Neuroscientist tells nurseries to ditch stereotypes as they create gendered brains

There is no difference between female brains and male brains, according to a neuroscientist, who says it is a gendered world in the early years of a child’s life that creates a gendered brain.

Stereotypes abound about male and female brains – men are good at reading maps, are logical and can only focus on one thing at a time whereas women are said to be able to multi-task and are empathetic.

In a talk at the Men in the Early Years conference, Professor Gina Rippon said: “The belief that we have held for over 200 years is that your biological make up determines the kind of brain you have. So the female brain is seen as empathic and caring and rubbish at reading maps. Whereas the male brain is seen as being about science and leadership.”

Professor Rippon, a researcher in the field of cognitive neuroscience at the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University, concedes there are differences between male and female brains but says they are not innate, it is because we treat boys and girls differently pretty much from the moment they are born.

“People want to believe there is a difference between girls and boys’ brains.

“But we all know that the world treats girls and boys differently. If you have got very tiny socially attuned individuals and a world that is so marked we can see where these differences come from. There is such a thing as a gendered brain because we develop in a gendered world.”

Baby girls are often dressed in pink and baby boys are dressed in blue, with studies showing baby boys are bounced in the air more, with raspberries blown on their tummies and baby girls get more cuddles. As they get older, boys get ‘practical’ clothes and girls get ‘pretty’ clothes.

It is not long before boys are being bought train sets and cars and girls given dolls and toy cookers. Boys are called assertive and when the same behaviour is displayed by girls, they are called bossy. Boys are told to ‘man up’ when they cry while girls are comforted.

It can be hard to combat a lot of this gender stereotyping as it seems to be ingrained in our daily lives. However, with many attitudes being formed at a young age, Professor Rippon who has written a book called The Gendered Brain says it is vital to challenge these stereotypes early on, and nurseries can play a huge role in ensuring children are not limited by these assumptions about gender.

She sees the world as an “amazing brain influencer”, saying: “Our brains are plastic and throughout our lives our experiences will change the structure of our brains. This applies to the early years but much later in our lives as well.

“The brains of babies from birth are tiny, little sponges. They realise quickly to survive, they need to be an accepted member of a network. If you are rejected from a social group, it affects the same part of your brain as when you suffer pain.”

Children are very good at picking up hidden messages and the ages between two and four and a half are known as the gender detection years.

There have been studies carried out where researchers have set up games where previously neutral objects are coloured blue and pink. They show the children videos of girls playing with pink toys and boys playing with blue toys and researchers find this hugely influences what toys the girls and boys play with.

Boys are often said to have higher levels of spatial awareness but Professor Rippon believes that this could be due to Lego and Minecraft being a gendered activity and influencing boys’ development. She says if girls played Lego and Minecraft for the same amount of time, their spatial awareness would be boosted too.

Tips on keeping nurseries stereotype-free

There are many practical ways of changing the gender landscape in your nursery.

Georgina Phillips, recruitment & relationships officer for Gender Action and Caren Gestetner, co-director of Lifting Limits spoke at the Men in Early Years conference giving tips on recognising and correcting unintentional gender bias.

To tackle stereotypes, Caron Gestetner says the change needs to come from the whole setting and a good starting point is to do an audit and look at which children are playing in which areas of the nursery and what they are playing with.

She says: “Pink can be a real signifier of separation and if there is a lot of pink in one of the play areas, it can put boys off playing there as they quickly learn that pink is for girls.”

She also recommends looking at dressing up outfits to see if there are a lot of princess and firefighter outfits.

The pair advise practitioners to think about the ethos of the nursery and the curriculum and the staff and the families that attend the nursery.

• What pictures and posters do you have on your walls and what books do you have? Are they stereotypical?

• Nurseries need to offer children books featuring strong female characters as well as strong male characters.

• If they fall over and hurt themselves, do you treat girls and boys equally and give them the same level of comfort. Is there an unconscious bias?

• If you are doing a topic on pirates, do you make sure you don’t just feature male pirates?

• Do you tell girls ‘that is not ladylike behaviour’ or say ‘boys will be boys’.

• If there are male practitioners in the nursery, are they doing different roles to the female practitioners?

Ms Gestetner reveals during their work in schools, they often get “teachers telling us boys are not able to process their emotions as well as girls. But it is drummed into boys from an early age that they shouldn’t cry and they need to man up”.

Ms Phillips from Gender Action warns that although using stereotypes may not seem that harmful, “it is that slow drip drip that can internalise ideas until they become part of that person’s belief system”.