Children's Perceptions of Gender Discrimination

Brown, Christia Spears
Bigler, Rebecca S.

¹Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christia Spears Brown, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: [email protected].

Part of this project was presented as a poster at the 2002 Conference on Human Development, Charlotte, NC. This research was supported by a grant to Christia Spears Brown from the Debra Beth Lobliner Fellowship. We are extremely grateful to the director, John Combs, and the site leaders of Extend-A-Care in Austin, TX, and to the students who participated in the project and their parents. We also thank Enrique Barroso, Jensen Sapido, Tiffany Seaman, Leah Lambert, and Allison Davis for help with data collection and Alex Brown for the illustrations.

Received Date: February 20, 2003; Revised Date: January 13, 2004; Accepted Date: February 26, 2004

Developmental Psychology 40(5):p 714-726, September 2004.

Children (N = 76; ages 5–10 years) participated in a study designed to examine perceptions of gender discrimination. Children were read scenarios in which a teacher determined outcomes for 2 students (1 boy and 1 girl). Contextual information (i.e., teacher's past behavior), the gender of the target of discrimination (i.e., student), and the gender of the perpetrator (i.e., teacher) were manipulated. Results indicated that older children were more likely than younger children to make attributions to discrimination when contextual information suggested that it was likely. Girls (but not boys) were more likely to view girls than boys as victims of discrimination, and children with egalitarian gender attitudes were more likely to perceive discrimination than were their peers.