountability” sanctions tied to gender-subgroup performance. We could ask, “Should gender be included more strongly in accountability policies?”

In this post, I’ll explain why I don’t think accountability policy interventions would produce real gender equity in the current system—a system that largely relies on existing state standardized tests of math and English language arts to gauge equity. I’ll argue that although much of the recent research on gender equity from kindergarten through postgraduate education uses math or STEM parity as a measure of equity, the overall picture related to gender equity is of an education system that devalues young women’s contributions and underestimates young women’s intellectual abilities more broadly.

In a sense, math and STEM outcomes simply afford insights into a deeper, more systemic problem. In order to improve access and equity across gender lines from kindergarten through the workforce, we need considerably more social-questioning and self-assessment of biases about women’s abilities.

As soon as girls enter school, they are underestimated

For over a decade now, I have studied gender achievement with my colleague Sarah Lubienski, a professor of math education at Indiana University-Bloomington. In a series of studies using data from both the 1998-99 and 2010-11 kindergarten cohorts of the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we found that no average gender gap in math test scores existed when boys and girls entered kindergarten, but a gap of nearly 0.25 standard deviations developed in favor of the boys by around second or third grade.

For comparison purposes, the growth of the black-white math test score gap was virtually identical to the growth in the gender gap. Unlike levels and growth in race-based gaps, though, which have been largely attributed to a combination of differences in the schools attended by black and white students and to socio-economic differences, boys and girls for the most part attend the same schools and come from families of similar socio-economic status. This suggests that something may be occurring within schools that contributes to an advantage for boys in math.

Exploring deeper, we found that the beliefs that teachers have about student ability might contribute significantly to the gap. When faced with a boy and a girl of the same race and socio-economic status who performed equally well on math tests and whom the teacher rated equally well in behaving and engaging with school, the teacher rated the boy as more mathematically able —an alarming pattern that replicated in a separate data set collected over a decade later .

Another way of thinking of this is that in order for a girl to be rated as mathematically capable as her male classmate, she not only needed to perform as well as him on a psychometrically rigorous external test, but also be seen as working harder than him. Subsequent matching and instrumental variables analyses suggested that teachers’ underrating of girls from kindergarten through third grade accounts for about half of the gender achievement gap growth in math. In other words, if teachers didn’t think their female students were less capable, the gender gap in math might be substantially smaller.

An interaction that Sarah and I had with a teacher drove home the importance and real-world relevance of these results. About five years ago, while Sarah and I were faculty at the University of Illinois, we gathered a small group of elementary teachers together to help us think through these findings and how we could intervene on the notion that girls were innately less capable than boys. One of the teachers pulled a stack of papers out of her tote bag, and spreading them on the conference table, said, “Now, I don’t even understand why you’re looking at girls’ math achievement. These are my students’ standardized test scores, and there are absolutely no gender differences. See, the girls can do just as well as the boys if they work hard enough.” Then, without anyone reacting, it was as if a light bulb went on. She gasped and continued, “Oh my gosh, I just did exactly what you said teachers are doing,” which is attributing girls’ success in math to hard work while attributing boys’ success to innate ability. She concluded, “I see now why you’re studying this.”

Although this teacher did ultimately recognize her gender-based attribution, there are (at least) three important points worth noting. First, her default assumption was that girls needed to work harder in order to achieve comparably to boys in math, and this reflects an all-too-common pattern among elementary school teachers, across at least the past couple decades and in other cultural contexts . Second, it is not obvious how to get teachers to change that default assumption. Third, the evidence that she brought to the table was state standardized test scores, and these types of tests can reveal different (often null or smaller) gender achievement gaps than other measures.

On this last point, state standardized tests consistently show small or no differences between boys and girls in math achievement, which contrasts with somewhat larger gaps on NAEP and PISA , as well as with gaps at the top of the distribution on the ECLS , SAT Mathematics assessment, and the American Mathematics Competition . The reasons for these discrepancies are not entirely clear, but what is clear is that there is no reason to expect that “hardening” the role of gender in accountability policies that use existing state tests and current benchmarks will change the current state of gender gaps. Policymakers might consider implementing test measures similar to those where gaps have been noted and placing more emphasis on gains throughout the achievement distribution. However, I doubt that a more nuanced policy for assessing math gains would address the underlying problem of the year-after-year underestimation of girls’ abilities and various signals and beliefs that buttress boys’ confidence and devalue girls, all of which cumulatively contributes to any measured gaps.

More obstacles await women in higher education and beyond

Looking beyond K-12 education, there is mounting evidence at the college and postgraduate levels that cultural differences between academic disciplines may be driving women away from STEM fields, as well as away from some non-STEM fields (e.g., criminal justice, philosophy, and economics). In fact, although research and policy discussions often dichotomize academic fields and occupations as “STEM” and “non-STEM,” the emerging research on gender discrimination in higher education finds that the factors that drive women away from some fields cut across the STEM/non-STEM divide. Thus, while gender representation disparities between STEM and non-STEM fields may help draw attention to gender representation more broadly, reifying the STEM/non-STEM distinction and focusing on math may be counterproductive to understanding the underlying reasons for gender representation gaps across academic disciplines.

In a recent study , my colleagues and I examined how perceptions on college majors relate to who is entering those majors. We found that the dominant factor predicting the gender of college-major entrants is the degree of perceived discrimination against women. To reach this conclusion, we used two sources of data. First, we created and administered surveys to gather perceptions on how much math is required for a major, how much science is required, how creative a field is, how lucrative careers are in a field, how helpful the field is to society, and how difficult it is for a woman to succeed in the field. After creating factor scales on each of the six dimensions for each major, we mapped those ratings onto the second data source, the Education Longitudinal Study, which contains several prior achievement, demographic, and attitudinal measures on which we matched young men and women attending four-year colleges.

Among this nationally representative sample, we found that the degree to which a field was perceived to be math- or science-intensive had very little relation to student gender. However, fields that were perceived to discriminate against women were strongly predictive of the gender of the students in the field, whether or not we accounted for the other five traits of the college majors. In short, women are less likely to enter fields where they expect to encounter discrimination.

And what happens if a woman perseveres in obtaining a college degree in a field where she encounters discrimination and underestimation and wants to pursue a postgraduate degree in that field, and maybe eventually work in academia? The literature suggests additional obstacles await her. These obstacles may take the form of those in the field thinking she’s not brilliant like her male peers in graduate school, having her looks discussed on online job boards when she’s job-hunting, performing more service work if she becomes university faculty, and getting less credit for co-authored publications in some disciplines when she goes up for tenure.

Each of the examples here and throughout this post reflects a similar problem—education systems (and society) unjustifiably and systematically view women as less intellectually capable.

Societal changes are necessary

My argument that policy probably isn’t the solution is not intended to undercut the importance of affirmative action and grievance policies that have helped many individuals take appropriate legal recourse. Rather, I am arguing that those policies are certainly not enough, and that the typical K-12 policy mechanisms will likely have no real effect in improving equity for girls.

The obstacles that women face are largely societal and cultural. They act against women from the time they enter kindergarten—instilling in very young girls a belief they are less innately talented than their male peers—and persist into their work lives. Educational institutions—with undoubtedly many well-intentioned educators—are themselves complicit in reinforcing the hurdles. In order to dismantle these barriers, we likely need educators at all levels of education to examine their own biases and stereotypes.

Related Content

Michael Hansen, Diana Quintero

July 10, 2018

Jaymes Pyne

July 30, 2020

Tom Loveless

March 24, 2015

Education Access & Equity Higher Education K-12 Education

Governance Studies

Brown Center on Education Policy

Douglas N. Harris

August 13, 2024

Rachel M. Perera, Jon Valant, Katharine Meyer

August 12, 2024

Kelly Rosinger, Robert Kelchen, Justin Ortagus, Dominique J. Baker, Mitchell Lingo

August 9, 2024

• My Favorites

You have successfully logged in but...

... your login credentials do not authorize you to access this content in the selected format. Access to this content in this format requires a current subscription or a prior purchase. Please select the WEB or READ option instead (if available). Or consider purchasing the publication.

OECD Education Working Papers

Gender stereotypes in education.

English , French

• ISSN: 19939019 (online)
• https://doi.org/10.1787/19939019
• Subscribe to the RSS feed Subscribe to the RSS feed

Policies and practices to address gender stereotyping across OECD education systems

In spite of advances in recognising that girls and boys, and women and men, do not have to be bounded by traditional roles, gender stereotypes persist in education and beyond. Children and youth are affected by gender stereotypes from the early ages, with parental, school, teacher and peer factors influencing the way students internalise their gender identities. As such, not only is intervening in pre-primary education necessary, but also measures at the primary and secondary levels are key to eradicate gender stereotypes and promote gender equality. Based on the analytical framework developed by the OECD Strength through Diversity project, this paper provides an overview of gender stereotyping in education, with some illustrations of policies and practices in place across OECD countries, with a focus on curriculum arrangements, capacity-building strategies and school-level interventions in primary and secondary education. 

• Click to access:
• Click to download PDF - 1,003.36KB PDF

Cite this content as:

Author(s) Ottavia Brussino i  and Jody McBrien i i OECD

19 May 2022

Gender equality through school: providing a safe and inclusive learning environment

Credit: Khumais

Boys and girls must feel welcome in a safe and secure learning environment. Governments, schools, teachers and students all have a part to play in ensuring that schools are free of violence and discrimination and provide a gender-sensitive, good-quality education (Figure 16). To achieve this, governments can develop nondiscriminatory curricula, facilitate teacher education and make sure sanitation facilities are adequate. Schools are responsible for addressing school-related violence and providing comprehensive health education. Teachers should follow professional norms regarding appropriate disciplinary practices and provide unbiased instruction. And students must behave in a non-violent, inclusive way.

FIGURE 16: Who is responsible for what in ensuring gender equality through school

NATIONAL AND SCHOOL POLICIES SHOULD TARGET SCHOOL-RELATED VIOLENCE

School-related violence is a pervasive issue in some countries. Violence can be physical, psychological or sexual; it can occur on school grounds, in transit or in cyberspace; and it may include bullying, corporal punishment, verbal and emotional abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment and assault, gang activity and the presence of weapons among students. It is often perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes and enforced by unequal power dynamics. It was estimated that, globally, approximately 246 million girls and boys experienced some form of school-related violence in 2014 (UNGEI, 2017).

While the vast majority of teachers are caring professionals who put the best interest of their students first, some abuse their position of power. In West and Central African countries, sexual abuse and exploitation by teachers, school staff and others in position of authority is common practice (Antonowicz, 2010). Sexual violence happens frequently in many schools in South Africa but crimes are rarely investigated and prosecution rates are low (HRW, 2016). In the United Republic of Tanzania, over half of girls and boys who had experienced physical abuse identified a teacher as an abuser (HakiElimu, 2017). In Samoa, 41% of children surveyed in 2013 indicated that they had experienced violence at the hands of their teacher (Office of the Ombudsman and NHRI Samoa, 2015).

Some countries, including Chile, Fiji, Finland, Peru, the Republic of Korea and Sweden, have passed legislation on violence in educational institutions (UNESCO, 2015c, 2017b). The 2013 Anti-Bullying Act in the Philippines requires all schools to adopt policies to prevent and address acts of bullying. It explicitly refers to gender-based bullying, which is described as any act that humiliates or excludes a person on the basis of perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet in the following year just 38% of schools had adopted child protection or anti-bullying policies. The low rate highlighted a lack of communication and a weak monitoring framework.

The Department of Education responded by issuing a memorandum to clarify submission requirements and is working to build implementation capacity (UNESCO, 2015c). Teacher education and codes of conduct can help change teacher attitudes and behaviours. In South Sudan, the UNICEF Communities Care programme engaged with teachers to challenge norms that enable sexual violence and brought about some shifts in teacher attitudes and behaviours (UNGEI, 2017). The Doorways programme in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi trained upper primary and lower secondary school teachers on children’s rights and responsibilities, alternative teaching practices, basic counselling and listening skills, awareness of sexual harassment at school and teacher code of conduct (DevTech Systems, 2008; Queen et al., 2015). The Communication for Change project trained teachers in the Democratic Republic of Congo to act as first responders when they witnessed school-related gender-based violence. The share of participating teachers who were aware of how to prevent gender-based violence in school increased from 56% to 95% after the intervention (C-Change, 2013). Teacher codes of conduct are generally written by teacher unions to guide their members. They promote professional accountability by giving peers a way to hold each other to account for adhering to norms (Poisson, 2009). A recent survey by Education International found that teacher codes of conduct were present in 26 of 50 countries surveyed (EI, 2017). A separate review of 24 countries found that over half of teachers believed the code of conduct had a very significant impact in reducing misconduct (McKelvie-Sebileau, 2011).

Teacher codes of conduct can be effective in reducing school-related gender-based violence if they explicitly refer to violence and abuse and include clear breach reporting and enforcement protocols. Mongolia’s Teachers Code of Ethics for General Education Schools and Kindergartens contains a section on teacher ethical norms, which specifies that teachers should protect student’s health and well-being, including from sexual abuse, and should ensure equal participation without discrimination, including on the basis of sex (Steiner-Khamsi and Batjargal, 2017). Kenya has a range of penalties for breach of professional conduct, including suspension and interdiction. Teachers convicted of sexual offences against students are deregistered (Kenya Teachers Service Commission, 2013). However, even when they exist, these codes are not always successfully disseminated.

The implementation of Ethiopia’s Code of Conduct on Prevention of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Schools has been patchy. Some school staff reportedly lacked commitment to or a sense of ownership of the code (Parkes et al., 2017). Students are also responsible for ensuring their behaviour does not impinge on others’ right to education (UNICEF and UNESCO, 2007). Schools are increasingly implementing prevention-oriented models to teach students acceptable strategies for interacting with their peers (Horner et al., 2010). These models set clear guidelines for students and define consistent instruction, record-keeping and follow-up procedures for teachers and other adults, such as administrative and custodial staff, playground supervisors, cafeteria workers and parent and community volunteers (Lewis et al., 2014).

Students are more likely to show positive social behaviours and reduce negative behaviours after the implementation of such programmes (Durlak et al., 2011). There is also increasing evidence linking improved social skills to academic achievement (Horner et al., 2010). While these codes of conduct are mostly used in Europe and North America (Sklad et al., 2012), Asian countries such as Singapore have also begun adopting them (Durlak et al., 2011).

GENDER-SENSITIVE FACILITIES CAN INCREASE THE TIME GIRLS SPEND IN SCHOOL

Inadequate sanitation facilities for girls during menstruation can have a negative effect on school attendance. Among 145 countries with data, primary school access to basic sanitation facilities was below 50% in 28 countries, 17 of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Only limited data are available on whether girls have separate facilities, let alone whether the facilities are functional or well maintained. In only 9 of 44 countries did more than 75% of primary schools have single-sex facilities; in Benin and Comoros, under 5% of schools had single-sex facilities. An estimated one in ten African girls miss school during menstruation (HRW, 2016).

Regulations requiring separate toilet facilities for boys and girls can help. Yet analysis of regulations in 71 education systems by the GEM Report team shows that only 61% required sex-separate facilities for public schools and 66% for private schools (UNESCO, 2017a). Regulations alone are not sufficient to ensure facilities are available. Although separate sanitation facilities are mandated by regulations in Bangladesh, a survey found that in 2014 only 12% of girls reported access to female-only toilets with water and soap available. Combined with a lack of waste bins, the poor facilities contributed to girls missing school during menstruation. Two in five girls were absent during menstruation for an average of three days during each cycle (Alam et al., 2014). Girls in Haiti have reported having to go home to change the materials they use to manage their menstruation, resulting in lost instructional time (HRW, 2016).

School inspections play a key role in ensuring that schools adhere to regulations. However, inspections do not always take gender issues into account. In Sweden, the school inspectorate takes gender equality into consideration (Heikkilä, 2016) and in the United Kingdom inspectors evaluate equal opportunities in the classroom and whether the school provides an inclusive environment for boys and girls (Rogers, 2014). By contrast, gender issues are rarely included in inspections in Bangladesh, with sex-separate sanitation facilities only occasionally observed (Chatterley et al., 2014). In any case, inspectorates are severely constrained by human resource shortages in many poor countries. For instance, in Mvomero district, United Republic of Tanzania, although 80% of schools are supposed to be inspected annually, only one in five schools were inspected in 2013 (Holvoet, 2015).

GENDER EQUALITY IN EDUCATION REQUIRES UNBIASED CURRICULA AND TEXTBOOKS

To facilitate gender-responsive instruction, curricula and textbooks should be free from gender bias and promote equality in gender relations. How students perceive themselves and how they project their role in society is shaped to some extent by what they experience at school, including by how they are represented in textbooks.

Comprehensive sexuality education

School-based comprehensive sexuality education programmes equip children and young people with empowering knowledge, skills and attitudes. In many contexts, programmes focus almost exclusively on HIV as a motivator to encourage students to delay sexual activity and have fewer sexual partners and less frequent sexual contacts (Fonner et al., 2014). However, international guidelines and standards, along with emerging evidence about factors influencing programme effectiveness, increasingly stress the value of a comprehensive approach centred on gender and human rights (Ketting and Winkelmann, 2013). A review of 22 studies showed that comprehensive sexuality education programmes that addressed gender power relations were five times more likely to be effective in reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy than those that did not (Haberland, 2015).

In 2009, UNESCO and other UN agencies published the revised International Technical Guidance on Sexual Education to provide an evidence-based, age-appropriate set of topics and learning objectives for comprehensive sexuality education programmes for students aged 5 to 18 (UNESCO, 2009). In 2010, the International Planned Parenthood Federation adopted a rights-based approach in its Framework for Comprehensive Sexuality Education, and the WHO Regional Office for Europe produced Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe as a framework for policy-makers and education and health authorities (WHO Regional Office for Europe and BZgA, 2010). Nearly ten years after the original report, UNESCO’s revised guidance expands coverage to both school-based and out-of-school programmes with a strong focus on human rights, gender equality and skills building. The guidance can act as both an advocacy and accountability tool for programme implementers, NGOs, and youth (UNESCO, 2018).

A 2015 review of the status of comprehensive sexuality education in 48 countries found that almost 80% had supportive policies or strategies. Despite this political will, a significant gap remained between policies and implementation (UNESCO, 2015b). In western and central Africa, UNESCO’s Sexuality Education Review and Assessment Tool was used to assess 10 out of 13 national sexuality education programmes. Fewer than half the curricula met global standards for required content for all age groups, with gender and social norms identified as the weakest areas (Herat et al., 2014; UNESCO and UNFPA, 2012).

Recent studies in Ghana and Kenya provided evidence of gaps in content and delivery. The Kenya study covered 78 public and private secondary schools. While 75% of teachers reported teaching all topics of a comprehensive sexuality education programme, only 2% of students reported learning all topics. Only 20% learned about types of contraceptive methods, and even fewer learned how to use and where to get them (Figure 17). In some cases, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information was taught. Almost 60% of teachers incorrectly taught that condoms alone were not effective in pregnancy prevention (Sidze et al., 2017). Moreover, 71% of teachers emphasized abstinence as the best or only method to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and most depicted sex as dangerous or immoral for young people.

FIGURE 17: In Kenya, only one in five students reported learning about contraceptive methods

Barriers to effective implementation of comprehensive programmes include lack of well-trained teachers, poor support of schools, weak regulation and supervision of policy implementation, opposition from religious and conservative groups, and culturally imposed silence about sexuality. In the Ghana study, 77% of teachers reported lacking resources or teaching materials. A smaller share reported conflicts, embarrassment or opposition from the community or students on moral or religious grounds (Awusabo-Asare et al., 2017).

Textbooks increasingly cover gender issues but progress is insufficient

Self-reporting from governments in Cuba, Estonia, Finland, Mexico, Nicaragua, Slovenia and Spain indicates that gender equality is integrated into national school curricula (UN Human Rights Council, 2017). The Ministry of Education, Culture, Science equality as one of the key values in its new core curriculum (Steiner-Khamsi and Batjargal, 2017).

Over the past 50 years, mentions of women and women’s rights in textbooks have increased (Bromley et al., 2016; Nakagawa and Wotipka, 2016). Nevertheless, in many countries women remain under-represented or, when included, are relegated to traditional roles such as housework and childcare (UNESCO, 2016a). Women accounted for only 37% of images in primary and secondary school textbooks in the Islamic Republic of

Iran in 2006–2007 (Paivandi, 2008) and across nine Jordanian secondary school history books only 21% of images were female. From Sweden to the Syrian Arab Republic, despite governments explicitly identifying the importance of gender equality in textbooks, women and men were still routinely portrayed in a stereotypical manner (Bromley et al., 2016).

Both governments and civil society can act to reduce textbook biases. The Human Rights Council has made it clear that ‘states have an obligation to periodically review and revise curricula, textbooks, programmes and teaching methods to ensure that they do not perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes’ (UN Human Rights Council, 2017). Some states include an explicit gender analysis as part of their textbook and review process. In Viet Nam, the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2011–2020 specifies that textbook content should be reviewed for gender stereotypes (UNESCO, 2016c). In Ghana, the Textbook Development and Distribution Policy for Pre-tertiary Education included gender sensitivity as one of the main criteria for evaluating textbook proposals (Ghana MOE, 2001). By contrast, the Pakistan National Textbook and Learning Materials Policy and Plan of Action does not mention gender as a criterion of textbook review, referring instead to ‘quality of content, presentation, language and specific provincial coverage’ (Pakistan MOE, 2007).

Textbook monitoring by parents and civil society can be effective. In South Africa, a parent’s question posted on Facebook in July 2016 inspired a petition that ultimately led the textbook publisher to amend and issue an apology for content that promoted blaming the victim for sexual assault (Davies, 2016).

TEACHER EDUCATION CAN HELP ADDRESS UNDERLYING GENDER BIASES

Aside from the influence of official curricula and textbooks, teacher practice in the classroom is partly shaped by their assumptions and stereotypes about gender, which in turn affects students’ beliefs and learning. In Australia, female teachers felt particularly responsible for boys’ underachievement relative to male teachers (Hodgetts, 2010). In the United States, anxiety expressed by female mathematics teachers was associated with female students’ belief in the stereotype that boys are better at mathematics (Beilock et al., 2010).

Teacher education can assist teachers to reflect on and overcome their biases. Formal initiatives in teacher education with a focus on gender have taken place in Italy, the Republic of Moldova and Sudan (OHCHR, 2015). In Spain, the University of Oviedo requires teacher candidates to complete a mandatory course on gender and education (Bourn et al., 2017). In Ankara, Turkey preservice teachers that took a semester long course on gender equity in education developed more gender sensitive attitudes (Erden, 2009).

In low and middle income countries, teacher education programmes are often externally funded. The UNESCO Regional Bureau in Bangkok has recently funded a five-year project, Enhancing Girls’ and Women’s Right to Quality Education through Gender Sensitive Policy Making, Teacher Development and Pedagogy, which focuses on training participants from Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan to conduct gender assessments in teacher education (UNESCO, 2016b).

In Karamoja region, Uganda, the UNICEF Gender Socialization in Schools programme trained over 1,000 primary school teachers to enhance their knowledge, attitudes and practices related to gender equality promotion and conflict resolution. The initial training lasted for two days and was followed by two refresher training sessions. A subset of teachers received reinforcing text messages reminding them of examples of good practice. However, while the programme improved teachers’ knowledge and attitudes on gender equality, classroom practices did not become more gender-responsive (American Institutes for Research and UNICEF, 2016; El-Bushra and Smith, 2016).

Nigeria updated its teacher education curriculum in 2012, in part to address gender issues (Unterhalter et al., 2015). While a policy is in place to ensure minimum standards on gender equality, a survey of 4,500 student teachers in 2014 showed that very few had an in-depth understanding of what gender equality in education might mean, while many were hostile to women’s participation in public life and any form of social engagement. Among respondents employed following graduation, teachers reported receiving no professional development on gender, a point echoed by other colleagues at the schools where they taught. Teachers who had the most egalitarian ideas about gender reported themselves the most frustrated of respondents and said that they were unable to put their ideas into practice (Unterhalter et al., 2017).

The examples from Uganda and Nigeria highlight some of the challenges in changing teacher practices. To be effective, teacher education and training need to be continuous to recognize the time it takes for such practices to change. They also need to incorporate other stakeholders to help build a more supportive environment.

Gender Stereotypes and Education

• First Online: 31 August 2022

Cite this chapter

• Lin Bian 4  

Part of the book series: Focus on Sexuality Research ((FOSR))

2933 Accesses

4 Citations

Girls and women have matched boys and men in academic achievements. However, the gender disparity in representation favoring men over women persists in many careers and domains. This chapter focuses on the sociocultural factors shaping women’s participation in the STEM domain and beyond. In particular, I highlight two classes of stereotypes that may contribute to this phenomenon: (1) stereotypes against women’s and girls’ intellectual abilities and (2) stereotypes about the culture of the field. Throughout the chapter, I introduce the two clusters of stereotypes, describe the early emergence of the gender stereotypes about intelligence, illustrate three potential mechanisms working against women’s engagement, and discuss the means through which parents, educators, and society can counter these stereotypes as well as the downstream consequences. Overall, this chapter sheds light on the developmental roots of the gender imbalance across different fields and provides insights on potential interventions remedying this problem.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Numbers for Boys and Words for Girls? Academic Gender Stereotypes among Chinese Parents

High school students’ math and science gender stereotypes: relations with their STEM outcomes and socializers’ stereotypes

Egalitarian gender role attitudes give girls the edge: Exploring the role of students’ gender role attitudes in reading and math

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice . Addison-Wesley.

Google Scholar  

Aluja-Fabregat, A., Colom, R., Abad, F., & Juan-Espinosa, M. (2000). Sex differences in general intelligence defined as g among young adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences, 28 (4), 813–820.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ambady, N., Shih, M., Kim, A., & Pittinsky, T. L. (2001). Stereotype susceptibility in children: Effects of identity activation on quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 12 (5), 385–390.

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37 (2), 122–147.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control . W.H. Freeman.

Baron-Cohen, S. (2002). The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6 (6), 248–254.

Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotyping endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42 , 228–235.

Beilock, S. L., Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. C. (2010). Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (5), 1860–1863.

Beloff, H. (1992). Mother, father and me: Our IQ. The Psychologist, 5 , 309–311.

Benbow, C. P., & Stanley, J. C. (1980). Sex differences in mathematical ability: Fact or artifact? Science, 210 (4475), 1262–1264.

Benbow, C. P., & Stanley, J. C. (1983). Sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability: More facts. Science, 222 (4627), 1029–1031.

Bennett, M. (1996). Men’s and women’s self-estimates of intelligence. Journal of Social Psychology, 136 (3), 411–412.

Bennett, M. (1997). Self-estimates of ability in men and women. Journal of Social Psychology, 137 (4), 540–541.

Betz, D. E., & Sekaquaptewa, D. (2012). My fair physicist? Feminine math and science role models demotivate young girls. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3 (6), 738–746.

Beyer, S., DeKeuster, M., Walter, K., Colar, M., & Holcomb, C. (2005). Changes in CS students’ attitudes towards CS over time: An examination of gender differences. In ACM SIGCSE bulletin (Vol. 37(1), pp. 392–396). ACM.

Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science, 355 (6323), 389–391.

Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2018a). Evidence of bias against girls and women in contexts that emphasize intellectual ability. American Psychologist, 73 (9), 1139–1153.

Bian, L., Leslie, S. J., Murphy, M. C., & Cimpian, A. (2018b). Messages about brilliance undermine women’s interest in educational and professional opportunities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76 , 404–420.

Bian, L., Shu, Y., Hu, Q., & Xu, F. (2019). The development of the gender stereotypes about brilliance in Chinese young children. In Poster to be presented at the 11th Biennial Cognitive Development Society, Louisville, KY .

Bianco, M., Harris, B., Garrison-Wade, D., & Leech, N. (2011). Gifted girls: Gender bias in gifted referrals. Roeper Review, 33 (3), 170–181.

Boucher, K. L., Rydell, R. J., & Murphy, M. C. (2015). Forecasting the experience of stereotype threat for others. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58 , 56–62.

Brown, E. R., Smith, J. L., Thoman, D. B., Allen, J. M., & Muragishi, G. (2015). From bench to bedside: A communal utility value intervention to enhance students’ biomedical science motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107 (4), 1116–1135.

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Campbell, D. E., & Wolbrecht, C. (2006). See Jane run: Women politicians as role models for adolescents. The Journal of Politics, 68 (2), 233–247.

Ceci, S. J., Williams, W. M., & Barnett, S. M. (2009). Women’s underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations. Psychological Bulletin, 135 (2), 218–261.

Chamberlain, A. (2016). Demystifying the gender pay gap: Evidence from glassdoor salary data. Retrieved from https://research-content.glassdoor.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/Glassdoor-Gender-Pay-Gap-Study.pdf

Cheryan, S., Drury, B. J., & Vichayapai, M. (2013a). Enduring influence of stereotypical computer science role models on women’s academic aspirations. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37 (1), 72–79.

Cheryan, S., Master, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: Increasing girls’ interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 , 49.

Cheryan, S., & Plaut, V. C. (2010). Explaining underrepresentation: A theory of precluded interest. Sex Roles, 63 (7–8), 475–488.

Cheryan, S., Plaut, V. C., Davies, P. G., & Steele, C. M. (2009). Ambient belonging: How stereotypical cues impact gender participation in computer science. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97 (6), 1045–1060.

Cheryan, S., Plaut, V. C., Handron, C., & Hudson, L. (2013b). The stereotypical computer scientist: Gendered media representations as a barrier to inclusion for women. Sex Roles, 69 (1–2), 58–71.

Cheryan, S., Siy, J. O., Vichayapai, M., Drury, B. J., & Kim, S. (2011). Do female and male role models who embody STEM stereotypes hinder women’s anticipated success in STEM? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (6), 656–664.

Cheryan, S., Ziegler, S. A., Montoya, A. K., & Jiang, L. (2017). Why are some STEM fields more gender balanced than others? Psychological Bulletin, 143 (1), 1–35.

Chestnut, E. K., & Markman, E. M. (2018). “Girls are as Good as boys at math” implies that boys are probably better: A study of expressions of gender equality. Cognitive Science, 42 (7), 2229–2249.

Chestnut, E. K., Zhang, M. Y., & Markman, E. M. (2021). “Just as good”: Learning gender stereotypes from attempts to counteract them. Developmental Psychology, 57 (1), 114–125.

Clark, E. K., Fuesting, M. A., & Diekman, A. B. (2016). Enhancing interest in science: Exemplars as cues to communal affordances of science. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46 (11), 641–654.

Colom, R., García, L. F., Juan-Espinosa, M., & Abad, F. J. (2002). Null sex differences in general intelligence: Evidence from the WAIS-III. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 5 (1), 29–35.

Correll, S. J. (2001). Gender and the career choice process: The role of biased self-assessments. American Journal of Sociology, 106 (6), 1691–1730.

Correll, S. J. (2004). Constraints into preferences: Gender, status, and emerging career aspirations. American Sociological Review, 69 (1), 93–113.

Cvencek, D., Meltzoff, A. N., & Greenwald, A. G. (2011). Math–gender stereotypes in elementary school children. Child Development, 82 , 766–779.

Cvencek, D., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kapur, M. (2014). Cognitive consistency and math–gender stereotypes in Singaporean children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 117 , 73–91.

Cvencek, D., Kapur, M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Math achievement, stereotypes, and math self-concepts among elementary-school students in Singapore. Learning and Instruction, 39 , 1–10.

Dasgupta, N. (2011). Ingroup experts and peers as social vaccines who inoculate the self-concept: The stereotype inoculation model. Psychological Inquiry, 22 (4), 231–246.

Davies, P. G., Spencer, S. J., Quinn, D. M., & Gerhardstein, R. (2002). Consuming images: How television commercials that elicit stereotype threat can restrain women academically and professionally. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28 (12), 1615–1628.

Denissen, J. J., Zarrett, N. R., & Eccles, J. S. (2007). I like to do it, I’m able, and I know I am: Longitudinal couplings between domain-specific achievement, self-concept, and interest. Child Development, 78 (2), 430–447.

Diekman, A. B., Brown, E. R., Johnston, A. M., & Clark, E. K. (2010). Seeking congruity between goals and roles: A new look at why women opt out of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Psychological Science, 21 (8), 1051–1057.

Diekman, A. B., & Eagly, A. H. (2008). Of men, women, and motivation: A role congruity account. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 434–447). Guilford.

Division APAP. (2011). Program review report, 2004–2011. Retrieved April 21, 2012, from http://apapacific.org/governance/Program_Review_Report.2004-11.pdf .

Dunham, Y., Baron, A., & Carey, S. (2011). Consequences of ‘minimal’ group affiliations in childhood. Child Development, 82 (3), 293–811.

Dweck, C. S. (1999). Caution--praise can be dangerous. American Educator, 23 (1), 4–9.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success . Ballantine.

Eccles, J. S. (1987). Gender roles and women’s achievement-related decisions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 11 (2), 135–172.

Eccles, J. S. (1994). Understanding women’s educational and occupational choices: Applying the Eccles et al. model of achievement-related choices. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18 (4), 585–609.

Eccles, J. S., & Jacobs, J. E. (1986). Social forces shape math attitudes and performance. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 11 (2), 367–380.

Eccles, J. S., Jacobs, J. E., & Harold, R. D. (1990). Gender role stereotypes, expectancy effects, and parents’ socialization of gender differences. Journal of Social Issues, 46 (2), 183–201.

Else-Quest, N. M., Hyde, J. S., & Linn, M. C. (2010). Cross-national patterns of gender differences in mathematics: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (1), 103–127.

Emerson, K. T., & Murphy, M. C. (2015). A company I can trust? Organizational lay theories moderate stereotype threat for women. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41 (2), 295–307.

Fralick, B., Kearn, J., Thompson, S., & Lyons, J. (2009). How middle schoolers draw engineers and scientists. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 18 (1), 60–73.

Fredricks, J. A., & Eccles, J. S. (2002). Children’s competence and value beliefs from childhood through adolescence: Growth trajectories in two male-sex-typed domains. Developmental Psychology, 38 (4), 519–533.

Frome, P. M., Alfeld, C. J., Eccles, J. S., & Barber, B. L. (2006). Why don’t they want a male-dominated job? An investigation of young women who changed their occupational aspirations. Educational Research and Evaluation, 12 (4), 359–372.

Furnham, A., Reeves, E., & Budhani, S. (2002). Parents think their sons are brighter than their daughters: Sex differences in parental self-estimations and estimations of their children’s multiple intelligences. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 163 (1), 24–39.

Furnham, A., & Valgeirsson, H. (2007). Parents’ estimations of their own intelligence and that of their children: A comparison between English and Icelandic parents. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 48 (4), 289–298.

Galdi, S., Cadinu, M., & Tomasetto, C. (2014). The roots of stereotype threat: When automatic associations disrupt girls’ math performance. Child Development, 85 (1), 250–263.

Geary, D. C. (1996). Sexual selection and sex differences in mathematical abilities. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19 (2), 229–247.

Geary, D. C. (2010). Male, female: The evolution of human sex differences (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/12072-000

Book   Google Scholar  

Good, C., Aronson, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents’ standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 24 (6), 645–662.

Good, C., Rattan, A., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Why do women opt out? Sense of belonging and women’s representation in mathematics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (4), 700–717.

Guiso, L., Monte, F., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2008). Culture, gender, and math. Science, 320 (5880), 1164–1165.

Haines, V. A., & Wallace, J. E. (2003). Gender-role attitudes, perceptions of engineering, and beliefs about women in engineering “having it all”: Are male and female engineering undergraduates really so different? Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 49 (4), 376–379.

Hakim, C. (2006). Women, careers, and work-life preferences. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 34 (3), 279–294.

Halpern, D., Aronson, J., Reimer, N., Simpkins, S., Star, J., & Wentzel, K. (2007). Encouraging girls in math and science (NCER 2007–2003) . National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ncer.ed.gov

Hamid, P. N., & Lok, D. (1995). Gender stereotyping in estimates of intelligence in Chinese students. The Journal of Social Psychology, 135 (3), 407–409.

Hannover, B., & Kessels, U. (2004). Self-to-prototype matching as a strategy for making academic choices. Why high school students do not like math and science. Learning and Instruction, 14 (1), 51–67.

Huang, C. (2013). Gender differences in academic self-efficacy: A meta-analysis. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28 (1), 1–35.

Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2015). An early-emerging explanatory heuristic promotes support for the status quo. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109 (5), 739–752.

Hyde, J. S., Fennema, E., & Lamon, S. J. (1990). Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 107 (2), 139–155.

Jacobs, J. E., Davis-Kean, P., Bleeker, M., Eccles, J. S., & Malanchuk, O. (2005). I can, but I don’t want to. The impact of parents, interests, and activities on gender differences in math. In A. Gallagher & J. Kaufman (Eds.), Gender difference in mathematics: An integrative psychological approach (pp. 246–263) . Cambridge University Press.

Jaxon, J., Lei, R. F., Shachnai, R., Chestnut, E. K., & Cimpian, A. (2019). The acquisition of gender stereotypes about intellectual ability: Intersections with race. Journal of Social Issues, 75 (4), 1192–1215.

Karatas, F., Micklos, A., & Bodner, G. (2008). Sixth grade students’ images of engineering: What do engineers do? Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Karniol, R., Galili, L., Shtilerman, D., Naim, R., Stern, K., Manjoch, H., & Silverman, R. (2011). Why superman can wait: Cognitive self-transformation in the delay of gratification paradigm. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 40 (2), 307–317.

Kell, H. J., Lubinski, D., Benbow, C. P., & Steiger, J. H. (2013). Creativity and technical innovation: Spatial ability’s unique role. Psychological Science, 24 (9), 1831–1836.

Killen, M., Margie, N. G., & Sinno, S. (2006). Morality in the context of intergroup relationships. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 155–183). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Kirkcaldy, B., Noack, P., Furnham, A., & Siefen, G. (2007). Parental estimates of their own and their children’s intelligence. European Psychologist, 12 (3), 173–180.

Knight, M. T., & Cunningham, C. M. (2004). Building a structure of support: An inside look at the structure of women in engineering programs. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 10 , 1–20.

Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347 (6219), 262–265.

Levine, S. C., Vasilyeva, M., Lourenco, S. F., Newcombe, N. S., & Huttenlocher, J. (2005). Socioeconomic status modifies the sex difference in spatial skill. Psychological Science, 16 (11), 841–845.

Liben, L. S., Bigler, R. S., & Krogh, H. R. (2001). Pink and blue collar jobs: Children’s judgments of job status and job aspirations in relation to sex of worker. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 79 (4), 346–363.

Lippa, R. A., Collaer, M. L., & Peters, M. (2010). Sex differences in mental rotation and line angle judgments are positively associated with gender equality and economic development across 53 nations. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39 (4), 990–997.

Lummis, M., & Stevenson, H. W. (1990). Gender differences in beliefs and achievement: A cross-cultural study. Developmental Psychology, 26 (2), 254–263.

Mandalaywala, T. M., Amodio, D. M., & Rhodes, M. (2018). Essentialism promotes racial prejudice by increasing endorsement of social hierarchies. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9 (4), 461–469.

Marshall, R. (2013). The rentless naturalist. 3:AM magazine . Retrieved from http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-relentless-naturalist/

Master, A., Cheryan, S., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2017). Social group membership increases STEM engagement among preschoolers. Developmental Psychology, 53 (2), 201–209.

McAdam, J. E. (1990). The persistent stereotype: Children’s images of scientists. Physics Education, 25 (2), 102–105.

Meyer, M., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2015). Women are underrepresented in fields where success is believed to require brilliance. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 , 235.

Milkman, K. L., Akinola, M., & Chugh, D. (2012). Temporal distance and discrimination: An audit study in academia. Psychological Science, 23 (7), 710–717.

Milkman, K. L., Akinola, M., & Chugh, D. (2015). What happens before? A field experiment exploring how pay and representation differentially shape bias on the pathway into organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100 (6), 1678–1712.

Miller, D. I., Nolla, K. M., Eagly, A. H., & Uttal, D. H. (2018). The development of children’s gender-science stereotypes: A meta-analysis of 5 decades of US draw-a-scientist studies. Child Development, 89 (6), 1943–1955.

Moore, D. S., & Johnson, S. P. (2008). Mental rotation in human infants: A sex difference. Psychological Science, 19 (11), 1063–1066.

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (41), 16474–16479.

Murphy, M. C., Steele, C. M., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Signaling threat: How situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings. Psychological Science, 18 (10), 879–885.

National Academy of Engineering. (2017). NAE grand challenges for engineering . Retrieved from http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/

National Association for Gifted Children. (2015). 2014–2015 state of the states in gifted education: Policy and practice data [Data file]. Retrieved from http://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-state/2014-2015-state-states-gifted-education

National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). Bachelor’s,master’s,and doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by sex of student and discipline division: 2014–15 . Retrieved from https://bit.ly/ 2MrmiYz.

National Science Foundation. (2013). Survey of Earned Doctorates . Retrieved from http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/

National Science Foundation. (2016). National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Doctorate recipients from U.S. Universities: 2015 (Special Report NSF 17–306). Arlington, VA. Retrieved from www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17306/

Neuville, E., & Croizet, J. C. (2007). Can salience of gender identity impair math performance among 7–8 years old girls? The moderating role of task difficulty. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 22 (3), 307–316.

Newcombe, N. S. (2007). Taking science seriously: Straight thinking about sex differences. In S. J. Ceci & W. Williams (Eds.), Why aren’t more women in science? Top researchers debate the evidence (pp. 69–77). American Psychological Association.

Niedenthal, P. M., Cantor, N., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1985). Prototype matching: A strategy for social decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48 (3), 575–584.

Osborne, J. W. (2007). Linking stereotype threat and anxiety. Educational Psychology, 27 (1), 135–154.

Pope, D. G., & Sydnor, J. R. (2010). Geographic variation in the gender differences in test scores. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24 (2), 95–108.

Quinn, P. C., & Liben, L. S. (2008). A sex difference in mental rotation in young infants. Psychological Science, 19 (11), 1067–1070.

Rammstedt, B., & Rammsayer, T. H. (2000). Sex differences in self-estimates of different aspects of intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 29 (5), 869–880.

Rhodes, M., Leslie, S. J., & Tworek, C. M. (2012). Cultural transmission of social essentialism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (34), 13526–13531.

Rhodes, M., Leslie, S. J., Yee, K. M., & Saunders, K. (2019). Subtle linguistic cues increase girls’ engagement in science. Psychological Science, 30 (3), 455–466.

Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A., & Ho, A. K. (2017). So it is, so it shall be: Group regularities license children’s prescriptive judgments. Cognitive Science, 41 , 576–600.

Roberts, S. O., Guo, C., Ho, A. K., & Gelman, S. A. (2018). Children’s descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency replicates (and varies) cross-culturally: Evidence from China. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 165 , 148–160.

Robinson-Cimpian, J. P., Lubienski, S. T., Ganley, C. M., & Copur-Gencturk, Y. (2014). Teachers’ perceptions of students’ mathematics proficiency may exacerbate early gender gaps in achievement. Developmental Psychology, 50 (4), 1262–1281.

Rock, D., & Shaw, J. M. (2000). Exploring children’s thinking about mathematicians and their work. Teaching Children Mathematics, 6 (9), 550–550.

Saggino, A., Pezzuti, L., Tommasi, M., Cianci, L., Colom, R., & Orsini, A. (2014). Null sex differences in general intelligence among elderly. Personality and Individual Differences, 63 , 53–57.

Schott, G., & Selwyn, N. (2000). Examining the “male, antisocial” stereotype of high computer users. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 23 (3), 291–303.

Setterlund, M. B., & Niedenthal, P. M. (1993). “Who am I? Why am I here?” self-esteem, self-clarity, and prototype matching. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65 (4), 769–780.

Sheltzer, J. M., & Smith, J. C. (2014). Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (28), 10107–10112.

Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., & Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance. Psychological Science, 10 (1), 80–83.

Smith, J. L., Lewis, K. L., Hawthorne, L., & Hodges, S. D. (2013). When trying hard isn’t natural: Women’s belonging with and motivation for male-dominated STEM fields as a function of effort expenditure concerns. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39 (2), 131–143.

Smith, J. L., Morgan, C. L., & White, P. H. (2005). Investigating a measure of computer technology domain identification: A tool for understanding gender differences and stereotypes. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 65 (2), 336–355.

Spelke, E. S. (2005). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science? A critical review. American Psychologist, 60 (9), 950–958.

Spencer, S. J., Logel, C., & Davies, P. G. (2016). Stereotype threat. Annual Review of Psychology, 67 , 415–437.

Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype threat and women’s math performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35 (1), 4–28.

Steele, C. M. (2013). Stereotypes and the fragility of academic competence, motivation, and self-concept. Handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 436–454).

Stephens-Davidowitz, S. (2014). Google, tell Me. Is my son a genius? The New York Times . Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/google-tell-me-is- my-son-a-genius.html

Storage, D., Horne, Z., Cimpian, A., & Leslie, S. J. (2016). The frequency of “brilliant” and “genius” in teaching evaluations predicts the representation of women and African Americans across fields. PLoS One, 11 (3), e0150194. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150194

Stout, J. G., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. A. (2011). STEMing the tide: Using ingroup experts to inoculate women’s self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100 (2), 255–270.

Sugimoto, C. R., Lariviere, V., Ni, C., Gingras, Y., & Cronin, B. (2013). Global gender disparities in science. Nature, 504 (7479), 211–213.

Tiedemann, J. (2000). Parents’ gender stereotypes and teachers’ beliefs as predictors of children’s concept of their mathematical ability in elementary school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92 (1), 144–151.

Tomasetto, C., Alparone, F. R., & Cadinu, M. (2011). Girls’ math performance under stereotype threat: The moderating role of mothers’ gender stereotypes. Developmental Psychology, 47 (4), 943–949.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics. (2018). Fact Sheet No. 51: Women in Science . Retrieved from http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/women-science

Upson, S., & Friedman, L. F. (2012). Where are all the female geniuses? Scientific American Mind, 23 (5), 63–65.

Voyer, D., & Voyer, S. D. (2014). Gender differences in scholastic achievement: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140 (4), 1174–1204.

Wai, J., Cacchio, M., Putallaz, M., & Makel, M. C. (2010). Sex differences in the right tail of cognitive abilities: A 30 year examination. Intelligence, 38 (4), 412–423.

Wai, J., Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (2009). Spatial ability for STEM domains: Aligning over 50 years of cumulative psychological knowledge solidifies its importance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101 (4), 817–835.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2007). A question of belonging: Race, social fit, and achievement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92 (1), 82–96.

Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2011). A brief social-belonging intervention improves academic and health outcomes of minority students. Science, 331 (6023), 1447–1451.

Walton, G. M., Cohen, G. L., Cwir, D., & Spencer, S. J. (2012). Mere belonging: The power of social connections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (3), 513–532.

Walton, G. M., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Latent ability: Grades and test scores systematically underestimate the intellectual ability of negatively stereotyped students. Psychological Science, 20 (9), 1132–1139.

White, R. E., Prager, E. O., Schaefer, C., Kross, E., Duckworth, A. L., & Carlson, S. M. (2017). The “Batman Effect”: Improving perseverance in young children. Child development, 88 (5), 1563–1571.

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2015). National hiring experiments reveal 2: 1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112 (17), 5360–5365.

Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Gender and physics. Nature, 387 , 341–347.

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. S. (2000). Expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25 , 68–81.

Woods-Townsend, K., Christodoulou, A., Rietdijk, W., Byrne, J., Griffiths, J. B., & Grace, M. M. (2016). Meet the scientist: The value of short interactions between scientists and students. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 6 (1), 89–113.

Yeager, D. S., Romero, C., Paunesku, D., Hulleman, C. S., Schneider, B., Hinojosa, C., Lee, H. Y., O’Brien, J., Flint, K., Roberts, A., & Trott, J. (2016). Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: The case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108 (3), 374–391.

Yee, D. K., & Eccles, J. S. (1988). Parent perceptions and attributions for children’s math achievement. Sex Roles, 19 (5–6), 317–333.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lin Bian .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada

Doug P. VanderLaan

Gender Studies Programme and Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Wang Ivy Wong

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Bian, L. (2022). Gender Stereotypes and Education. In: VanderLaan, D.P., Wong, W.I. (eds) Gender and Sexuality Development. Focus on Sexuality Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84273-4_9

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84273-4_9

Published : 31 August 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-84272-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-84273-4

eBook Packages : Biomedical and Life Sciences Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Gender equality and education

Gender equality is a global priority at UNESCO. Globally, 122 million girls and 128 million boys are out of school. Women still account for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read.

UNESCO calls for attention to gender equality throughout the education system in relation to access, content, teaching and learning context and practices, learning outcomes, and life and work opportunities. The  UNESCO Strategy for gender equality in and through education (2019-2025)  focuses on a system-wide transformation to benefit all learners equally in three key areas: better data to inform action, better legal and policy frameworks to advance rights and better teaching and learning practices to empower. 

What you need to know about education and gender equality

"her education, our future" documentary film.

Released on 7 March for 2024 International Women’s Day, “Her Education, Our Future” is a documentary film following the lives of Anee, Fabiana, Mkasi and Tainá – four young women across three continents who struggle to fulfill their right to education. 

This documentary film offers a spectacular dive into the transformative power of education and showcases how empowering girls and women through education improves not only their lives, but also those of their families, communities and indeed all of society. 

Global Accountability Dashboard

The Global Accountability Dashboard is a one stop resource that monitors country progress against key indicators on gender-transformative education, spotlights actions taken by governments and their partners, and provides an evidence hub of initiatives and good practices from 193 countries.

The Dashboard is supported by the Global Platform for Gender Equality and Girls’ and Women’s Empowerment in and through Education , a multi-stakeholder partnership emerging from the 2022 Transforming Education Summit. It complements and deepens the Summit’s Dashboard of Country Commitments and Action to Transform Education. 

Key figures

of which 122 million are girls and 128 million are boys

of which 56% are women

for every 100 young women

Empowering communities: UNESCO in action

Keeping girls in the picture

Everyone can play a role in supporting girls’ education

UNESCO’s new drive to accelerate action for girls’ and women’s education

2022 GEM Report Gender Report: Deepening the debate on those still left behind

Capacity building tools

• From access to empowerment: operational tools to advance gender equality in and through education
• Communication strategy: UNESCO guidance on communicating on gender equality in and through education
• Communication tools
• Keeping girls in the picture: youth advocacy toolkit
• Keeping girls in the picture: community radio toolkit

Monitoring SDG 4: equity and inclusion in education

Resources from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report.

Related items

• Gender equality
• Policy Advice
• Girls education
• See more add

Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Gender issues have been discussed during many international meetings and forums. The role of both sexes in society has raised many questions while most analysts and researchers have found out that education plays a great role in determining the role of a gender personality. Teachers instructing children should be familiar with methods of effective analysis of gender roles with students since it is a serious problem affecting contemporary society. Stereotypes produce a negative effect on human beings leading to failure in understanding the needs and motivations of another sex. In this essay, the relationship between stereotypes and genuine gender roles is discussed broadly about activities and the effectiveness of performance of individuals.

The academic performance of male and female students differs due to stereotypes producing effects on their self-identification and individual progress. According to researches conducted in most schools worldwide, girls perform better in languages than boys (Pajares and Valiante, 2002) whereas male students are better in exact sciences that require a logical approach and numeric data analysis. Females are found to be better at defining and describing their thoughts because their skills and logic enable them to do it better than, for instance, calculating and solving mathematical problems. Masculine motivation is oriented toward performing challenging and resource-consuming assignments that deal with calculations and scientific innovations. Teachers play an important role in modeling the self-identification of students at school since they spend most of the time with them.

Educators should be trained on methods of explaining gender roles effectively about possible differences and shifts that occur due to technological progress and changes in society. It is necessary to encourage both genders to play active roles in society regardless of their sex though taking into account their skills and competencies (Connolly, 2008). The best way the teachers can do this is by encouraging the students to use their inborn skills.

Recent findings show that stereotyping is harmful to society because it reduces the chances of people searching for information effectively. As information is an integral part of our lives and most work is related to it, individuals should resist the effects of stereotyping. In the USA, the racial stereotyping of youth has led to the increase of antisocial activities such as robbery and murder in the streets (Welch, 2007). Stereotypes are based on a generalization of certain characteristics that are said to be typical for some groups of people leading to the labeling of all people of this group as those possessing such a characteristic.

To sum up, the topic of gender should be introduced in educational institutions to enable the students to learn the differences and peculiar features of gender roles in the community. Though findings show that female and male students do have some differences in academic performance that occur due to their sex, students should be encouraged to shift roles and use their skills regardless of the effects of stereotyping. Teachers should be trained to give clear and useful instruction to students on the issue of gender roles in modern society. Stereotypes help people to manipulate others’ viewpoints by omitting the details and escaping a multifaceted approach in dealing with a particular individual. Therefore, students should learn more about gender roles and the negative effects of stereotyping; besides, students need to avoid those effects.

• Connolly, P. (2008). A critical review of some recent developments in quantitative research on gender and achievement in the United Kingdom. Routledge and Francis Journal , 29(3), 249-260.
• Pajares, F., & Valiante, G. (2002). Gender differences in writing motivation and achievement of middle school students: a function of gender orientation? Apps for Library Journal, 26 (3), 366-381.
• Welch, K. (2007). Black criminal stereotypes and racial profiling. Journal of Contemporary criminal Journal , 23 (3), 575-596.
• Evolutionary Explanation for Sex and Gender Differences
• Sexualities and Cultures Relations Explained
• Dangers of Stereotyping Students
• Self Identification at the Time of Enforcing the Law
• Stereotyping and Prejudice
• Sexuality, Gender, or the Natural History of Sex
• Women in the Moso Community
• Rust’s “Bisexuality: The State of the Union”
• Gender Related Questions in the Jewish War Novel by Tova Reich
• “Are There Differences Between the Brains of Males and Females?” by Doctor Sabattini
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, January 14). Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education. https://ivypanda.com/essays/gender-roles-and-stereotyping-in-education/

"Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education." IvyPanda , 14 Jan. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/gender-roles-and-stereotyping-in-education/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education'. 14 January.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education." January 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/gender-roles-and-stereotyping-in-education/.

1. IvyPanda . "Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education." January 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/gender-roles-and-stereotyping-in-education/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Gender Roles and Stereotyping in Education." January 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/gender-roles-and-stereotyping-in-education/.

• Education Shifts Power
• Ending Gender Stereotypes
• Feminist School
• Gender at the Centre Initiative
• School-related Gender-based Violence
• Transform Education

Knowledge Hub

Learning and resources on gender in education

Challenging gender bias and stereotypes in and through education

Launched on International Women's Day 2022, this factsheet shares the latest evidence and highlights how education can challenge gender bias and stereotypes in and through education. 

• Resource info
• Gender stereotypes
• Gender norms
• Gender equality in education

More to explore

Gender Responsive Pedagogy

Young Mothers Need Dignity and Agency

GCI Newsletter - Issue 6, English

Sign up to the ungei newsletter.

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Gender stereotypes and education: A comparative content analysis of Malaysian, Indonesian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi school textbooks

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Political and Press Section, German Embassy, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Department of Economics, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom, Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE), Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, School of Education, Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom, IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany

• Kazi Md. Mukitul Islam, 
• M. Niaz Asadullah

• Published: January 19, 2018
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807
• Reader Comments

Using government secondary school English language textbooks from Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, we conducted a quantitative content analysis in order to identify gender stereotypes in school education. In total, 21 categories of exclusion and quality of representation were used to study gender stereotypes. Our analysis confirms a pro-male bias in textbooks: the aggregate female share is 40.4% in textual and pictorial indicators combined. Female occupations are mostly traditional and less prestigious while the characters are predominantly introverted and passive in terms of personality traits. Women are also shown to be mostly involved in domestic and in-door activities while men have a higher presence in professional roles. Systematic underrepresentation of females is evident regardless of whether we look at the text or pictures. A cross-country analysis shows that the female share in picture content is only 35.2% in Malaysia and Bangladesh. Overall, the proportion of female to male characters (text and pictures combined) is balanced in Malaysia and Indonesia (44.4% and 44.1% respectively) while this share is only 24.4% and 37.3% in Pakistani and Bangladeshi textbooks respectively. The finding of underrepresentation of women in Pakistani textbooks, in terms of quality and quantity, is robust to the selection of province-, grade- and subject-specific textbooks, as well as the range and type of categories used.

Citation: Islam KMM, Asadullah MN (2018) Gender stereotypes and education: A comparative content analysis of Malaysian, Indonesian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi school textbooks. PLoS ONE 13(1): e0190807. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807

Editor: Aurora García-Gallego, Universitat Jaume I, SPAIN

Received: December 30, 2016; Accepted: December 20, 2017; Published: January 19, 2018

Copyright: © 2018 Islam, Asadullah. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper.

Funding: This study is part of a research project supported by the Population Studies Unit (PSU) grant number IF2014-002 of the University of Malaya, Malaysia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Despite their growing presence in the labor force and educational institutions in the last few decades, women remain socially marginalized and underrepresented within, as well as, outside of households in low-income countries [ 1 , 2 ]. More than 700 million women worldwide are married off each year before they reach their 18 th birthday while one in every three women experience physical violence by their intimate partners [ 3 ]. Women are also paid significantly lower wages than men [ 4 ]. They also account for almost two-thirds of the 775 million illiterate population today [ 5 ]. A contributing factor to the lack of improvement in women’s socioeconomic status is the persistent male-female gap in educational opportunities as well as in social and gender norms, which interfere with the ability of girls and women to take advantage of the opportunities in many developing countries [ 6 – 8 ].

Investment in women’s education is widely believed to benefit the society through numerous economic and noneconomic channels [ 9 – 17 ] [ 114 ]. Given the evidence of the private and social returns to female education and various international agreements and national campaigns, it is not surprising that gender inequality in school enrolment has reduced in many developing countries in the last few decades. In developing countries, the average years of female schooling have increased from 2.2 years to 7.2 years between 1970 and 2009 [ 18 ]. Between 2006 and 2013, female net enrollment in secondary education increased from 57% to 65% [ 19 ].

Schools serve as the dominant institution for transmitting social knowledge and attitudes, thereby facilitating social change [ 20 ]. Therefore, some consider higher school enrolment of girls to reduce gender inequality in society, using a broad range of indicators, by shifting social attitudes in favor of women [ 8 , 21 ]. In reality, however, educational institutions are not designed or mandated to shift social attitudes in favor of women. Exposure to institutional education may not be enough to alter gender attitudes and address gender stereotypes. According to some scholars, the classroom can paradoxically serve as a place for nurturing gender bias and stereotypes [ 6 ] [ 22 – 24 ]. For instance, in Africa, it is often the maxim in the classroom that teachers say “boys need career and girls need husbands” [ 23 ]. School education can even be a negative experience. For instance, religious schools often regulate the socialization process in ways that particularly disadvantage girls [ 25 ]. Moreover, there are pro-male attitudes among teachers [ 26 ] and gender imbalance in the teaching staff. Lastly, schools may rely on overly masculine textbooks for girls’ education [ 26 , 27 ]. According to Blumberg [ 6 ], gender bias in the textbook is one of the “hardest budge rocks in the road to gender equality in education” and is geographically more widespread than the gender gap in school enrolment. The United Nation’s Girl Education Initiative identified it as one of the five challenges towards achieving gender equality in education [ 28 ]. Biased textbook contents not only limit women’s worldviews and career choices, but they also distort their self-image and the image of the opposite gender group [ 29 ]. Yet, compared to other school-specific drivers of gender inequality, textbook content is less researched and frequently overlooked in the policy debate. This is a serious concern given the evidence that students spend the majority (80%-95%) of their classroom time using textbooks [ 30 ]. Most teachers also rely on textbooks for assigning homework for the students [ 31 ]. Research on classroom practices from developing countries shows that teachers barely challenge the textbook stereotypes and instead reproduce them; this only propagates the problem, while students passively receive what they are taught [ 32 ].

Our study, therefore, examines the presence of gender stereotypes in school textbooks in four countries in South and South-East Asia, namely, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These countries were chosen because they belong to different levels of socio-economic development and vary significantly in terms of progress in female schooling despite their patriarchal social structure. The sample countries also have a predominantly Muslim population, so an analysis of these countries can shed additional light on the relatively higher gender inequality in Muslim countries in education and social indicators [ 11 , 33 ]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative study on gender stereotypes in school textbooks of these four major Muslim countries.

Our research objectives are to document the extent of (a) gender exclusion and improper representation in the texts and images of the textbooks and (b) the variation in gender stereotypes across countries. In terms of study population, we exclusively focus on government-approved English textbooks used in secondary schools (grade 9). The content analysis technique is applied to examine gender imbalances in textbooks employing as many as 21 indicators. Since our main analysis is based on a single textbook from each of the four countries, we further examine ten additional textbooks from Pakistan to assess the sensitivity of our findings.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the sample countries regarding aggregate indicators of economic performance, women’s economic and political participation, educational and demographic achievements and constitutional articles/rights. Section 3 presents an extensive review of the literature on textbook content analysis. Section 4 discusses the methodology and data. Section 5 presents the main results while Section 6 concludes.

Study background: Women’s schooling and socioeconomic status in the sample countries

Women in South and South-East Asia face a multitude of social and economic problems. Their participation in the labor market is not only low, but they are also less likely to be employed compared to men (see Table 1 ). On average, only 55 females participate in the labor force for every 100 males in our sample countries. Pakistani women are particularly disadvantaged regarding labor market indicators and contraceptive prevalence rate, where women also face a greater burden of housework owing to larger family size.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t001

However, there are notable differences between South and South-East Asia (see Table 1 e.g. [ 1 , 19 , 41 – 44 ]). In Bangladesh and Pakistan, female literacy rates and gross female enrolment are almost half that of Malaysia and Indonesia. The under-investment in girls’ education continues despite the fact that female education has many non-economic direct and indirect benefits [ 12 ] [ 34 – 38 ]. Schooling also matters significantly for the labor market performance of women in South and South-East Asia [ 39 , 40 ]. Solely owing to reservation policies, Pakistan and Bangladesh have more female parliamentarians.

In recent decades, governments in these four countries have responded to the existing gender gaps in social and labor market indicators by enacting new laws that aim to improve women’s access to education as well as job opportunities. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, financial incentives have been provided to girls for continuing on to secondary school and/or delaying marriage [ 17 , 45 , 46 ]. Constitutions in the four countries studied promise equality, non-discrimination, the right to education and political participation for women (See Table 1 ). All countries have National Women Policies that emphasize equal rights for women in the socio-economic domain. At the same time, patriarchal mindsets often demand reforms that undermine pro-women policies. Examples include virginity tests for female police recruitment in Indonesia [ 47 ], the reform of a marriage law in Bangladesh and Malaysia allowing for child marriage under “exceptional circumstances” [ 17 , 46 , 48 ], a discriminatory application of family law denouncing Malaysian women as second class citizens [ 49 ] and the practice of honor killings in Pakistan [ 50 ].

Therefore, women remain poorly represented in economic as well as political spheres (e.g., the share in ministerial positions). The rising enrolment of females in schools (primary, secondary or even higher) per se does not guarantee gender empowerment or equality. Patriarchal customs and social norms continue to affect gender roles through socialization processes at school and at home. This, in turn, shapes women’s attitudes towards further education and the job market [ 51 ]. Women in the region face many social barriers outside the education system and the schooling of young women can enhance their voice and power within the family [ 50 ]. However, a gender insensitive school curriculum may particularly undermine this important role of education in addressing the existing sources of gender inequality in society. Universal access to education can, paradoxically, serve as an institutional source of discrimination through the teaching system, classroom environment and the school curriculum [ 23 ]. This is an important concern because all countries have agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and joined the global community in making ambitious commitments to gender equality in education. Thus, they are bound to the indicative strategy recommended in Education 2030 Target 4.5 of SDG 4, namely, “Ensure government review of education sector plans, budgets, curricula and textbooks, along with teacher training and supervision, so that they are free of gender stereotypes and promote equality, non-discrimination and human rights and foster intercultural education”[ 52 ]. The next section elaborates on this concern by critically reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of textbooks in gender development.

Literature review

In this section, we first focus on the theories of gender stereotypes based on differences in school curricula only. In the second part of this section, we present an overview of the existing studies on textbook content analyses with a particular focus on developing country studies.

There are two theories of gender stereotypes within an educational institution, namely, social cognitive theory and hidden curriculum theory. The social cognitive theory emphasizes three types of environmental structures in schools: imposed, selected and constructed. In imposed environmental settings, teachers, curricula, textbook content and the class environment are all forced upon a child regardless of his/her personal preference [ 53 ]. In such a setting, they develop gender perceptions based on what they learn through the curriculum, teachers and other mechanisms at school. The hidden curriculum theory helps us to understand how gender stereotyped attitudes are reproduced in an imposed environment in schools. It maintains that school curriculum teaches something beyond the scope of the existing (formal) curriculum which is often implied and delivered through textbooks, teachers or other instruments [ 54 ]. As such, textbooks, staffing patterns, and the system of rewards, all contribute to promoting gender stereotypes at school, lowering self-esteem and undermining aspiration among for girls [ 23 ].

Jones, Kitetu, and Sunderland illustrate the interplay between hidden curriculum and its implication for cognitive and pedagogical development using gender imbalance in textbook ‘dialogues’[ 55 ]. First, if examples of dialogue between individuals of a particular gender are less frequent in the book, then students of the silenced gender will have fewer opportunities as dialogue participants. Second, if one sex initiates conversation most of the time, then the other sex will have inactive/passive participation in the dialogue. Finally, the negative cognitive impact of this is that female students consciously or unconsciously become demotivated to play roles that are restricted linguistically as well as occupationally. Therefore, this marginalization within textbooks (i.e. biased gender modeling through hidden curriculum) indirectly shapes female students’ acceptance of disempowered roles.

With regards to hidden curricula, there are two reasons why education materials succeed in instilling values and attitudes in the minds of young students. First, students accept what is imposed on them and are less critical about it. Second, most of their learning time is spent reading textbooks and paying attention to the messages conveyed through these books [ 56 ]. Moreover, in Asian countries, textbooks play an important role in the education system—the common perception is that whatever is printed in the textbook must be practiced [ 57 , 58 ].

Motivated by the social cognitive and hidden curriculum theories of gender stereotypes, numerous studies have examined teaching and learning materials to analyze the extent of the problem. The content analysis technique is one of the most common approaches to studying gender stereotypes in school textbooks in both developing countries (e.g., [ 6 ],[ 27 ] [ 59 – 62 ]) and developed countries (e.g.,[ 6 ] [ 62 – 66 ]). The simplest method involves coding the text and counting concepts, words and occurrences and reporting them in tables [ 67 ]. The key steps involve selectingthe sample text (whole book or specific chapters), identifying the unit of analysis (e.g. words, sentences, etc.), developing categories, reviewing the text to categorize it, counting and logging the occurrences of categories and statistical analysis facilitating interpretation [ 68 ]. Cohen described the process in 4Cs: coding, categorizing, comparing and concluding. Different scholars have suggested detailed and systematic steps to conduct content analysis research [ 60 , 62 ]. In this study, we have followed 11 steps detailed by Cohen [ 67 , 69 ].

One of the benefits of choosing content analysis is that the data is in a permanent form (texts and pictures) and verifiable as well as replicable through repeated analysis [ 67 ]. The literature using the content analysis method to explore gender bias has grown in developing countries in the past two decades [ 6 , 62 ]. Some of these studies only focus on picture-based analysis while others additionally scrutinize textual content. The latter group also varies regarding the extent to which they study exclusion and the quality of representation. Studies also differ regarding the selection of grade- and subject-specific textbooks.

Among early studies in Muslim developing countries, textbooks in Syria were found to portray males as engaging in a bustling world, while females were in the background in servitude, often degraded and victimized [ 27 ]. Similarly, in Nigeria, an analysis of 15 of the most frequently taught novels from 15 English literature textbooks found that all the stories were male-centered; out of 273 characters, only 61 were female [ 70 ]. A comparative analysis of gender stereotypes in the textbooks of two Arab countries found that textbooks in Jordan featured female characters 20.8 percent of the time as compared to almost zero or no mention of achievements of women in Palestine [ 71 ]. Likewise in Iran, some studies pointed out female exclusion and the quality of representation in the textbooks (e.g., [ 61 ] [ 72 – 74 ]). Bahman and Rahimi, for instance, examined different aspects of gender bias in 3 volumes of English textbooks taught in secondary schools in Iran [ 72 ] and found 70%-80% names, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives to be male specific.

Research in non-Muslim developing countries also suggests similar patterns. Studies in India show a high rate of male chauvinism in the textbook contents [ 75 – 77 ]. Women are found in less than one tenth of the textbooks in the Andhra Pradesh region [ 75 ] and around one fourth in the Rajasthan region [ 77 ]. Similar to India, studies in African countries show relative underrepresentation as well as poor quality of representation of females. In Zambia, for instance, the content analysis of secondary school textbooks found that 73.9% of the examples involved males shown as hard working with wage employment [ 78 ]. In China, primary school textbooks were found to over-represent males in all categories, the most stereotyped of which were professional occupations [ 79 ].

For our sample countries, existing content analysis studies describe women in passive and derogatory roles and limit their involvement to indoor activities [ 59 , 80 , 81 ]. One Malaysian study found 66% of all verbs used in the textbook to be male-specific [ 80 ]. Another study finds that textbooks function as channels for the indoctrination of sexism among young Malaysians [ 59 ].

In Indonesia, women were not only underrepresented in the English textbooks of higher grades in secondary school, but men were given a wider range of roles (62.4% as opposed to 37.2% in the case of women) [ 82 ]. The presence of gender stereotypes was also confirmed using a 12 th grade English textbook in Indonesia where the authors identified 1,098 (77%) male characters in comparison to only 321 (23%) female characters [ 83 ].

In Pakistan, Zeenatunissa examined 7 English and Urdu language textbooks at the secondary level [ 60 ]. She found that in only about 15% to 20% cases women were portrayed as leading characters, regular characters and subjects of biographies. Meanwhile, of the 50 occupations mentioned in the textbooks, women were only assigned to 8. Their activities were service-oriented, whereas men were in power-oriented activities. Mirza conducted by far the most comprehensive study on textbook contents in Pakistan [ 84 ]. It included as many as 194 textbooks from 4 provinces, spanning grades 1 to 10. Her study found only 26.5% of women as central characters. Regarding professional characters, only 15% were female in primary level textbooks and 9.8% in secondary level books. Moreover, only six attributes were exclusively used for females in contrast to 59 for males. Female attributes were passive (e.g., modest, noble, dear, etc.) while those for a male were bold (brave, truthful, etc.).

In a more recent study in the Sindh province, a study found 60% of the stories to be pro-male, while 76% of all images contained a male character [ 85 ]. In the Punjab region, content analysis of primary school Urdu and English language textbooks revealed similar evidence of gender stereotypes and ‘gender apartheid’ pictures [ 86 ]. A comparative study of three South Asian countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal also confirms underrepresentation of women, particularly in Pakistani textbooks [ 87 ].

In Bangladesh, while textbook contents have often been manipulated by successive governments for political purposes [ 88 ], gender bias in the curriculum and learning materials remains an overlooked topic. Because of the excessive focus on creating a national identity through textbooks, issues like gender are often bypassed by the authority in charge of textbook development [ 87 , 89 ]. The available evidence is mostly qualitative. The findings indicate that women are given limited space, and their contribution is disregarded in the textbook [ 87 , 89 , 90 ].

In sum, our review of the existing literature spanning the period 1980–2016 altogether identified nineteen studies covering Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The overall findings from these studies, as discussed above, show broadly similar patterns of gender stereotypes over time and across countries. Moreover, the evidence discussed for developing countries also show high gender stereotypes regardless of whether they are Muslim or non-Muslim, Arab or non-Arab, Asian or African. Findings based on more recent analysis in these countries do not suggest that exclusion and improper representation is decreasing. Nonetheless, it is difficult to conclude whether the observed pattern is systematic across countries. Most of the studies reviewed in this section suffer from several methodological limitations which limit the scope for direct comparisons.

First, they employ a narrow selection of textbooks (regarding the total number and types) and may not be representative of the true extent of gender bias. Second, most studies rely on a very small number of categories. Third, some studies only examine pictures (e.g., Ena [ 83 ] in Indonesia) while others focus on texts. In general, there appears to be a trade-off between content and textbook coverage in the literature–studies covering more textbooks restrict the analysis to fewer content-specific indicators. For instance, Jasmani et al. use six textbooks but only one indicator [ 84 ]. Apparently, there is no consensus among scholars regarding the number of textbooks and categories for constructing the quantitative indicators. The majority of the studies employed 4 to 5 indicators, on average, while the number of textbooks used range from 1 to 194. Therefore, in this study, we address these methodological limitations not only by using a much larger sample of indicators/categories, but also by examining the robustness of our findings by varying the textbook sample for one study country by grade, province, and subject. To our knowledge, this is the first study looking at developing countries to perform such a sensitivity analysis formally.

Lastly, the literature also lacks consensus on what constitutes ‘misrepresentation’. According to policymakers in some countries, textbooks should represent the social reality in a country [ 84 ]. A higher presence of women in lower socioeconomic roles and characters is therefore an authentic portrayal of women even though they may reinforce gender stereotypes. Depicting women as leaders and decision makers in society and men as caregivers may constitute a misrepresentation. Others, however, maintain that the role of the textbook should be emancipatory and present progressive and affirmative images of women [ 52 , 91 ]. Women’s representation in textbooks should reflect their dynamic positions, multiple roles and identities; they may be mothers and caregivers but also income earners and professionals [ 92 , 93 ]. In this paper, our approach is the latter and we evaluate the quality of representation in text and images in terms of proportionate gender presence in prestigious roles and activities.

Research design, the sample, and data

Our primary study population of interest is secondary school English language textbooks used in the ninth grade in the academic year of 2015 [ 94 – 97 ]. Sample textbooks are described in Table 2 . There are two reasons for restricting the analysis to English language textbooks. Firstly, as this is a cross-country study, only English language textbooks can be analyzed comparatively without any language barriers. Secondly, English language textbooks have been widely used in gender stereotype research and other socio-cultural content analysis studies for both single country analysis [ 59 – 61 , 63 – 65 , 70 , 72 , 73 , 80 , 82 , 86 , 98 ] as well as cross country comparisons [ 99 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t002

The justification for focusing on secondary school textbooks is twofold. First, some studies used secondary level textbooks for analyzing gender stereotypes [ 60 , 61 , 63 , 64 , 70 – 72 , 78 , 80 , 82 , 98 , 99 ]. Second, this is the final stage for students after which they decide to either further their academic career, or enter the job market (primarily boys), or get married off (primarily girls).

Our analysis of gender stereotypes in textbooks is based on two broader frameworks, i.e exclusion and the quality of representation. ‘Exclusion’ refers to the lack of presence of a particular gender, while poor ‘quality of representation’ refers to the incorrect or biased portrayal of one gender over the other (see Table 3 ). According to OHCHR [ 58 ], gender stereotypes can arise in either form and are defined as:

“ …a generalized view or preconception about attributes or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by , or the roles that are or should be performed by women and men . A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities , pursue their professional careers and make choices about their lives and life plans . Harmful stereotypes can be both hostile/negative (e . g ., women are irrational) or seemingly benign (e . g ., women are nurturing) .”

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t003

Keeping the above definition in mind, and building on the literature discussed earlier, 21 sub-categories were identified. Our qualitative, albeit descriptive, analysis is primarily carried out using four elements of the textbook content. These are: words (e.g. names, nouns, pronouns, attributes, roles etc.), sentences (e.g. dialogues between two males vs. two females, firstness or order of mention in sentences), stories (e.g. centeredness of the story, leading characters) and pictures (e.g. the individual and their activities) as different units of analysis. We follow the four Cs of Cohen—coding, categorizing (creating meaningful categories where suitable units of analysis are used), comparing and concluding [ 67 ]. A total of 713 pages from sample textbooks were manually analyzed based on the 21 identified categories in a Microsoft excel spreadsheet.

To ensure the reliability of the content analysis, we followed two strategies. First, a small subset of textbook pages (20%) was initially analyzed to check the appropriateness of categorization as suggested by Weber [ 69 ] and Cohen [ 67 ]. Second, following Milne and Adler [ 100 ], overall findings were cross-checked after a few weeks of the primary content analysis to ensure inter-coder reliability.

Since our study of gender stereotypes is centered upon two broad frameworks, exclusion and the quality of representation, the 21 categories are organized to fit these two broad frameworks. Data on each of the 713 pages of the four textbooks are analyzed according to these categories and inputted into the excel spreadsheet using simple codes. After the frequency and range of categories are identified, data analysis was done at the individual level (i.e., gender wise analysis) as well as at the aggregate level (i.e., cross-country analysis). The data was analyzed in order to identify patterns and differences between genders and countries.

It should be noted that, similar to previous studies, we examined school textbooks by restricting the analysis to a single-subject textbook, as well as from a single grade. However, as discussed in section 3, this is less than ideal since the findings, particularly country rankings, can be sensitive to sample composition. Moreover, in countries governed by a federal system, textbook content can vary by location. To address these concerns, we examined additional textbooks to verify whether our results change depending on the textbook type. We do so by looking at five additional English textbooks, from both primary and secondary school levels, as well as four subject-specific books used in grade 9 in the Punjab province of Pakistan. This sensitivity analysis is, however, based on pictorial indicators only. To assess whether the results are specific to the Punjab province, we repeated the full content analysis (text as well as picture) using the grade 9 English textbook from KPK, one of the poorest provinces of Pakistan (see Table 2 for details).

Main findings

Gender visibility: exclusion vs. inclusion.

Exclusion or under-representation of one gender in the textbook is one form of gender stereotype and discrimination. Table 4 presents our findings for each category using both text and pictures. The figures in the table show the percentage of female presence for each indicator and the figure in parenthesis indicates the total number of the respective item in the textbook.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t004

In the nine word-related sub-categories, the average female share is 36.08% (aggregating the four-country average). Regarding the sentence-related sub-category, average female exclusion is 42.4% in firstness and dialogue indicators. In the sub-category relating to stories, we found female presence to be 40.4% in the four categories. Finally, the visual representation sub-categories show the female share to be 42.8%. Findings based on 19 indicators reported in Table 4 show that female presence is lower (40.4%) than male presence.

However, there is important variation across countries regarding female exclusion. The sum of 19 categories shows a nearly balanced percentage share between males and females in Malaysian (44.4) and Indonesian (44.1) textbooks. In contrast, we find high female exclusion in Pakistani (24.4) and Bangladeshi (37.3) textbooks. This finding is consistent with female share in non-pictorial indicators. However in pictorial indicators, the Indonesian textbook has a very high female share (58.0%), while the Malaysian and Bangladeshi textbooks have a female share of 35.2%. There are no images with human figures in the Pakistani textbook (from the Punjab board). Also, even though there is apparent gender parity in the Malaysian and Indonesian textbooks, we still find considerable gender disparity when individual indicators are considered. For instance, high presence of male characters is evident in categories like ‘Firstness’, ‘Professional occupation’ in the Malaysian textbook and ‘Nouns’, ‘Attributes (range)’, ‘Attributes (range)’, ‘Professional Occupation’, ‘Firstness’ and ‘Author’ in the Indonesian textbook (see Table 4 ).

To better understand exclusion in the context of previous studies, Table 5 below summarizes the findings of female-male visibility in previous studies of five developed non-Muslim majority countries and five developing Muslim majority countries. The findings of our study resemble all the recent studies conducted in developing countries as well as the findings from studies and textbooks used in developed countries two to three decades ago. All these studies identified the share of male presence between 65–75 percent and the share of female presence between 25–35 percent in the textbooks.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t005

However, the country-specific findings of this study reveal surprising facts about exclusion. It shows that the degree of exclusion in the Malaysian and Indonesian textbooks is quite different from the degree of exclusion in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi textbooks. The former two countries resemble the findings of recent studies in developed countries showing a more balanced gender representation. On the other hand, in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi textbooks, the degree of exclusion also varies but resembles findings of developing countries in general. While the Bangladeshi textbook almost resembles the overall finding of this study, the Pakistani textbook represents a much higher female exclusion, which is consistent with findings from recent studies using Pakistani textbooks.

Improper representation

In addition to the under-representation of one gender in textbooks, gender stereotyped representations or false portrayal of one gender is another form of gender stereotyping. In this section, we discuss the ‘quality of gender representation’, based on four categories: ‘terms used to address females’, ‘domestic roles’, ‘professional roles’, and ‘attributes’ used for female and male characters (see Tables 6 – 9 ). In contrast to the categories reported in Table 4 , which are primarily quantitative measures of female exclusion, these four categories capture both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of gender representation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t006

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t007

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t008

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t009

Representation in domestic roles.

The high percentage of female characters in domestic roles is one of the common forms of gender-stereotyped representation in textbooks [ 64 , 84 ]. We find that females are presented in domestic roles four times more than their male counterparts (see Table 6 ). The four-country average female representation in different social roles is 31.2%. Even for the Malaysian textbook, which have a fairly balanced female aggregate presence using the 19 indicators (i.e. Table 2 ), we find a high female representation in the domestic role category (with a share of 85%). Meanwhile, in the Pakistani textbook, no male character is depicted in a domestic role.

Terms used when addressing female characters.

When a female is addressed as ‘Mrs.’, it identifies her in terms of her male counterpart. On the other hand, when someone is addressed as ‘Miss or Ms.’, then it refers only to her identity. The use of ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss/Ms.’ is thus an important category in linguistic sexism and has been used in previous content analysis studies [ 64 ]. In our study, both Malaysian and Bangladeshi textbooks show more frequent use of ‘Miss’ in addressing female characters, while in Indonesian textbook, most female characters are referred as ‘Mrs.’ (see Table 7 ). This shows a promising shift in the use of terms when addressing female characters, moving from focusing on their marital identity to their independent identity.

Representation in professional roles or occupations

Table 8 below shows the most stated professions for both female and male characters. ‘Teacher’ is the most stated profession for females in Malaysia and Bangladesh. The overall findings show that professions attached to female characters are traditional, and lower in prestige and income. This finding is in line with previous studies using Pakistani, German and other textbooks [ 60 , 65 , 78 , 107 , 108 ]. Moreover, surprisingly in the Bangladeshi textbook, the professional roles are more prestigious and demanding than in any of the other textbooks (such as a lawyer, social scientist or even a TV anchor).

Representation in personality traits

In the textbooks, women are often found to be portrayed as weak, victimized, passive and subordinate [ 60 , 70 , 84 , 99 , 109 ]. On the other hand, the image of male characters reflects quite the opposite personality; as they are portrayed as bold, brave and active agents in society. In this study, we used the five factor model [ 110 ] to identify the personality traits of female and male characters in the textbooks (see Table 9 ). The five factor model [ 110 ] is a popular method used in studies dealing with personality traits; it identifies five different traits: extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness [ 111 ].

This study uses a list of adjectives developed by John [ 112 ] for each of the five personality traits. The adjectives are divided into two groups: high and low. Using this list, an individual is given either a high or a low score for each personality trait. A high score in extraversion (E), openness (O) and conscientiousness (C) is quite the opposite of a high score in neuroticism (N) and agreeableness (A). For instance, having a low score in the former three is the same as being introverted, closed, and having a lack of direction [ 111 , 113 ]. Whereas having a low score in the latter two is tantamount to being emotionally stable and analytical.

Table 9 shows female-male percentage share at each of the personality traits categories. From a total of 349 attributes range (see Table 4 ), we selected only those (n = 132) that correspond with the list of John [ 112 ]. Of the 132 selected attributes, only 39 attributes were found for women (29.5%) i.e. male figures have higher representation. Therefore, the direct reading of the table can be misleading, if one intends to compare gender-wise share at each of the five low and high traits. For instance, having 0% ‘Low E’ for females does not mean that they are less likely to be introvert. Rather, we have 0% ‘Low E’ due to the fact that they have exclusion problem in general. Therefore, a better way to identify male-female personality trait is through extrovert-introvert ratio of male and female for each country for each of the five traits (i.e. EOCNA).

We calculated the extrovert-introvert ratio by giving 1 point to males or females if their share is more than 50% in any of the particular categories of EOCNA. Thus, an absolute extroversion will show extrovert-introvert ratio would entail a result of 5:0 and 0:5 for absolute introversion. Our result shows that for males, the extrovert-introvert ratio is 2:1, 2:2, 4:3 and 5:3 for Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh and ratio of 1:3, 0:0, 1:0 and 0:2 for females respectively. This means, except for Indonesia, the other three countries have high male share in favor of extroverted traits and introverted ones. Similarly, for females, only Pakistani textbook favors extroverted traits (that too is due to exclusion problem). On the other hand, both Malaysian and Bangladeshi textbooks have high female share in introverted traits than extroverted ones. In our sample, Malaysia is the only country where we find equal male-female attributes range for testing the attributes (the other three has exclusion problem). Even for Malaysia our result show males favoring extroverted personality traits while females as introvert and passive, a finding that is consistent with past studies [ 27 , 80 , 84 , 99 , 109 ].

Besides, this demarcation is also visible how female and male characters are presented in the textbooks. Some of the common characters attributed to men include: disciplined , responsible , sensible , visionary , legendary etc., whereas for females the attributes include: messy , depressed , kind , compassionate etc. Some of the practical examples from the textbooks for females are: a) “I am a sixteen year old girl. I am depressed.” (p.168 in Malaysian textbook); b) “Tisha’s room is always messy” (p.8 in Bangladeshi textbook); c) “the world salutes her for her love and compassion for humanity” taking about Mother Teresa (p. 118 in Bangladeshi textbook); d) “Nature, a mother, is kind to all” (p. 122 in Pakistani textbook) and for males examples include: a) Jamil, a sensible character who is lauded for avoiding overcrowded boat and saving his life. (p. 49 in Bangladeshi textbook); b) “Jobs was a visionary” (p. 121 in Bangladeshi textbook); c) “They came together to oppose this powerful giant by using his stupidity” talking about a character named Kbo Lwo in Bali (p. 91 in Indonesian textbook).

Sensitivity analysis

One criticism of the existing quantitative analyses of textbook content is that they rely on very specific samples and, therefore, it is difficult to generalize the results. Our analysis can be criticized on the same grounds, as we have only used grade 9 English textbooks from each of the study countries. In this section, we, therefore, assess the sensitivity of our findings by using additional textbooks from one of our study countries. Since Pakistan is ranked behind other sample countries in terms of…, we conduct the sensitivity analysis using other Pakistani textbooks. We do this to ascertain whether the poor ranking is as a result of the textbook we chose, or due to the absence of other variables causing heterogeneity in our data.

First, we repeat the analysis of the picture contents of English textbooks used in different grades in the Punjab province (see Table 10 ). The grade 9 sample textbook has no pictures, while all the books used in grades 4 to 8 and 10 contain pictures. A total of 575 pages from five textbooks were analyzed using pictorial indicators. The percentages in Table 9 show that in all secondary school textbooks, Pakistan is behind the other sample countries regarding female presence (see Table 4 ). This is true in all domains, i.e., the total number of pictures, the centeredness of the picture and indoor and outdoor activities. The percentage of pictures with females ranges from 11 to 25 percent (considering all grades). Only the grade 4 textbook appears to have a balanced representation of males and females.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t010

Second, we assess whether the poor ranking of Pakistan is because we restricted our analysis to English language textbooks only. We repeat the analysis of the Pakistan textbooks (from the Punjab province) using grade 9 Chemistry, Mathematics, Science, and Biology textbooks. In total, we examined pictorial contents from 945 pages for this analysis. As can be seen from Table 11 , grade 9 textbooks from the Punjab province, in general, contain very few pictures. In the Physics book, we identified 23 pictures (containing a human character) of which only 17% contained a female figure. Chemistry and Biology books contained as many as 58 and 21 pictures with human figures respectively, and all of them were male.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t011

Lastly, we repeated the same analysis as in Table 4 using a grade 9 English textbook from KPK, a different province in Pakistan (see Table 12 ). In 9 out of the 19 non-picture related categories, the female share is lower in the KPK textbook as compared to the Punjab textbook. While KPK English textbook for grade 9 contains many pictures (when that for Punjab contains none), the overall female share in pictures is very small (3%) and far below the respective figures for other study country samples (as shown in Table 4 ). Consequently, the overall result (picture and non-picture items combined) for the KPK textbook is 14% which is even lower than that reported earlier for the Pakistani textbook in Table 4 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190807.t012

In sum, the analysis of textbooks from a different province (KPK) as well as those relating to different subjects and grades in the Punjab province confirm that at least in the context of Pakistan, findings based on our main analysis are not driven by the textbook subject or grade. Irrespective of what textbook we used from Pakistan, it lagged behind the other study countries regarding female presence in textbooks.

We found a high degree of gender stereotypes in the form of ‘exclusion’ and ‘the quality of representation’ in all the sample textbooks. Moreover, female characters were mostly associated with traditional and low wage occupations as well as more passive personality traits. The extent of stereotypes found in the textbooks, however, varies across countries. The Malaysian and Indonesian textbooks have a more egalitarian representation of females than their South Asian counterparts, Pakistan and Bangladesh. On the other hand, compared to the other three countries, women in Bangladeshi textbooks are described in a wider range of professional roles such as teachers and lawyers. Overall, the contents of the Pakistani textbook show the highest percentage of stereotypes (regarding exclusion), while the lowest was found in the Malaysian textbook. The Pakistani textbook consistently ranks below the Malaysian, Indonesian, and Bangladeshi in almost all gender indicators. Using province, subject and grade specific textbooks, we further show that the poor ranking of the Pakistani textbook, in comparison to the other study countries is not as a result of the specific textbook used in our primary analysis. Among other things, while textbooks in Indonesia and Malaysia have higher gender balance when compared to Pakistan, our analysis also highlights areas where there is room for further improvement in textbook gender content (regarding quality of representation) in these two countries. Nonetheless, the observed regional differences are consistent with the relatively higher economic status women in Southeast Asian countries enjoy in comparison to other developing countries [ 115 , 116 ] and in line with evidence presented in earlier studies using textbook content analysis [ 87 ].

Our findings have important implications for gender and education policies in developing countries. Public interventions in South Asia that focus on women’s development have been preoccupied with employment and income-generating schemes [ 117 ]. This approach implicitly assumes that the education system will empower women by preparing them for the job market. Our results highlight the need to go beyond the current policy focus on improving access to education among girls. In that sense, our findings add to the recent research that warns about the limitations of fostering gender equity exclusively through school-based initiatives [ 118 , 119 , 122 ]. In this regard, the Global Monitoring Report 2015 rightly stressed the need to revise textbook content and restore gender balance as well as encourage children to question gender stereotypes in the society [ 120 ]. However, not all governments have been equally successful in addressing the problem. In the case of Pakistan, the 2001–2015 Education for All (EFA) action plan also acknowledged the need to free textbooks of gender bias. Despite this policy initiative and clear evidence of gender bias in learning materials documented in academic research conducted in the 1990s and 2000s, we found evidence of gender stereotypes in Pakistani school textbooks across grades, subjects, and provinces. The lack of change in textbook content in Pakistan partly reflects the fact that chairmen and directors of textbook boards in the country believe that gender portrayals of the textbooks should be in agreement with the status quo [ 84 ]. This suggests that simply re-prioritizing the elimination of stereotypes in school textbooks and classroom practices in policy documents may not be enough to attain the SDGs of gender equality by 2030. Changing the mindset of policymakers remains a key challenge. A participatory approach that ensures a wider consultation of teachers, authors, and reviewers of both genders in curriculum and textbook review as well as development is critical [ 93 ]. Such consultation processes should also include comprehensive expert reviews of textbook gender contents such as this one.

Lastly, while the extant literature primarily documenting gender bias in curriculum materials is growing, why countries differ in terms of textbook quality is unclear. One popular explanation is the male dominated textbook development process [ 93 ], though it is difficult to statistically validate this hypothesis based on a small sample of textbooks. Political factors can also influence curriculum development, particularly in countries where the delivery of education is decentralized to the state level. Moreover, very few studies have attempted to evaluate the impact of programs which make textbooks gender-sensitive [ 121 ]. Evidence suggests considerable variations in support for gender stereotypes among students across schools that differ in terms of curriculum content [ 122 ]. Follow-up studies focusing on the causes of cross-country variation in gender contents as well as evaluation of existing initiatives to remove gender bias in textbook content will be informative. Equally, while our analysis confirms that textbooks disseminate a hidden curriculum among students, we did not empirically test whether actual student attitudes systematically vary owing to the textbooks they used in school. This is left for future research.

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by Population Studies Unit, Faculty of Economics & Administration, University of Malaya (Grant number IF2014-002). We are grateful to two referees of this journal as well as Husaina Banu Bt Kenayathulla of University of Malaya, Uma Kambhampati of University of Reading and Nora Fyles of United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) for detailed comments on the manuscript. We also thank Goutam Roy of National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) of Bangladesh, participants at the Thinking Gender Conference organized by the Centre for the Study of Women, University of California (Los Angeles, USA), the UKFIET 2017 Conference on Education and Development (Oxford, UK), and research seminar at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) for useful feedback. Sahar Saeed of Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), Pakistan, and Umihannie Tukimin of LeapEd, Malaysia, helped with copies of country-specific school textbooks. The usual disclaimers apply.

• 1. UNDP. “Human Development Report 2015”. New York UNDP, 2015.
• 2. World Bank. WTW. “World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington D.C: World Bank, 2011.
• 3. UN Women. UTUN. “Facts and figures: ending violence against women”: UN Women 2015 [cited 2016 February 16]. Available from: http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures .
• 4. International Labor Organization. “Women at Work Trends 2016”. ILO, 2016.
• 5. UN Chronicle. “Education as Pathway towards Gender Equality”: UN Chronicle, L (4).; 2013 [cited 2016 January 15, 2016.]. Available from: http://unchronicle.un.org/article/education-pathway-towards-gender-equality/ .
• 6. Blumberg RL. “Gender bias in textbooks: a hidden obstacle on the road to gender equality in education”. UNESCO, 2007.
• 7. UNESCO (The United Nations Educational SaCO. Education for All Global Monitoring Report. Strong Foundations: Early Childhood Care and Education”. Paris: UNESCO, 2006.
• 8. Bank W. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington DC.: World Bank, 2014.
• View Article
• Google Scholar
• 11. Dollar D, Gatti R. Gender inequality, income, and growth: are good times good for women?: Development Research Group, The World Bank Washington, DC; 1999.
• 12. Drèze J, Sen A. An uncertain glory: India and its contradictions: Princeton University Press; 2013.
• PubMed/NCBI
• 15. Jimenez E, Patrinos HA. Can cost-benefit analysis guide education policy in developing countries? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, Vol. 2008.
• 16. Sen A. Development as freedom: Oxford Paperbacks; 2001.
• 19. “World Development Indicators” [Internet]. World Bank 2015 [cited Accessed May 2016]. Available from: http://data.worldbank.org/ .
• 21. Sperling GB, Winthrop R. What Works in Girls' Education: Evidence for the World's Best Investment: Brookings Institution Press; 2015.
• 22. Stromquist NP, Lee M, Brock-Utne B. The explicit and the hidden school curriculum. In: Stromquist NP, editor. Women in the Third World: an encyclopedia of contemporary issues. New York: Garland Publishing; 1998. p. 397–407.
• 26. Bailey S. How schools shortchange girls: The AAUW report. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company. 1992.
• 28. UNGEI. UNGEI at 10: A Journey to Gender Equality in Education. New York 2010.
• 32. Page E, Jha J. Exploring the bias: Gender and stereotyping in secondary schools: Commonwealth Secretariat; 2009.
• 33. Asadullah MN. The Conversation [Internet]2014. Available from: http://theconversation.com/gender-equity-in-schools-in-muslim-countries-it-can-be-done-32271 .
• 35. The effect of education on the timing of marriage and first birth in Pakistan [Internet]. ANU Open Research Repository 2001. Available from: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/41483/6/gangadharan_maitra.pdf .
• 41. Forum) WWE. Global Gender Gap Report. World Economic Forum., 2015.
• 42. “Women in Politics: 2014 [Internet]. The United Nations Women. 2014 [cited Accessed January 18 2016.]. Available from: http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2014/wmnmap14_en.pdf.ashx .
• 43. Women) UtUN. Constitutional Database UN Women; 2016. Available from: http://constitutions.unwomen.org/ .
• 44. Education: Percentage of female teachers by teaching level of education [Internet]. 2016 [cited 10/11/2017]. Available from: http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=178 .
• 47. Watch). HHR. Indonesia: Virginity test for female police: Human Rights Watch; 2014 [cited 2016. January 20]. Available from: https://http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/11/17/indonesia-virginity-tests-female-police .
• 49. Kent J. Malaysia Women suffer ‘apartheid’. BBC news 2006.
• 50. Londergan B. “Fighting honor killing in Pakistan with fashion”. Huffington Post. 2013 June 2 2013.
• 51. Hadi ST, editor. Gender Stereotypes about College Majors: Prevalent Perceptions of Bangladeshi Undergraduates”. Dhaka University Press Limited; 2011.
• 52. UNESCO. Education 2030 Incheon Declaration: Towards Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education and Lifelong Learning for All. UNESCO 2016.
• 54. Kelly GP, and Nihlen A.S. “Schooling and the reproduction of patriarchy. In: In: Apple e M.W., editor. Cultural and economic reproduction in education” London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.; 1982.
• 56. Smith PM. Language, the sexes and society: Blackwell; 1985.
• 58. Do Thi Bich Loan NTMH, Kieu Thi Bich Thuy Nguyen Tri, Trinh Thi Ahn Hoa. Guidelines for textbook review and analysis from a gender perspective. Hanoi UNESCO, 2010.
• 60. Zeenatunissa M. Sex discrimination in education: content analysis of Pakistan school text books. ISS Working Paper Series/General Series. 1989;62:1–61.
• 62. Blumberg RL. Eliminating gender bias in textbooks: Pushing for policy reforms that promote gender equity in education”. UNESCO, 2014.
• 67. Cohen L, Manion L, Morrison K. Approaches to qualitative data analysis. Research methods in education. New York, NY: Routledge; 2007.
• 68. Douglas E. Qualitative analysis: practice and innovation: Taylor & Francis; 2002.
• 69. Weber RP. Basic content analysis: Sage; 1990.
• 77. Ramachandran DPMaN. Stories in a School Bag: a study of Children’s literature in language textbooks. New Delhi Sampurna Trust 2010.
• 78. Banda V. “The influence of content and structure of Secondary School textbooks on women's careers in the formal sector: Case of selected Schools in Lusaka”. Association of African Universities Database of African Theses and Dissertation2014.
• 82. Ena O. Visual analysis of E-textbooks for senior high school in Indonesia [Doctoral dissertation]: Loyola University Chicago.; 2013.
• 84. Mirza M. Gender analysis of school curriculum and text books. Islamabad: Unesco. 2004.
• 89. Srivastava G. Gender concern in the Social studies textbooks of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Internationale Schulbuchforschung. 2005:217–34.
• 90. Davies B. Gender bias in school text books: Commonwealth Secretariat; 1995.
• 91. UNESCO. The EFA Global Monitoring Report: Achievements and Challenges. UNESCO, 2015.
• 93. Heijnen-Maathuis E. From Parity to Equality in Girls' Education: How are We Doing in South Asia?: United Nations Children's Fund, Regional Office for South Asia; 2008.
• 94. Lee. P. T and Leng ANK. English Form 4 Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah 2011.
• 95. Wardiman A, Jahur M. B, and Djusma M. S. English in Focus: Pusat Perbukuan. Department of Pendidikan Nasional.; 2008.
• 96. Malik RZ. Textbook of English IX G, editor. Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board; 2011.
• 97. Shams RH , Roy Z M., Majumder G., Razzaque S. R., Shahzadi A M, N. English For Today: Class 9 and 10. Dhaka National Curriculum and Textbook Board.; 2012.
• 101. Kaya he. Stereotyped gender role perceptions and presentations in elementary schooling: a case study in burdur (2001–2002): Middle East Technical University; 2003.
• 102. Jaber MA. Breaking Through Glass Doors: A Gender Analysis of Womenomics in the Jordanian National Curriculum: Center for Universal Education at Brookings; 2014.
• 103. Gouvias D, Alexopoulos C. Sexist stereotypes in the language textbooks of the Greek primary school: a multidimensional approach. Gender and Education. 2016:1–21.
• 105. Cooke-Sawyer S. Gender bias and sex role stereotyping in grade seven history textbooks [Masters Dissertation]: University of Western Ontario; 2000.
• 106. Blankenship CL. Student perceptions of race and gender representations within college textbooks [PhD thesis]: University of Central Florida 2011.
• 112. John OPTBFftDopitnlaqs. The "Big Five" factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and questionnaire”s. In: (Ed.) ILAP , editor. Handbook of personality: Theory and research New York: Guilford Press.; 1990.
• 114. Blumberg RL. “Making the Case for the Gender Variable: Women and the Wealth and Well- Being of Nations”. Washington, D.C: Agency for International Development/Office of Women in Development.
• 118. Fernandes L. Routledge handbook of gender in South Asia: Routledge; 2014.
• 119. Murphy‐Graham E. Opening the black box: Womennder in South Asia: Routledge; 2014. theory? Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne
• 120. UNESCO (The United Nations Educational SaCO. Education for All Global Monitoring Report. EDUCATION FOR ALL 2000–2015: Achievements and challenges”. Paris: UNESCO, 2015.
• 121. Ghana C. What Works in Girls’ Education in Ghana: A critical review of the Ghanaian and international literature. Ministry of Education and the Girls’ Education Unit, Ghana Education Service. 2012

Essay on Gender Stereotypes

Students are often asked to write an essay on Gender Stereotypes in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Gender Stereotypes

Introduction.

Gender stereotypes are general beliefs about behaviors, characteristics, and roles of men and women in society. They can limit individuals’ potential and opportunities.

Common Stereotypes

Men are often seen as strong and decisive, while women are considered nurturing and emotional. These stereotypes can limit personal growth and career choices.

Consequences

Stereotypes can lead to discrimination and unequal treatment. They can also affect self-esteem and mental health.

Breaking Stereotypes

Education and awareness are key to breaking gender stereotypes. Encouraging individuality and respect for everyone’s abilities can help create a more equal society.

250 Words Essay on Gender Stereotypes

The origin of gender stereotypes.

The roots of gender stereotypes can be traced back to traditional societal structures. Historically, men were hunters and protectors, while women were gatherers and caregivers. These roles have been passed down generations, evolving into modern stereotypes.

Implications of Gender Stereotypes

These stereotypes limit individual growth and societal progress. They force individuals into predefined boxes, stifling their true potential. For instance, the stereotype that women are not good at math discourages them from pursuing STEM fields, while the belief that men should not show emotions hinders their mental health.

Breaking Down Stereotypes

It’s crucial to challenge these stereotypes to achieve gender equality. This can be done through education, promoting representation, and encouraging open dialogue. It’s also essential to challenge our own biases and question the stereotypes we unconsciously uphold.

Gender stereotypes are not only unfair but also counterproductive. They limit individuals and society as a whole. By actively challenging these stereotypes, we can work towards a more equitable and inclusive society.

500 Words Essay on Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are preconceived notions about the roles, characteristics, and behaviors of men and women. These stereotypes are deeply ingrained in our society and have significant implications on individual and societal levels. They are often perpetuated by media, educational systems, and social interactions, and can limit the potential and freedom of individuals, as well as perpetuate inequality and discrimination.

Gender stereotypes have far-reaching implications. They can limit opportunities and possibilities for individuals, leading to unequal outcomes in education, employment, and leadership roles. For instance, women are often stereotyped as being less capable in STEM fields, which can discourage them from pursuing careers in these areas. Similarly, men may face societal pressure to avoid careers perceived as feminine, such as nursing or teaching.

Furthermore, gender stereotypes can perpetuate harmful norms and behaviors. For example, the stereotype that men should be emotionally strong can deter them from seeking help for mental health issues, leading to adverse health outcomes. On the other hand, women are often objectified and sexualized due to prevalent stereotypes, contributing to issues such as body shaming and sexual harassment.

Challenging Gender Stereotypes

Media also plays a significant role in shaping societal perceptions. Hence, it is essential for media outlets to portray diverse and non-stereotypical images of men and women. This includes showcasing women in leadership roles and men in caregiving roles.

Moreover, individuals can challenge gender stereotypes in their everyday lives. This can be achieved by questioning traditional gender roles, promoting gender equality in personal and professional spaces, and encouraging open conversations about gender stereotypes.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

• School Education /

Essay on Gender Equality: Break Stereotypes

• Updated on  
• Jun 18, 2024

Gender equality means providing equal opportunities to both men and women. It ensures that everyone has the same access to resources, no matter their gender. Unfortunately, there is still a significant gap in the opportunities available to men and women. Addressing gender equality is crucial and requires attention from everyone.

Topics like gender equality are often included in academic writing, especially in essay assignments. These tasks help measure students’ understanding of the topic and their proficiency in English. To assist students in writing essays on gender equality, we have compiled some sample essays. These examples will inspire creative ideas that can be incorporated into your own essays.

Also Read: Essay on Women Empowerment: Samples & Useful Tips

Table of Contents

• 1 Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 100 words
• 2 Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 200 words
• 3 Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 300 words
• 4 Gender Equality Paragraph

Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 100 words

‘Gender equality is the cornerstone of a progressive society. It grants everyone the same rights and opportunities irrespective of gender. Gender discrimination continues to limit the potential of countless individuals all over the world. To overcome gender-based discrimination that limits the potential of an individual, society must recognize that every person, regardless of gender, possesses unique talents and abilities that deserve equal recognition and opportunities. In a world where diversity is celebrated, gender should be no exception. By overcoming gender bias we pave the way for a more inclusive, progressive, and harmonious world.’

Also Read:   Women’s Equality Day 2023: History, Theme, Significance

Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 200 words

‘Gender equality is a fundamental human right that should be embraced by all. It goes beyond mere parity between men and women; it encompasses the elimination of stereotypes, biases, and discrimination that hinder anyone from realizing their full potential. Achieving gender equality is not just a moral imperative; it also benefits society as a whole. When women and men have equal opportunities in education, employment, and leadership roles, economies thrive, communities prosper, and peace prevails.

Gender equality extends beyond basic rights; it embodies the struggle for a world where gender ceases to be a determining factor in one’s opportunities or treatment. It’s a call to arms against harmful stereotypes and prejudices that persist in our societies. It’s about nurturing an environment where everyone, regardless of gender, can thrive, pursue their ambitions, and contribute their talents to the fullest.

The fight for gender equality is far from over. Unequal pay, underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, and gender-based violence are stark reminders of the challenges we face. We must dismantle these barriers, foster inclusivity, and promote diversity in all aspects of life.’

Also Read: What are Human Rights?

Sample Essay on Gender Equality in 300 words

‘Gender equality is not just an abstract concept; it’s a critical aspect of human rights that affects individuals’ daily lives. Achieving gender equality necessitates systemic changes across society, politics, and the economy. It begins with recognizing that gender disparities are deeply rooted in our history, culture, and institutions, and it requires a concerted effort to uproot them.

To bridge the gender gap, we must first address the root causes of inequality. Stereotypes that dictate traditional gender roles must be challenged. Education plays a pivotal role in this endeavour, as it equips individuals with the knowledge and critical thinking skills to question existing norms. Moreover, it empowers women and men to make informed choices about their lives and careers.

One of the most urgent challenges is combatting gender-based violence. Millions of women and girls worldwide suffer from physical, sexual, or psychological violence simply because of their gender. Achieving gender equality means creating a world where no one lives in fear or faces violence due to their gender identity.

Gender equality encompasses not only equal rights but also equal opportunities, respect, and the freedom to express one’s identity without fear or prejudice. The fight for gender equality is a collective responsibility. It requires dismantling patriarchal norms and embracing diversity. It requires a shift in mindset, proactive policies, and unwavering commitment. When we embrace gender equality, we unlock the full potential of half the world’s population, creating a brighter, fairer future for all.

In conclusion, gender equality is not just a lofty ideal but an urgent necessity. It’s about reshaping our world into one where every individual, regardless of their gender, has the same rights and opportunities. Achieving gender equality requires a collective effort to change not only policies but also attitudes, cultures, and social norms.’

Gender Equality Paragraph

Ans. 1 Gender equality, besides being a fundamental human right, is essential to achieve peaceful societies, with full human potential and sustainable development. Moreover, it has been shown that empowering women spurs productivity and economic growth.

Ans. 2 Gender equality implies that the interests needs and priorities of both women and men and girls and boys are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups and that all human beings are free to develop their abilities and make choices without the limitations set by stereotypes and prejudices about gender roles. Gender equality is a matter of human rights and is considered a precondition for, and indicator of, sustainable people-centred development.

Ans. 3. 4 facts you need to know about gender equality 1. 70% of health and social care workers are women. 2. Women grow up to 80% of the world’s staple crops. 3. Women and girls are 10% more likely to go hungry. 4. If female farmers had equal resources, 150 million people could be lifted out of hunger.

Related Articles

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu.

Rajshree Lahoty

Meet Rajshree Lahoty, the writer behind insightful blogs on study abroad adventures and general knowledge trivia. Armed with a pen mightier than the sword (and a keyboard!), she navigates through the lanes of knowledge with a dash of research and a sprinkle of information. Join her escapades in solving the mysteries of the world!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

Resend OTP in

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

Don't Miss Out

• The Digital Games Most Welcoming to LGBTQ+ Players
• Stacey Abrams and Joyce Carol Oates Come to Atlanta for Decatur Book Festival
• On Harris and Trans Rights
• Out Front Theatre Company Announces Ninth Season

Breaking Gender Stereotypes in Education: How Students Can Help

This is a paid, sponsored article. 

Gender stereotypes have long dictated the way individuals are expected to behave, pursue careers, and even learn within educational settings. Breaking these stereotypes is crucial for creating a more inclusive and equitable society. Students, who stand at the forefront of change, play a pivotal role in dismantling these outdated norms. Here’s how students can actively contribute to breaking gender stereotypes in education, fostering an environment where everyone, regardless of gender, can thrive and pursue their interests freely.

Challenge Stereotypical Thinking

One of the most powerful steps students can take is challenging stereotypical thinking among their peers and within themselves. This involves questioning assumptions about what men and women can or should do. For instance, when someone asserts that a particular field of study or career path is better suited to one gender over another, it’s an opportunity to ask why and to provide counterexamples that debunk these myths. Encouraging open discussions about gender roles and their impact can illuminate biases and encourage a more critical examination of how and why we adopt these beliefs. By advocating for a mindset that values skills and interests over gender, students can help cultivate a culture that supports individuals in pursuing their passions without the constraints of traditional gender roles. To promote this important topic even further, you can write an essay about it. Alternatively, hire an essay writer to make the job easier. The best essay writing service is a good way to limit your workload without sacrificing the paper’s quality.

Promote Inclusive Activities

Extracurricular activities and clubs are often segregated by gender, either officially or through social pressures. Students can help break these barriers by participating in and promoting activities inclusive of all genders. This could mean joining clubs traditionally dominated by one gender or starting new ones that explicitly welcome everyone, regardless of gender. When students lead by example and cross these artificial boundaries, they pave the way for others to follow suit, gradually eroding the gendered expectations that limit participation. This approach enriches the student’s educational experience and makes these spaces more diverse and welcoming for future students.

Support Gender Diversity in Curriculum

The curriculum plays a significant role in shaping students’ perceptions of gender roles. Often, the achievements of women and non-binary individuals are underrepresented in textbooks and lectures. Students can advocate for a curriculum more reflective of gender diversity by requesting texts and resources that include contributions from people of all genders. They can also write papers on this topic, aiming to highlight the achievements of underrepresented groups. If a student should need help putting their ideas into writing, they can always reach out to the top essay writing services. Engaging with teachers and administrators about the importance of diverse representation can lead to more inclusive educational content, providing role models for students across the gender spectrum and challenging the notion that certain subjects or careers are inherently gendered. 

Use Inclusive Language

Language is a powerful tool for reinforcing or challenging stereotypes. Students can make a conscious effort to use gender-neutral language when referring to hypothetical situations or professions. This includes using terms like “firefighter” instead of “fireman” and “police officer” instead of “policeman,” as well as avoiding assumptions about someone’s interests or capabilities based on their gender. By making these small adjustments in language, students contribute to a cultural shift towards more inclusive communication that respects and acknowledges all genders equally.

Create Supportive Networks

Finally, students can help break gender stereotypes by creating and participating in supportive networks that offer a safe space for discussing and addressing gender-related challenges. These networks can be formal, such as student clubs focused on gender equity, or informal, such as peer support groups. Students can share experiences, strategies for overcoming stereotypes, and personal and professional development resources within these spaces. These networks support and amplify the voices of those challenging gender norms, creating a stronger collective force for change within the educational institution.

In Conclusion

Students are responsible for challenging and breaking down gender stereotypes within education. By questioning stereotypical thinking, promoting inclusive activities, advocating for a diverse curriculum, using inclusive language, and creating supportive networks, students can contribute to a cultural shift towards gender equity in education. This shift benefits individuals by allowing them to pursue their interests and talents freely and enriches the educational environment for everyone, fostering a more diverse, inclusive, and innovative society.

Richard Gambrell is a seasoned article writer with deep expertise in gender studies, bringing light to complex social dynamics through his insightful and thought-provoking pieces. His work, rooted in extensive research and a passion for equality, challenges readers to rethink traditional narratives around gender. Richard’s contributions educate and inspire action towards a more inclusive society.

• Frontiers in Psychiatry
• Computational Psychiatry
• Research Topics

Women in Psychiatry 2024: Computational Psychiatry

Total Downloads

Total Views and Downloads

About this Research Topic

Frontiers in Psychiatry is proud to launch this year's Women in Psychiatry: Computational Psychiatry collection to showcasing recent research advances from women across the entire breadth of Computational Psychiatry - presenting advances in theory, experiment, and methodology. This Research Topic is seeking submissions exploring psychiatric disorders through computational modeling of brain or behavior with using data with using data. Suggested topics include psychiatric taxonomy, the utilization of computational work with brain histology, multimodal neuroimaging, papers exploring clinical applications, the emerging field of psychoradiology, computational and statistical methodologies, machine learning approaches, new computational and statistical approaches and translational medicine. At present, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. Long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are discouraging girls and women away from science-related fields, and STEM research in particular. Science and gender equality are essential to ensure sustainable development. In order to change traditional mindsets, gender equality must be promoted, stereotypes defeated, and girls and women should be encouraged to pursue STEM careers. Please note: to be considered for this collection, the first or last author should be a researcher who identifies as a woman.

Keywords : women in, computational, computer modelling

Important Note : All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Topic Editors

Topic coordinators, submission deadlines.

Participating Journals

Manuscripts can be submitted to this Research Topic via the following journals:

total views

• Demographics

No records found

total views article views downloads topic views

Top countries

Top referring sites, about frontiers research topics.

With their unique mixes of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author.

Advertisement

Where Tim Walz Stands on the Issues

As governor of Minnesota, he has enacted policies to secure abortion protections, provide free meals for schoolchildren, allow recreational marijuana and set renewable energy goals.

• Share full article

By Maggie Astor

• Aug. 6, 2024

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the newly announced running mate to Vice President Kamala Harris, has worked with his state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to enact an ambitious agenda of liberal policies: free college tuition for low-income students, free meals for schoolchildren, legal recreational marijuana and protections for transgender people.

“You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” Mr. Walz wrote last year about his approach to governing. “You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”

Republicans have slammed these policies as big-government liberalism and accused Mr. Walz of taking a hard left turn since he represented a politically divided district in Congress years ago.

Here is an overview of where Mr. Walz stands on some key issues.

Mr. Walz signed a bill last year that guaranteed Minnesotans a “fundamental right to make autonomous decisions” about reproductive health care on issues such as abortion, contraception and fertility treatments.

Abortion was already protected by a Minnesota Supreme Court decision, but the new law guarded against a future court reversing that precedent as the U.S. Supreme Court did with Roe v. Wade, and Mr. Walz said this year that he was also open to an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would codify abortion rights.

Another bill he signed legally shields patients, and their medical providers, if they receive an abortion in Minnesota after traveling from a state where abortion is banned.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .