Abstract
Women are drastically underrepresented within computer science, which is in part informed by societal ideas of who can and should belong in the sciences. Less is known about how children evaluate their peers who challenge gendered expectations of who can and should take part in computer science. The current study asked children (N = 213; 110 girls) in middle childhood (Mage = 8.71 years; n = 108) and late childhood (Mage = 10.56 years; n = 105) to evaluate a gender-matched peer who challenged a group norm related to either computer science (male-gendered domain) or biology (less male-gendered domain). Male participants most negatively evaluated a peer who wanted to take part in a biology activity when the rest of the group wanted to do a programming activity. Furthermore, male participants expected their group to negatively evaluate this deviant peer in the programming condition. Mediation analysis revealed that for boys in the computer science condition, perceived group evaluation predicted individual evaluation. Female participants, in contrast, did not negatively evaluate someone who challenged a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) peer group norm. This study demonstrates that male peer groups may perpetuate the idea that computer science is for men through negative evaluation of in-group members who challenge those ideas and, in turn, maintain their dominant position as the high-status group. Achieving equity in the computer science field will require a greater understanding of these peer group norms.
Highlights
Women are underrepresented among computer science graduates (15%) and in the computer science workforce (16%) within the United Kingdom (Women into Science and Engineering [WISE Campaign], 2018)
This study aimed to explore how children in middle and late childhood evaluate their peers who deviate from a gender group norm related to STEM activities and how they believe their gender in-group peers would evaluate these individuals
Mulvey and Killen (2015) demonstrated that by adolescence (13–14 years) there was an expectation that whereas the individual would support challenging a gendered activity norm, the group would not support this challenge. We extended this existing work on deviant evaluation by asking children to evaluate a deviant peer in a computer science context where existing gender group expectations are highly salient— for boys, who represent the status quo within this STEM domain
Summary
Women are underrepresented among computer science graduates (15%) and in the computer science workforce (16%) within the United Kingdom (Women into Science and Engineering [WISE Campaign], 2018). Ideas and expectations about who can and should take part in specific domains of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are often based on gender and develop from early childhood (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011; Mulvey & Irvin, 2018). This can mean that girls, relative to boys, become increasingly excluded from STEM activities in school and outside of school, especially in the field of computing. Developmental research (Killen & Rutland, 2011; Rutland, Hitti, Mulvey, Abrams, & Killen, 2015) has shown a shift from middle childhood to late childhood, with biases not explicitly expressed but rather shown through the exclusion of peers who deviate from the norm of the group ( ‘‘deviants”). The current study examined, for the first time, the development of children’s own evaluations of peers who deviate from peer group norms regarding STEM activities (e.g., boys who do not want to do computing)
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