So just to get this straight, long hair = female? Thanks for clearing that up.

its a little depressing that most kids thought of scientists as white males. the fact is, there's a LOT of South Asians and East Asians who work in research labs, including my dad.

Amanda's drawing, not shown here, has a different skin color before and after, and I'd say it's darker in the after picture.

Either 14 or 15 of the before pictures seem to depict not only a male, but a bald(ing) male. I'd be interested to know what's going on with that specific aspect.

See Sadker and Sadker's Failing at Fairness regarding importance of women and minority role models (as just one possible but very compelling source).

I wonder if these young teens simply depicted a scientist who most resembled them? I would have. THat seems to be the case for the girl at any rate!

I also like the prevalence of goatees!

When I was a senior undergrad, I participated in a community education outreach program that had teams of students visit local middle schools once a month to do a hands-on science demo and lesson, as a way of showing students that "science is fun!" and "lots of normal people do science" with an emphasis on women and minorities, plus establishing a link between the public school system and the university. I am female and my outreach partner was a South Indian male. I was floored when I found that most of the students assumed that I was "the scientist's wife"!

I also participated in junior high and high school visits for National Engineers Week and made a concerted effort to dress up/be fashionable for those events (my usual lab wear runs to ratty jeans/T-shirts and gym clothes) because I knew my personal presentation was a challenge to the nerd/awkward/uncool stereotype.

The second picture grouping looks like a change in race to me (the "After" picture has short black hair and the skin is shaded, which makes it look like someone who would be considered black to me).

Also, could the fact that no boys changed their character's gender be because most boys their age tend to fix on their own gender? It is well known that boys primarily read books about boys and usually focus on shows with men playing the main character. Girls, on the other hand, usually read books about both boys and girls, and watch shows with both boys and girls as main characters. If they focus their media intake on a particular gender, it is not too surprising that is what they output onto paper.

As a physics geek, it cracks me up to see Fermilab referred to as "the Fermilab" like there are lots of them and this is the one that they happened to go to.

Interesting, btw, that there is a "typical white male", a "young female" and an "African American". I assume that the female is white and the African American male, and this seems reflected in the pictures, but if we're questioning stereotypes we should probably not expect (and thereby encourage) our audience to assume the default is white and male, hmm?

I like the second picture down...

Scientists: less panicked than you think we are! :D

Dude...I totally just noticed the black scientist in the third picture of the original post is saying "sup yall."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sxgs6#synopsis

In this BBC radio 4 programme, they explained recent research that showed that girls retain science teaching better when it comes from a text book with more pictures of female scientists. The same holds true for boys and this effect could potentially fully account for the better performance by boys in sciences at school.

The research was from this group http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~goodj/research.html

I wonder if the reason the boys didn't change the gender of their drawing was because the teachers/adults were so focused on making sure that the girls met some female scientists and learnt that women can be scientists, that they didn't think to make sure that the boys were interacting significantly with the female scientists - particuarly as it sounds like we can assume there would have been significantly fewer female scientists in the lab anyway. The boys may simply never have talked to them, and instead focused on the male scientists in the lab.

"We deliberately chose a typical white male, a young female and an African American physicist."

Hahahaha. A young white female and a male african american, then? Obviously goes without saying.

My 7th grade science teacher did the same experiment with my class. In the beginning of the year, she asked us to draw what a scientist looked like and give a brief written description. (This was only 5 or so years ago, so it hasn't been TOO long.) I remember drawing a long-haired, normal-looking female and writing something along the lines of "Anyone can be a scientist. Scientists can look like anybody."

I think I might have been the only kid in my grade who didn't draw the labcoat-wearing balding man. This was mainly due to the fact that I loved science, and it was also probably because Animal Planet and Discovery Channel were two of the TV stations I was actually allowed to watch. (My parents were EXTREMELY strict when it came to what their children watched on television.)

Am I the only one that totally *loves* the first "before" picture? That dude looks so happy to be a scientist.

I think it's interesting that there is so much commentary regarding the "gender ambiguity" of the drawings. Did anyone take into account the drawing skills of these children? In addition to the propensity of kids this age using easy visual symbols to denote things like gender/sex, age and other physical features, it also has to be taken into consideration that the image of the scientist in the mind of the child probably didn't look like the result on the paper. I've taught middle-schoolers art before, and even when an object is in front of them, they don't render it exactly as it is, and drawing something from the imagination is twice as difficult. There's a lot that goes on between the eyes, the brain and the drawing hand! If any of these drawings can be considered ambiguous in sex/gender based solely on the drawing style, then they should also be considered "not human" because of their disproportionately large heads and short legs.

I wonder what a "typical white male" is like. Is it that white people are all alike or just the male ones?

Very interesting. I am all about having my brainbox blown. Studying gender role models and shedding light on my previously unacknowledged racial and gender bias is awesome! Look, I made a post! http://malmater.com/2013/05/keep-merida-brave/

Boxy jackets, cropped tops, oversized coats and denim pieces received plenty of interesting interpretations, Air Jordan Shoes but there were also plenty of surprises show-wise.