In 71 of 72 countries, girls more likely than boys to attribute their failure to a lack of talent; this stereotype was strongest in more gender-egalitarian countries

 The stereotype that girls lack talent: A worldwide investigation. Clotilde Napp, Thomas Breda. Science Advances, Vol 8, Issue 10, Mar 9 2022. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm3689

Abstract: Recent research has shown that there exist gender stereotypes that portray men as more brilliant or inherently talented than women. We provide a large-scale multinational investigation of these stereotypes and their relationship with other gender gaps. Using a survey question asked to more than 500,000 students in 72 countries, we build a measure of the stereotypes associating talent with men and show that they are present in almost all studied countries. These stereotypes are stronger among high-achieving students and in more developed or more gender-egalitarian countries. Similar patterns are observed for gender gaps in competitiveness, self-confidence, and willingness to work in an ICT (Information and Communication Technology)–related occupation. Statistical analysis suggests that these three latter gender gaps could be related to stereotypes associating talent with men. We conclude that these stereotypes should be more systematically considered as a possible explanation for the glass ceiling.

DISCUSSION

Many of the gender gaps said to be related to the glass ceiling (47) are larger in more developed or more gender-egalitarian countries, and they are also larger among high-performing students. The first pattern suggests that the glass ceiling is unlikely to disappear as countries develop or become more gender-egalitarian. The second is worrying as high-performing students are the most likely to be concerned with the glass ceiling. Moreover, for the three gender gaps studied in this paper, we can show that the patterns observed worldwide are related to our measure of gender-talent stereotypes. To better understand why, we now turn back to our measure and try to characterize what it captures exactly, and why it also exhibits a gender-equality paradox.

What do gender-talent stereotypes actually measure?

Our measure of gender-talent stereotypes is related to gender gaps in confidence for activities that are stereotyped as difficult or requiring to be talented. For example, GTS are positively correlated across countries with gender gaps in students’ feeling to be self-responsible when failing in math (r = 0.53, see table S15B). Hence, when our measure of GTS is large, girls are more likely, relative to boys, to attribute a failure in math to their own inability rather than to external factors. As math is one of the academic fields most strongly related with brilliance or raw talent (3), this result shows that GTS are related to gender gaps in self-concept for activities that are stereotyped as requiring talent.

GTS are also associated at the country level with gender gaps in students’ belief that they can understand things quickly (r = 0.45) or that they are efficient at reading a map (r = 0.64). Hence, the stronger GTS, the more girls will think (relative to boys) that they cannot be a fast-thinker or perform a task that is usually not taught and stereotyped as masculine. GTS are also associated at the country level with gender gaps in students’ belief that they will struggle to perform a difficult task. This is actually the case when the considered task is in a domain that is stereotyped as feminine (“understanding difficult texts”; r = 0.51; see table S15). GTS are therefore positively associated to gender gaps in self-concept in domains that are stereotyped as requiring talent, as well as to gender gaps in attitudes toward tasks that are labeled as requiring talent, no matter the domain in which the tasks take place.

GTS do not relate to gender gaps in self-confidence in all contexts: There is, for example, no significant cross-country correlation between GTS and gender gaps in students’ confidence that they are good readers (r = −0.12). GTS is therefore related to gender gaps in students’ beliefs that they can perform difficult tasks in reading, but not to general self-confidence in reading. This shows that GTS more specifically capture attitudes or self-concepts for activities or tasks that are stereotyped to require talent.

GTS do not capture either a lack of ambition of girls relative to boys. On average, girls expect to be working at around 30 years old in higher-status occupations than boys, even when controlling for performance or when restricting the sample to OECD countries. There is also no significant cross-country correlation between the gender gaps in students’ expected occupational status at 30 years old and GTS (table S15). Last, GTS do not reflect a lower perceived control over succeeding at school as girls agree more than boys with the assertion “if I put enough effort, I can succeed at school” (gender gap of −0.09 SD), and there is no significant cross-country correlation between the corresponding gender gap and GTS (table S15). This is in line with the 6- and 7-year-old girls by Bian et al.’s (5) study who thought that girls get better grades in school than boys. It shows that girls can at the same time internalize a lack of talent, and a higher ability to succeed at school, confirming that the two lines of research that have examined these different stereotypes [Leslie et al. (3) on the one hand and Stewart-Williams and Halsey (16) on the other hand] are not in contradiction with each other. Together, these results illustrate the specificity of GTS, which does not deal with plain ability at school but with the lack of a special aptitude, that cannot be taught.

Last, we can show that GTS is unlikely to capture a gendered tendency for personal attribution. The question we use to build GTS is about attributing failure to the lack of a personal characteristic: talent. One may be concerned that it is not the characteristic per se that matters, but rather gender differences in attributing outcomes to oneself or a personal characteristic, no matter the characteristic that is considered. To show that this is not the case, we proceed in two steps. We first consider an item in PISA2012 about math: “Doing well in math is entirely up to me.” For this item, the gender gap (still conditional on ability) is clearly in favor of boys, showing that girls do not systematically attribute outcomes to themselves. A fundamental difference, however, with the item above is that it is about attributing success (rather than failure) to oneself. One could still argue that girls/women will attribute failure more, and success less, to themselves than do boys. To discard this hypothesis, we recall that the gender gap in the item “if I put enough effort, I can succeed at school” is in favor of girls (see above), showing that girls can in some cases attribute success to themselves or a personal characteristic. Together, the comparison of the gender gaps in the items above suggests that there are no systematic gender differences in attributing success or failure to a personal characteristic, and that the tendency to do so for girls and boys depends on the characteristic at stake. When it is about “doing math,” girls are less likely than boys to attribute potential success to themselves. However, when it is about “putting effort” to succeed, then they are more likely than boys to consider they can do it.

Why is there a gender-equality paradox regarding gender-talent stereotypes? And what does it imply?

As underlined by, e.g., Ridgeway (55), sex categorization is too deeply rooted as a system of relational sense-making for people to tolerate a serious disruption, and the bringing together of men’s and women’s worlds, the weakening of traditional gender norms, and roles about education and labor force, and politics participation that takes place in wealthier and more gender-equal countries can be associated with the enhancement of new forms of gender differentiation, like gender-talent stereotypes. This general theory is in line with the findings of England (56) or Knight and Brinton (57) that show that no country has eliminated gender essentialism. For instance, in the United States, with women’s progress toward equality in the workforce and in education, the beliefs that women are less intelligent and competent than men have weakened in the past decades (58), but “these specific gender beliefs were transformed and there is now more focus on women’s lower brilliance” (3, 59, 60). Broadly consistent with this argument, we find that the more women are present and entitled to be present in education, labor force, or politics, the stronger GTS are. GTS are positively related at the country level with female mean years of study, the female-to-male ratio in the labor force, the (opposite of the) date of women’s suffrage, or the opposite of the percentage of individuals agreeing with traditional values (in the World Value Survey).

A more fundamental reason that may explain why some gender essentialist norms (regarding talent or other domains) are more pronounced in wealthier and more egalitarian countries might be that these countries have also developed more emancipative, individualistic, and progressive values that give a lot of importance to self-realization and self-expression (61). These countries tend to “give citizens greater space to fall back on an old, deeply ingrained cultural frame as they try to make sense of themselves and others and organize their choices and behaviors accordingly” (55). This could explain that essentialist gender norms can be more easily internalized in these countries, as these norms will give individuals a cultural background on which they can fall back when facing the need to express their social identities. This explanation has been developed extensively by Charles and coauthors [see (22, 62–64)] to explain math attitudes and the larger extent of occupational segregation in more developed countries. We argue here that it can also apply to gender stereotypes regarding talent. Consistent with this argument, we find a large cross-country correlation between individualistic values and GTS (r = 0.68, N = 69; see the Supplementary Materials for details).

A related explanation comes from the fact that people in more developed and more individualistic countries have different beliefs regarding human intelligence. According to Rattan et al. (65), in Western countries, people tend to think that high intelligence is not universal but only granted to some (gifted) individuals, while in India or South Africa, for example, people believe that virtually everyone is born with the potential to become highly intelligent. This implies that in more developed countries, people may be generally more likely to attribute the underperformance to a lack of inherent potential, leaving more space for gender stereotypes regarding lack of talent to develop.

The existence of a gender-equality paradox for gender-talent stereotypes finally has important implications for the lively debate on the origin of the similar paradox regarding the underrepresentation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) or math-related fields. Some scholars have explained the latter paradox by the existence of deeply rooted gender differences in preferences that materialize more easily in countries where economic constraints are more limited or in countries where men and women have more similar rights [see, e.g., (23)]. Others argue that the paradox could be explained by the emergence of stronger gender norms associating math primarily with men in more developed or more gender-egalitarian countries (20, 61). The fact that GTS are larger in more developed countries means that girls in those countries internalize more the fact that they are less talented than boys, which is not consistent with an easier expression of girls’ and boys’ inner interests or preferences in these countries.

Final comments and policy implications

This paper shows the existence of large and widespread gender gaps in attribution of failure to a lack of talent. These gender gaps are linked to other well-known gender gaps at the country level and across students of different abilities, suggesting that self-selection patterns of girls away from competitive and prestigious careers may also be related to gender norms regarding talent. Considering gender norms regarding talent or related concepts such as brilliance or giftedness is therefore likely to be important to understand the supply-side contribution to the glass ceiling. This is both because these norms are likely to be directly related to the scarcity of women in top positions and because they are related to some of the main factors commonly put forward to explain it.

The evidence provided in the paper suggests, in particular, that exposure to cultural stereotypes about girls’ intellectual abilities and talent leads boys and girls to develop attitudes and preferences that they may not have had otherwise. In sending these messages, our culture may needlessly limit the behaviors, preferences, and career options that boys and girls consider. Gender-talent stereotypes may actually also hurt boys. For example, it may lead them to rely too much on talent and quick learning, to underestimate the role of effort over ability in the performance of particular tasks, to despise hard and in-depth study, and to abandon school work in case of failure. Consistent with this hypothesis, we obtain on PISA data that the gender gap in homework, as well as the gender gap in the belief that “Trying hard at school is important,” both at the advantage of girls, increase with GTS. The gender gap in students’ ability to sustain their performance over the course of the PISA test, also at the advantage of girls [see (66)], is again positively correlated with GTS at the country level, suggesting further that gender-talent stereotypes may hinder boys’ ability to engage in a sustained effort.

In terms of policy interventions, trying to suppress the myth of brilliance, raw talent, and creativity might require to convey the idea that talent is built through learning and effort and through trials and errors and that it is not innate and unchangeable (64). This consists of instilling a growth mindset [e.g., (35)] and viewing success as emerging from these processes rather than as depending on the amount of fixed, inherent ability one was supposedly born with. One small starting point is to be cautious when describing peers, children, or students as creative or brilliant because of the potential for bias in these descriptions. Exposing boys and girls to successful and arguably talented female role models is also likely to be a successful practical solution [see, e.g., (36, 67, 68)].