The gender disparity in STEM fields emerges early in development. This research examined children's explanations for this gap and investigated two approaches to enhance children's structural understanding that this imbalance is caused by societal, systematic barriers. Five- to 8-year-old children ( = 145) observed girls' underrepresentation in a STEM competition; the condition presented no additional information, the condition compared boys' greater representation to girls' when boys had more opportunities to practice than girls, and the condition compared greater STEM representation when they had opportunities versus not. Children in the condition largely generated intrinsic explanations; in contrast, children in both structural conditions favored structural explanations for girls' lack of participation (Experiment 1) and achievement (Experiment 2). Importantly, each structural condition also had unique effects: raised children's fairness concerns, while increased children's selection of girls as teammates in a competitive STEM activity.

中文翻译：

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为什么没有女孩？提高儿童对 STEM 性别差距结构性原因的认识

STEM 领域的性别差异在发展早期就出现了。这项研究考察了儿童对这种差距的解释，并调查了两种方法来增强儿童的结构性理解，即这种不平衡是由社会、系统性障碍造成的。5 至 8 岁儿童 (= 145) 观察到女孩在 STEM 竞赛中的代表性不足；该条件没有提供额外的信息，该条件比较了当男孩比女孩有更多练习机会时男孩与女孩的更大代表性，并且该条件比较了当男孩有机会与没有机会时更大的 STEM 代表性。处于这种情况的儿童很大程度上会产生内在的解释。相比之下，两种结构条件下的儿童​​都倾向于对女孩缺乏参与（实验1）和成就（实验2）的结构性解释。重要的是，每种结构条件也有独特的影响：引起儿童对公平的担忧，同时增加儿童在竞争性 STEM 活动中选择女孩作为队友的机会。