Girls who play with Barbie dolls tend to see fewer
career options available to them compared with the
options available to boys, according to a new study
by researchers at Oregon State University and the
University of California, Santa Cruz.
The study's authors, psychology professors Aurora
Sherman of Oregon State and Eileen Zurbriggen at UC
Santa Cruz, describe their findings as “sobering.”
Their article “‘Boys Can Be Anything’: Effect of
Barbie Play on Girls' Career Cognitions,” appears
online in the Springer journal Sex Roles published
March 5.
Play with Barbie dolls is an understudied source of
gendered socialization that may convey a sexualized
adult world to young girls.
Early exposure to sexualized images may have
unintended consequences in the form of perceived
limitations on future selves. Researchers
investigated perceptions of careers girls felt they
could do in the future as compared to the number of
careers they felt boys could do as a function of
condition (playing with a Barbie or Mrs. Potato Head
doll) and type of career (male dominated or female
dominated) in a sample of 37 U.S. girls aged 4–7
years old residing in the Pacific Northwest. After a
randomly assigned 5-min exposure to condition,
children were asked how many of ten different
occupations they themselves could do in the future
and how many of those occupations a boy could do.
Data were analyzed with a 2×2×2 mixed factorial
ANOVA.
Averaged across condition, girls reported that boys
could do significantly more occupations than they
could themselves, especially when considering
male-dominated careers. In addition, girls’ ideas
about careers for themselves compared to careers for
boys interacted with condition, such that girls who
played with Barbie indicated that they had fewer
future career options than boys, whereas girls who
played with Mrs. Potato Head reported a smaller
difference between future possible careers for
themselves as compared to boys.
Results support predictions from gender
socialization and objectification theories.
For more information
“Boys Can Be Anything”: Effect of Barbie Play on
Girls’ Career Cognitions
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