“Not a single boy in that study drew a female scientist,” said David Miller, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern University. Not very many girls did, either. Only 28 students drew female scientists — less than 1 percent of the students in the study, of whom 49 percent were girls.
The portrait of a scientist in a young person’s mind, however, appears to be changing. In the past five years, Miller and his Northwestern colleagues reviewed 78 draw-a-scientist studies completed after Chamber’s report.
After 1980, 3 in 10 students drew women as scientists. Younger children, young girls in particular, were the most likely to sketch female scientists, according to the report published Tuesday in the journal Child Development.
Pooling pictures by nearly 21,000 students, from kindergarten to grade 12, the authors of the new study also found a change in perception around age 8. Before middle school, most girls drew female scientists and most boys drew male scientists. But as students grew older, the proportion of male scientists in their drawings increased. So, too, did the prevalence of laboratory coats and eyeglasses in their drawings.
“We think this reflects that children are learning multiple stereotypes about scientists as they age,” Miller said. Put another way: Young children might draw more female scientists because they haven’t learned the cultural perceptions yet. (Drawings can be barometers for children’s opinions about other occupations; in one companion study, students drew 40 percent of veterinarians and 25 percent of teachers as men.)
“If they think that others are expecting them to draw male scientists,” he said, “maybe science isn’t perceived as a typical path for girls.”
Significance
The study “is important because it shows that children’s gender stereotypes of scientists have decreased over the past five decades in the United States,” said Western Michigan University communications professor Jocelyn Steinke, who studies media representation of scientists and was not a part of the new research.
Women in science
Female representation in science varies widely by field. In 2013, 49 percent of biologists and 35 percent of chemists were women, but 11 percent of astronomers and physicists. Women earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in biological, social sciences and psychology, according to National Science Foundation statistics, whereas men earn more degrees in engineering, physics and computer sciences.
500 Women Scientists
The results come at a time when scientists such as ecologist Jane Zelikova are pushing back against the Bill Nye stereotype — or “stale, pale and male,” as she put it. Zelikova, a University of Wyoming research scientist, is the co-founder of 500 Women Scientists, a grass-roots organization based on an open letter, published after the 2016 election, that advocated for women and equality in science. The organization quickly grew beyond its first 500 signatories. Today, Zelikova said, 500 Women Scientists has about 400 local chapters, called “pods,” of 10 to 200 members each.
When asked if she found the results of this study promising, Zelikova invoked Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Supreme Court justice once said she would be satisfied when nine women sat on the bench. “Twenty-eight percent is not good enough, not even close. One hundred percent of children should be able to draw a woman scientist,” Zelikova said.
“If we really want the public to see themselves in science, we have to show them scientists who look like them and talk like them,” said Maryam Zaringhalam, an Iranian American molecular biologist and member of 500 Women Scientists. To that end, 500 Women Scientists created a Request a Woman Scientist database of more than 5,000 women, experts ready to speak to the public, at conferences or to journalists.
Meeting actual scientists, it turns out, can dismantle the Bill Nye stereotype. In a twist on the draw-a-scientist test, students have made sketches before and after meeting working scientists. The BBC radio science journalist Quentin Cooper recounted the results of one such study to New Scientist in 2011: A girl’s first drawing was a man with a shock of hair and a lab coat. But her second was a woman holding a test tube, with a single word as a caption, “Me.”
