In this project Dr Lindsey Cameron and colleagues examine how modern gender stereotypes are shaped. The findings have important implications for educators, families, equality and diversity policies, and research.
Project aims
We research gender stereotypes in childhood: how do children learn them? How do they develop with age? And how can they be challenged?
Our aim is to conduct community research with schools, families and children. We want to know about modern gender stereotypes and how they shape children’s lives. We work hard to share findings with schools, families and children, and get their views.
We have a few ongoing projects and are looking for people to take part! A few are described below:
How do children learn about stereotypes? Gender stereotypes in children’s magazines
Do children’s magazines convey stereotypes? We are carefully analysing children’s media, including magazines and TV programmes, to identify the different ways stereotypes manifest themselves, and are communicated, from page layout and font, to colours and number of words characters get to say. We have been conducting these analyses for a number of years, and you can find related publications below.
Can we use children’s magazines to counteract gender stereotypes?
We have been using the magazine format to try and subvert gender stereotypes and change children’s ideas about what girls and boys can play with. It’s exciting work, and we’ve found that peers, presented in magazines, are a potentially useful means to subverting gender stereotypes. Read more about our work below:
Tackling gender stereotypes in schools: developing and evaluating a school curriculum that tackles gender stereotypes
We have been conducting action research with a number of local schools to find ways of making small changes to the classroom to help tackle gender stereotypic behaviours, using psychological research methods to evaluate the impact on children’s behaviour. We’re excited to work with more schools, so please do get in touch if you are interested in working with us.
Resources
We have a number of resource packs for EYFS and KS1 including a number of books that challenge typical stereotypical expectations of boys and girls. We are keen to lend these out to schools as we know that getting resources can be difficult. Please get in touch if your school would like to borrow these.