Sexism Affects Everyone, Especially Children
Children learn from everything they see and everything they touch. All their surroundings affect how they will be and what they will believe in the future when they grow up. Something that is almost everywhere that negatively affects kids is sexism. Sexism can show children a negative side to society and could expose them to think in certain ways. Questions that we could ask is, how does the media negatively affect children when it comes to sexism? What is being shown that children start to think differently about themselves and others? Will sexism ever be diminished by the time the next generation has arrived. These are questions that could be answered to understand the problem that is going on and how we can potentially fix it. The way men and women are shown in media something important to be aware of since not everyone universally does not look the same. Therefore, we can see that sexism can affect a child deeply and affect their mindset in the future.
When They Grow Up
There have always been different ways of thinking between equality against men and women. Women are the submissive ones and men must be the strong leaders in society. Its seen in all fairy tales, movies, books, and other platforms that children have access to. In psychology, it is known that the things you see around you in your environment are what shapes and affect your mind. According to Sexism in Childhood and Adolescence: Recent Trends and Advances in Research, “The sexualization of men and women in the media exaggerates stereotypical images of attractiveness that are largely unattainable for most people” (Leaper, Brown, 12). From this, it’s noticed that kids learn about what they must be attracted to at such an early age and can skew the way they think. Many people relate to this because one day they realize that when looking for someone to be in a relationship with, they start to notice that the person they’re looking for is at such a high standard and they cannot seem to find who that person is. The person starts to put filters on in dating as if they are looking for a home; picking the qualities that they want and filtering out what they don’t. From the evidence gathered, we can see that this can stem from early childhood learning about the real world.
Genders Differences in Education
This is also something that influences genders in education as well. Way back when women weren’t even allowed to attend school or universities and were forced to stay home. That problem has been fixed, but it has not always been fair. STEM is an educational group that is one of the most important parts in schools and it is where women have trouble being represented. There are not that many women in STEM programs in school even if some of them do get the highest grades in math and science (Sexism in Childhood and Adolescence: Recent Trends and Advances in Research, 11). Because of this, young girls are more likely to not want to pursue science and math careers because they have been discouraged or believe that they won’t make it.
To look deeper into this problem, a study was done to see what children think a scientist looks like. When asked what a scientist looks like, the results were what some predicted. The article analyzing this study states, “The drawings, collected from 1966 to 1977, almost exclusively depicted male scientists, often with lab coats, eyeglasses, and facial hair, working indoors with laboratory equipment. Only 28 children drew a female scientist (0.6% of the sample), suggesting strong gender-science stereotypes linking science with men” (Miller, Nolla, Eagly, Uttal, 1943). This study shows that men are the main figures that the see as
Works Cited
Leaper, Campbell. Brown, Spears Christia. “Sexism in Childhood and Adolescence: Recent Trends and Advances in Research”. Child Development Perspectives. March 1, 2018. 10-15. Print.
Miller, David I., et al. “The Development of Children’s Gender-Science Stereotypes: A Meta-Analysis of 5 Decades of U.S. Draw-A-Scientist Studies.” Child Development, vol. 89, no. 6, Nov. 2018, pp. 1943–1955.
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