Essay --

Schaefer, Ashleigh Ling 325 Professor Mathis Part 1: Annotated Bibliography: Gender Stereotypes in Subject Matter 1. Cvencek, D. , Meltzoff, A. , & Greenwald, A. (2011). Math–gender stereotypes in elementary school children. Child Development, 82(3), 766-779. Gà ¶mleksiz, M. (2012). This article focuses on the connection between one’s perception of their own gender and how it affects their belief of cultural stereotypes placed on their gender. Cveneck, Meltzoof, and Greenwald examined various children, 126 girls and 121 boys, between the ages of 6-10 in elementary school by giving the children Implicit Association tests and along with having them provide self-reports to see if their perception of gender affected their ideas of certain subject matters in the school. The self-reports asked the children questions regarding gender identity, gender stereotypes, and their self-concept. This article focuses on examining the cultural stereotypes about math. Their research focuses on the stereotype that â€Å"math is for boys†. Cvencek, Meltzoff, and Greenwald argue that this is because their self-concept is a â€Å"I am a female† along with the cultural stereotype that â€Å"math is for boys† tends to lead females to the belief that â€Å" I am a girl therefore I’m not good at math†. Cveneck, Meltzoof, and Greenwald had the children take a quiz on the computer. For each question the children were provided with a statement then asked to choose whether or not the male or female character possessed the aforementioned attributes. Once the children chose which character/gender possessed the attribute they were then asked whether or not their selected character possessed this characteristic â€Å"a little† or â€Å"a lot†. The second part of the study involved childre... ...eresting about their research was that it showed even at a young age girls tend to believe â€Å"math is for boys†. This suggests that the language used in regards to subject matter and gender is ingrained in young minds from a young age. Since math is a learned skill males and females should both have the ability to excel in the subject mater. However, cultural stereotypes regarding math as a primarily male domain run deep and hold females back. It was interesting to see the statements both genders related to in the studies. These articles suggest that gender stereotyping with subject matter is nurture based. If females didn’t hear from a young age that â€Å"math is for boys† then perhaps they could enter the subject matter in a confident manner. Overall, these articles follow the generalizations seen throughout the semester about the differences between females and males.