Girls more likely to attribute failure to lack of talent: study

According to the study, girls are more likely than boys to blame academic failure on a lack of talent.

The idea that males are inherently more brilliant was most entrenched in countries that are less sexist.

The new work, published in the journal Science Advances, has the advantage of covering 500,000 students across the world, making it possible to compare between countries.

It used data from the Program for International Student Assessment to learn more about the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in math, reading, and sciences.

When I am failing, I am afraid that I might not have enough talent.

Girls were more likely to attribute their failures to a lack of talent than boys were, even when performance was equal, in 71 of the 72 countries studied. Saudi Arabia was the only exception.

The differences were most pronounced in wealthy nations.

61 percent of girls in wealthy countries agreed with the statement, compared to 47 percent of boys.

The difference was eight percent in non-OECD countries.

Higher-performing students had a bigger difference compared to average performance.

The ceiling is made of glass.

The study co-author, Thomas Breda, of the Paris School of Economics, told Agence France-Presse that there was no perfect explanation for the paradoxes.

It has been observed before that boys are more likely to study sciences and math.

As countries develop, gender norms do not disappear, but reconfigure themselves.

One hypothesis is that countries with more freedom allow individuals to fall back into stereotypes.

The countries that focus on individual success place a higher premium on the idea of talent.

There is less room for people to apply stereotypes in societies that assign less value to talent.

The correlation between the idea of being less talented and three other indicators was shown by the researchers.

The less talented girls think they are compared to boys, the less confident they are, the less willing they are to work in male-dominated occupations such as information and communication technology.

The existence of the glass ceiling may be linked to the three indicators.

The authors said in the paper that the glass ceiling is unlikely to disappear as countries become more gender-egalitarian.

The solution is to stop thinking in terms of innate talent.

Success comes from trial and error. The idea that girls are less endowed with talent than boys if we deconstruct the concept of pure talent.

More information: Clotilde Napp et al, The stereotype that girls lack talent: A worldwide investigation, Science Advances (2022). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm3689 Journal information: Science Advances

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