--- title: Kids' Gender Stereotypes Are Slowly Changing, Study Says description: A meta-analysis of "Draw-A-Scientist" studies shows that kids are becoming more likely to draw female scientists over time. canonical: https://time.com/5201175/draw-a-scientist-studies/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-20T04:15:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:58:00.543Z article:section: Health og:title: Researchers Asked Kids to ‘Draw a Scientist.’ Here's What They Came Up With og:description: Kids' gender stereotypes are slowly but surely changing, the study suggests og:url: https://time.com/5201175/draw-a-scientist-studies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1924fbc206c5373b/69892b54656a3f77dbbd3ea1/vasiliachristidou-59g.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2330 og:image:height: 1311 og:image:alt: vasiliachristidou-59g.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Researchers Asked Kids to ‘Draw a Scientist.’ Here's What They Came Up With twitter:description: Kids' gender stereotypes are slowly but surely changing, the study suggests twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1924fbc206c5373b/69892b54656a3f77dbbd3ea1/vasiliachristidou-59g.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Researchers Asked Kids to ‘Draw a Scientist.’ Here's What They Came Up With > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Mar 20, 2018 4:15 AM UTC  "Draw-a-Scientist" picture courtesy of Vasilia Christidou  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Mar 20, 2018 4:15 AM UTC Between 1966 and 1977, a group of researchers gave more than 5,000 schoolchildren a simple instruction: Draw a scientist. The kids drew scientists of all kinds: some with white coats, some peering into microscopes, some with facial hair. But out of the 5,000 children, just 28 — less than 1% — drew a woman. Since the results of that study were published in 1983, the “Draw-A-Scientist” experiment has been repeated dozens of times. Now a [new meta-analysis, published in the journal _Child Development_](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13039/full)_,_ looked at 78 studies of U.S. children — some completed as recently as 2017 — to see how things have changed. “Given that children might see a greater representation of female scientists \[today\] and are more often seeing female scientists in media marketed toward children, we wanted to know: How are those cultural changes influencing children’s images? Have children’s stereotypes changed along with them?” says David Miller, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Northwestern University and one of the study’s authors. “The basic finding is that, indeed, yes.”  "Draw-a-Scientist" picture courtesy of Vasilia Christidou In studies completed since 1985, accounting for almost 21,000 kids, about 28% of children drew female scientists, Miller says. Girls are significantly more likely than boys to draw female scientists — 42% of girls’ drawings depicted female scientists, compared to just 5% of boys’ drawings — but there was growth among both genders, Miller says, which points to the impact of better gender representation in the sciences. “It’s not directly asking children to say, ‘Is science for men or is it for women?'” Miller says. “It’s not expressing these explicit stereotypes. It’s more getting at these associations that children have.”  "Draw-a-Scientist" picture courtesy of Leon Walls The research suggests that those associations are changing. Miller and his colleagues found that kids younger than six drew male and female scientists in almost equal measure. It was only upon reaching elementary and middle school that students began to draw significantly more male scientists, a “developmental shift that we think likely reflects children’s greater exposure to male scientists as they age,” Miller says. That phenomenon, he adds, underscores the importance of visible representation.  "Draw-a-Scientist" picture courtesy of Vasilia Christidou “Women are still underrepresented in some fields, so it makes sense that children exposed to that environment are still reproducing those stereotypes,” Miller says. “What’s important to consider is making sure those stereotypes don’t unfairly limit girls’ interest in science — that girls who are really interested in science can pursue it.” Those who do, the research suggests, will shape the perceptions of generations to come.  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