Can anyone suggest why girls at 6 change their view of girls' ability to be brilliant?

And yet the boys still end up running the country and getting paid more. I wonder what would happen if they hadn't been "dumb boys'.
Although primary schools are mainly staffed by women, I wonder if 6-yr-olds view teachers more as caregivers than as women having careers (Only musing - no studies to back this up).
I also found the 'you can't climb in a skirt' jarred with my experience. I wasn't particularly a tomboy and I was rules obsessed but I have lots of memories of climbing trees in a skirt (both in and out of school). I didn't care about boys seeing my pants. And in fact I'm the parent that taught DS to climb trees.

You are on FIRE tonight Meagan.

Me too Meagan. I am now a 35 year old woman and witnessing yet another female prime minister. Fucking feminists.

When I was a child in the 80. The girls were always the smart ones in the class and that I witnessed that boys believed they were dumb boys and not meant to be smart because they were boys.

Funnily enough i had a conversation about this with dd today. She told me x said boys do boy things and girls do girl things. I asked her what she thinks. She said she can do anything she likes and play with anything she likes,but x said that. I told her x is silly and by thinking that way he has less choices in what to wear and what to play with,so isn't she lucky she knows there's no such thing as boy things and girls things. She was happy with that,but insisted i have a chat with x and set him straight.
Sorry kid, I can't fix sexist parenting as much as I'd like to.

Errol at my daughter's school except for 3 males,all the other staff are female. Head,deputy head, teachers,ta's,office staff,dinner ladies,pastoral care etc. So the majority of her role models are working females. This was in answer to the pp that said that girls are surrounded by looks obsessed female role models.

btw if anyone is up for a mass campaign against stereotyping in children's adverts then I am all up for that!

whats relevant to kids aged 5/6 is the advertising aimed at kids aged 5/6. This includes "everyone wants to look their best for the ball" plastic castles, and "get the speed,be the best, beat the others" racing tracks for cars.

Guess which of the above shows exclusively girls and which shows exclusively boys......

most school staff is female

Speculation....Maybe the kids in the study don't perceive primary teachers as being 'smart'? I've been told that in the US, public sector jobs tend to be viewed as lower status, not at all aspirational.

Actually if you think about it,most school staff is female. So girls would be surrounded by at least 20 working females (ranging from positions of great power-HT to caretakers ,cleaning ladies etc) for at least 30 hours a week. There are very few women I know that are clothes,makeup and looks obsessed. None in mine or dd's close social circle.

Sorry, I've skim read the thread so far, but just wanted to say that, although the subject is very interesting and well-worth debating, I think the study referred to in the article is much too small and localised to be significant. Overall they studied 300 American children of whom it seems 96 were six-year-olds and not the same children as the five-year-olds they studied.

Delurking because someone brought up that ridiculous monkey study. I heard about that a few years ago and looked into it. I'm on my phone and can't link right now but the details can be found pretty easily. They measured how long the monkeys made contact with the toys. I take "made contact" to mean touched. So because they say the boy monkeys touched a truck for a few seconds longer than the girl monkeys did, toy preferences are inate in humans.
I'm no scientist but that seems like a huge leap to me.

I think the magazines are a red herring actually, in terms of age 6 change, they are more a wider part of media children experience

You introduced the subject.

whoputthecatout

I can just see it!

That sounds like scene from Miranda Whoputthecat

As the archetypal climbing tomboy as a kid I was always in trousers. However, in my young days many decades ago Girl Guides always wore a serge-type skirt. I had my salutary lesson about climbing in skirts then, when I scaled some very high pointed metal railings (to get into a park, which was closed at sunset ) hooked my skirt on the point bit and was left dangling upside down and, yes, flashing my blue school knickers.

Luckily no one was about, but also unluckily no one as about. So shouting for help was useless. The only way to free myself was to rip my skirt from waist to hem and plunge into the flower bed. Then I had to make my way home.. not a good look.
God bless trousers.

Mmm, buns. With lemon icing, preferably...

Whenever that happens, Italian, Lass will challenge it. As indeed, she did a post or two after mine!

Nor is it hard to climb a climbing frame in a play ground

But it is easy for boys to cluster underneath and try to see girls' knickers. That kept a lot of girls on the ground in my day.

Yy.

It's also possible in some set ups for researchers to give some body language hints, if they are aware of the sex of the children.

to re-run his study to reach the objective he wanted (lol)

Blimey. Even worse than the issue of studies which show no differences being underreported (firstly, not written up, secondly maybe less likely to be deemed worthy of joirnal publication although that shouldn't be the case, thirdly almost never reported in the media).