Meet the stereotype threat — so you can fight it
And learn why mothers' gender stereotypes are more relevant
Math has proved to be an essential part of the path toward loving technology and coding. And, although boys’ and girls’ performance in math is now equal, girls still don’t see themselves using it a lot in their careers.
One possible explanation for some persistence of the gender gap in math is a phenomenon called stereotype threat (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Here’s what it is: Women’s math performance is disrupted under threat, not because of insufficient talent, but because women feel threatened by the possibility that their performance will confirm negative stereotypes associated with their social group.
Research has shown that under stereotype threat, women report:
more negative domain-related thoughts,
show increased physiological arousal, and
reveal heightened activation in the cortical regions associated with processing socioemotional information but not in the regions associated with math problem-solving.
These changes appear to impair working memory, which then results in performance disruption.
Numerous experimental studies suggest that this stereotype threat and gender differences in math performance still occur in environments that are evoking traditional gender stereotypes (e.g., “girls can’t do math”; Beilock, 2008).
Mothers are key to fighting stereotype threat in girls
Previous research on stereotype threat in children suggests that making gender identity salient disrupts girls' math performance as early as 5 to 7 years of age.
Results confirmed that stereotype threat impaired girls' performance on math tasks among students from kindergarten through 2nd grade.
Moreover, mothers' but not fathers' endorsement of gender stereotypes about math moderated girls' vulnerability to stereotype threat. The performance of girls whose mothers strongly rejected the gender stereotype about math did not decrease under stereotype threat.
These findings are important because they point to the role of mothers' beliefs in the development of girls' vulnerability to the negative effects of gender stereotypes about math.