Especially in wealthy and egalitarian countries where girls are more likely than boys to 'blame their talents for academic failure'



Gender stereotypes such as 'men are better at science and mathematics' and 'women are emotional' affect academic performance and careers after entering society, so it is necessary to eliminate these stereotypes. It has been. From a study based on a large survey of 500,000 students from 72 countries, female students are more likely than male students to blame their academic failure for talent. It turned out to be particularly strong in countries where egalitarianism has permeated.

The stereotype that girls lack talent: A worldwide investigation

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm3689

Large Study Finds Girls Credit This Stereotype For Failing, And It's Holding Them Back
https://www.sciencealert.com/large-study-highlights-how-girls-attribute-a-lack-of-innate-talent-for-their-failures

At the time of writing, women outnumbered men in college enrollment in some Western countries, with women accounting for more than 40% of the labor market in most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. However, in Europe, the percentage of women on the board of listed companies is only 23.3%, and the percentage of CEOs is only 5.1%, and it is pointed out that there is a ' glass ceiling ' that hinders the promotion of women. I am.

A research team at the French National Center for Scientific Research points out that there are stereotypes that generally state that 'men are more intelligent than women.' To better understand this stereotype, we conducted a study using data from the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) .

The 2018 PISA included a question asking how much he agreed with the sentence, 'When I fail, I'm worried that I'm not talented enough.' From data collected from more than 500,000 students living in a total of 72 countries, the research team analyzed how much the percentage of people agreeing with this text varies by gender and country.



Analysis of the data collected shows that in 71 of the 72 countries surveyed, girls are more likely than boys to blame their talents for failure, even if their grades are similar. Turned out. Surprisingly, this trend is more pronounced in wealthy countries, where 61% of girls blame their talents for failure in OECD wealthy countries, compared to 47% for boys, a difference of 14 points. On the other hand, although similar trends were seen in relatively poor non-OECD countries, the gender gap was only 8 points.

In addition, the research team points out that the gender differences in the tendency to blame failure for talent were greater in students who performed better than those with average grades. In addition, the only country where boys blame failure more than girls is Saudi Arabia, which is pointed out that the human rights of women are particularly suppressed in the world.

'There is no perfect explanation for the contradiction that developed countries with better human rights education and smaller gender gaps have stronger gender and talent stereotypes,' said Thomas Breda, co-author of the paper. The results this time show that 'as the country develops, gender norms do not disappear, but are reconstructed by themselves.'

One hypothesis is that 'a country with more freedom will eventually leave room for individuals to fall into old stereotypes.' Also, in developed countries, it is easy to get a lot of attention for personal success, so there is a possibility that the concept of 'talent' is more important. For example, in a society where success is determined by origin and gender, regardless of personal outcomes, each talent is less important and, as a result, there is less room to apply gender and talent stereotypes.



Furthermore, in this study, there is a tendency that girls who think 'I have no talent' are 'not confident in myself', 'do not like competition', and 'do not want to get a male-dominated occupation such as information and communication technology'. Shown. These three factors are often cited as the reasons for the existence of a 'glass ceiling'. The research team put together these results and summarized in a paper, 'Even if the country develops and gender equality advances, the glass ceiling will not disappear.'

As a solution to these problems, Breda said, 'Stop thinking in terms of innate talent. Success comes from learning through trial and error. If you dismantle the concept of'pure talent', The idea that girls are naturally less talented than boys will be dismantled. '

in Science, Posted by log1h_ik