Girls Are Better Students but Boys Will Be More Successful at Work: Discordance Between Academic and Career Gender Stereotypes in Middle Childhood.

Despite findings of female advantages at school, men still are higher achieving in the workplace. Only a small amount of research has simultaneously investigated stereotypes of these different domains. We investigated whether stereotypes about academic female superiority and paradoxical stereotypes about workplace male superiority coexist. Participants were 1144 Grades 1-6 students (Mage = 9.66) from Hong Kong. They completed measures of academic gender stereotypes and meta-stereotypes, career gender stereotypes, career-related motivation for school excellence, and school engagement. Teachers provided school exam scores. We examined (1) gender and age differences, (2) the relationship between the stereotypes, and (3) the moderating role of these stereotypes in gender differences in school engagement, exam scores, and career-related motivation. Both boys and girls perceived girls as better students but a belief in female superiority did not translate to the career domain. Although both boys and girls beginning primary school believed their gender was superior in both domains, those at the end of primary school believed that girls do better at school while men are more successful at work. Also, at the end of primary school, these two stereotypes were more discordant on the individual level, i.e., the tendency for children who believed that girls perform better at school to also believe that women perform better at work was weaker in older children. Academic gender stereotypes moderated gender differences in school engagement and exam scores. Understanding why children hold discordant beliefs about success in different arenas and combating both academic and career stereotypes early may help improve gender equality for both genders.

Early Gender Differences in Spatial and Social Skills and Their Relations to Play and Parental Socialization in Children from Hong Kong.

Children's play preferences are highly gender-typed. At the same time, much research revolves around spatial and social skills that sometimes show male and female advantages, respectively. There is evidence that play with masculine toys is associated with better spatial skills and emerging evidence suggests that play with feminine toys is associated with better social skills. However, several research gaps limit current knowledge on these aspects of gender development. First, the study of childhood gender development has been largely Eurocentric; second, the link between gender-typed play and social skills development is not well supported. We tested 644 5-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children on five gender-typed skills, play preferences, and parental gender socialization. The pattern of gender differences was remarkably similar to those in the West. Boys preferred masculine toys more than girls and were better at mental transformation and targeting accuracy, while girls preferred feminine (and neutral) toys more than boys and were better at empathy and were less aggressive, although there was no significant gender difference in comforting skill. There was little evidence that these gender differences varied with socioeconomic status (parental income and education). Play correlated with some outcomes in expected ways. This is in contrast to parents' gender socialization, which showed some expected differences by child gender but minimally correlated with children's skills. These findings shed light on the generalizability of current knowledge on early gender differences and may facilitate gender developmental research outside the West. Although the study did not test the direction of effects, they substantiate the growing discourse on gender-typed play as an important learning mechanism.