Draw A Scientist
On a recent grade 9 science quiz, half of my students assumed that “a scientist” was a “he”, while the other of half did not assign a gender to the scientist. Not a single student assumed the scientist was a “she”.
The next day, I gave each student a blank sheet of paper and told them to “draw a scientist”, an exercise inspired by Dave Chambers’s study to investigate how early on children start forming an image of a scientist.
Some students took the prompt literally and drew real-life scientists that they have heard of before:
One student drew me, their teacher:
Another student drew himself. If you are keeping count, that is 4 male scientists so far, all based on real-life people. The remaining 22 pictures depicted fictional scientists, and ONLY ONE of them was of a female (the drawing shown at the top of this story).
Final Score: 25 drawings of male scientists to 1 drawing of a female scientist. My class had 14 boys and 12 girls in attendance that day.
What Did The Students Say?
When I asked them why the male-to-female drawing ratio was so imbalanced, the predominant answer was that they were thinking of a scientist they have heard of. The names that popped up were Einstein, Newton, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Nye. Some boys said that they were just drawing themselves. But if some boys drew themselves, then why didn’t any girls draw themselves? Another student said that it’s easier to draw a guy than it is to draw a girl. When he said that, a few other students immediately and enthusiastically concurred with him — I suspect they may have jumped on the bandwagon, but who knows for sure. What I did notice was that it was mostly boys coming up with these responses, and that most girls remained silent.
I also asked why students wrote “he” in their response to the quiz question about “a scientist”, and the only answer anyone would admit to was that they just always use “he” when they write.
Nobody brought up the possibility that there exist societal attitudes, still, in 2017, that cause more boys to pursue STEM professions than girls. Also, within some STEM communities themselves there are professionals who exude, possibly subconsciously, a male-centric viewpoint. I raised these issues with my class and encouraged them not to let these barriers stop them from being a scientist or a mathematician if that’s what they want to do. I also assigned them homework to research a female scientist and share their findings with the class so that next time they won’t just have males references.
