Draw a Scientist |
Last week was a holiday week with fewer days of school for my kids, so I decided to do a little experiment with them and the other kids on our street who were willing to participate. What I asked them to do was simple; I said, “Draw a scientist.” I didn’t give them any other directions.
I didn’t make up this experiment—researchers have been asking children of various ages to “Draw a scientist” for more than five decades. They don’t do this because they are interested in children’s art; instead, they are interested in how children think about scientists and, more specifically, whether they think of them as male or female.
The very first study using the “draw a scientist” task included drawings from children between the years of 1966 and 1977. Not surprisingly, nearly every single drawing collected featured a male scientist. In fact, less than 1 percent of children drew a woman. Importantly, both boys and girls participated in this study, so the girls were just as likely as the boys to picture scientists as exclusively male (Chambers, 1983).
And it isn’t because kids are more likely to draw males across all occupations: When another group of researchers asked children to draw scientists and teachers, while most children drew male scientists, they were much more likely to draw teachers as female than male (Losh, Wilke, & Pop, 2008).
Ever since these now classic studies were published, the “draw a scientist” task has become a litmus test for how well women are represented in the sciences, including science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)........