About this session

Friday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

From input to action: Examining how subtle contextual cues sustain gender inequalities in childhood

Over the last decade, progress toward gender equality has slowed. One reason for this stagnation is the persistence of implicit gendered expectations, such as the expectation that girls will attend to others’ needs more than boys. Thus, the present papers collectively examine the development of psychological factors that instantiate and sustain gender inequality to better understand how these expectations can be eliminated. We first elaborate on how environmental input can induce gendered expectations. Paper 1 highlights how observing others seek explanations for a group’s success leads children to make inferences regarding the group’s lack of competence and skill. Further examining how gendered expectations are induced, Paper 2 considers how exposure to gender inequality in children’s own homes shapes children’s beliefs, finding that children exposed to greater inequality in the division of domestic labor were more likely to perpetuate these inequalities by assigning more labor to mothers (than to fathers). Paper 3 illustrates that gendered expectations manifest across multiple levels, establishing that children and adults not only expect invisible labor from young girls, but also impose this labor on girls and devalue it. Finally, Paper 4 explores the consequences of children’s gendered beliefs on their own identities by establishing that children’s endorsement of gendered communality beliefs relates to their own values. Together, these papers provide a rich exploration of the cognitive and psychological factors that sustain gender inequalities, illustrating a trajectory from input to expectations, and subsequently, to the internalization and perpetuation of gender inequalities.

Paper #1
Title	When seeking an explanation is an explanation: Children’s ability group stereotypes are influenced by explanation-seeking
Presenting author	Jamie Amemiya, Occidental College, United States

Paper #2
Title	The Role of Family Inequality on Children’s Normative Understanding of Household Labor
Presenting author	Kiana Gee, University of California - Irvine, United States

Paper #3
Title	Gender inequities in expectations for invisible labor begin in childhood and persist into adulthood
Presenting author	Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto, Canada

Paper #4
Title	The Role of Gender Stereotypes in Shaping Communality in Children
Presenting author	Cameron Hall, University of British Columbia, Canada

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Session chair
Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto, Canada

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