There is consistent evidence that women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Although boys and girls start out performing similarly on STEM-related school subjects, the gap between them widens as they mature, leading to the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields at the college level and in the workforce. One prominent interpretation of this widening gap is that women are conforming to gender stereotypes. Learned gender stereotypes affect people's interests, their beliefs in their abilities, and their performance on tasks. In this work, I explore two potential factors that may be contributing to the gender gap in STEM fields: children's susceptibility to stereotype threat and their beliefs about males' and females' competence and capacity to learn about STEM fields. In Study 1, two experiments investigated the effect of stereotype threat on children's (ages 4-9) performance on a spatial task. After a gender identity activation manipulation, children were asked to replicate a series of designs with LEGO blocks. In Experiment 1 (N = 22), preschool girls in the stereotype-threat condition were significantly slower than girls in the control condition, although they did not express strong explicit stereotypical attitudes in general, or specifically about LEGO blocks. In Experiment 2 (N = 160), children in kindergarten through third grade did not perform differently in the stereotype-threat condition, although girls in general were slower than boys. Moreover, children's speed on the block-construction task was predicted by their stereotypical attitudes towards LEGO blocks, whether their favorite toy was LEGO blocks, and how frequently they played with blocks at home. To complement these results, in Study 2 (N = 132), children rated males' and females' competence and learning ability in STEM and non-STEM fields. Children as young as age 5 held stereotypes about females' decreased ability to perform at STEM-related fields, although children's school-subject preferences and career aspirations did not reflect these stereotypes. Results from this work point to the detrimental effects of gender stereotypes on children's performance as early as age 4 and children's beliefs about women's abilities. Implications for understanding precursors of the STEM gender gap and for informing intervention work are discussed.
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