Why young girls don't think they are smart enough - Gifted Issues Discussion Forum

Why Young Girls Don't Think They Are Smart Enough
January 26, 2017
By Andrei Cimpian and Sarah-Jane Leslie
New York Times

Originally Posted by article

When we asked children to guess which of four children, two boys and two girls, would get the best grades in school, girls picked mostly other girls. In other words, the girls we tested were aware that girls do better in school than boys, but that didn�t change their ideas about who�s �smart.�

The authors observed that children's perceptions did not vary by SES, and that more positive role models of brilliant women, and a more equal distribution of household chores are protective factors... exposing children to these early and consistently may help balance their perceptions and career aspirations.

Related post in Research forum: research published in the journal Science, AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

Portia, excellent questions!

I've been puzzling over those questions since I read them... I can only wonder whether it may be possible that in seeing moms/women doing more household chores and dads/men doing fewer chores (therefore thinking in a child-like way that dads/men must be "smarter" to get out of work)... might this carry over to school as a belief that boys are "smarter"... even while girls earn higher grades...?

This seems to fit with the research finding that when a game was described as being for those who are "really, really smart" girls tended to not be interested to play the game... but when the same game was described as being for those who "work hard" girls tended to be interested to play.

Children observing that moms/women do most of the household chores also seems consistent with these children adopting the stereotype that moms/women/girls are "nice".

I would think it might have more to do with social values. Hard work is an important social value (more indicative of society's view of a successful female) where as often girls are socially ostracized pretty early on if they are considered overly intelligent.