This website is best viewed in a browser that supports web standards.

Skip to content or, if you would rather, Skip to navigation.

Listen Live
Donate
MARYVILLE

KXCV-KRNW


News Brief

March 21, 2018DES MOINES, Iowa |  By: INS

Children's views of scientists changed over fifty years

Children who were asked to draw a scientist in the 1960s would almost certainly draw a male – but a new study shows today's children depict female scientists more often than ever before. In 1966, women earned about 20 percent of chemistry bachelor degrees in the U.S. But when asked to draw a scientist, only 28 children out of 5,000 drew a woman - and all 28 of those drawings were by girls.

By 2015, women earned 48 percent of all chemistry degrees. And while children younger than five tend to draw both male and female scientists, study co-author David Miller at Northwestern University says that changes in later grades.

Children's artwork from earlier decades almost exclusively showed scientists as bearded men wearing glasses and lab coats. The recent studies show that both girls and boys drew female scientists more often, although girls overall drew female scientists much more often than boys.

Miller says children's perceptions of who can be a scientist have changed in part because female scientists are more often portrayed on television shows and in magazines and other media.

The Northwestern study is the first systematic, quantitative review of the "Draw-A-Scientist" literature and combined results from 78 U.S. studies, including more than 20,000 children in kindergarten through 12th grade.