The Surprising Way Children Picture Scientists Today

For years, researchers asked children to draw a scientist and received almost the same answer every time: a man in a lab coat, often wearing glasses and surrounded by beakers. Now, after decades of research, that picture is changing, with children drawing women scientists far more often than they once did.

The shift offers a striking glimpse into how children absorb ideas about who belongs in certain careers, and how those ideas can change when the world around them changes too.

A Simple Drawing Test Produced A Stark Result

The experiment began with a deceptively simple instruction: draw a scientist. Between 1966 and 1977, researcher David Wade Chambers collected nearly 5,000 drawings from children to find out how early their ideas about scientists had taken shape.

Only 28 of those drawings showed a woman scientist. That worked out to just 0.6%, and the figure remained remarkably low across the 11 years Chambers collected the pictures.

Even girls rarely drew women in scientific roles. Only 1.2% of girls’ drawings featured a female scientist, suggesting that the stereotype had reached children regardless of their own gender.

Many of these children had never personally met a scientist. Their images were likely shaped by television, textbooks, cartoons, and other parts of the culture around them, where scientists were overwhelmingly presented as men.

More Than 20,000 Drawings Revealed A Major Shift

Decades later, researchers at Northwestern University examined whether the stereotype had changed. In 2018, David Miller, Kyle Nolla, Alice Eagly, and David Uttal analyzed 78 American studies that used the same drawing exercise between 1966 and 2016.

Together, those studies included 20,860 drawings from children ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. The results, published in Child Development, showed that the image of the scientist had changed considerably.

In studies conducted from 1985 onward, 28% of children drew a female scientist. Compared with the 0.6% found in Chambers’ original research, the difference was substantial.

Miller said the findings suggested that changing stereotypes could allow girls to develop interests in science more freely. However, the overall average also concealed a major difference between the drawings produced by girls and boys.

Girls And Boys Drew Different Pictures

Female scientists appeared in 42% of girls’ drawings but only 5% of boys’ drawings. The stereotype had weakened across the decades, but it clearly had not disappeared equally for everyone.

The drawing test does not directly ask children whether they believe science is a career for men or women. Instead, it captures the person who immediately appears in their imagination when they think of a scientist.

That simple distinction may explain why the exercise has remained useful for researchers for so long. The drawings reveal expectations children may not even realize they have formed.

At Age Six, The Picture Is Far More Open

The most interesting pattern appears when the drawings are sorted by age. At six years old, children seem far less fixed in their assumptions about what a scientist should look like.

The 2018 analysis found that the share of male scientists did not significantly differ from 50% until children reached age eight. Among six-year-old girls, about 70% drew a woman scientist.

As children grew older, however, the picture changed. Girls began drawing more men than women between the ages of 10 and 11, and by age 16, only about 25% still drew a woman scientist.

Across the high school years, students produced roughly four times as many male scientists as female scientists. The findings suggest that the strongest stereotypes may develop during the years when children are repeatedly exposed to cultural messages about careers and gender.

Boys Showed A Much More Consistent Pattern

Girls’ drawings changed considerably as they grew older, but boys showed a much flatter pattern. Across the 50 years covered by the research, 96% of the scientists boys drew were male.

In more than half of the samples examined by researchers, boys drew nothing but men. The share of male scientists in their drawings increased from about 83% at age six to 98% at age 16.

The research does not claim that a child’s drawing predicts how that person will behave as an adult. Still, expectations formed early in life can follow people into schools, workplaces, and institutions.

Those children will eventually become teachers, employers, researchers, and decision-makers. The images they carry about who belongs in science may influence how they see the people around them.

Society Changed, And Children Changed With It

Researchers believe the shift in children’s drawings reflects a broader change in the roles women occupy in society. Eagly said the results suggested that children’s stereotypes change as women’s and men’s roles change too.

The numbers behind that change are significant. From 1960 to 2013, the share of women among employed American scientists increased across several scientific fields.

• Biological sciences: Women increased from 28% to 49%.
• Chemistry: Women increased from 8% to 35%.
• Physics and astronomy: Women increased from 3% to 11%.

Those changes did not eliminate gender gaps in every field, particularly in physics and astronomy. However, they changed who children could see working as scientists.

Representation Can Reshape Expectations

Children learn from direct instruction, but they also learn by watching the people around them and the images presented through media. A child who sees women leading research teams, appearing in documentaries, or working in highly visible scientific roles receives a different message from one who sees only men.

Nobody necessarily had to convince an entire generation of children to draw differently. As more women became visible in scientific careers, the old image of the scientist became less representative of reality.

The same process that once reinforced a narrow stereotype may now be helping weaken it. Children appear to be responding to the world they actually see.

New Studies Added Gender And Skin Tone

The famous drawing test has continued to evolve. In 2025, a research team led by Angelina Joy asked 69 children, with an average age of 7.6, to draw a scientist and examined both gender and skin tone.

The study found that boys were still less likely than girls to draw a woman scientist. It also found that older children were less likely to draw either a woman or a scientist with darker skin.

Children who believed scientific ability could be developed rather than simply inherited were more likely to draw a woman. The study involved a small group, so its findings come with clear limitations.

In 2026, Joy led another study that moved the exercise onto a screen. Researchers asked 371 college students to build a scientist avatar, and nearly 59% created a woman.

Both male and female participants also strongly tended to create scientists who resembled themselves. Because the study involved college students rather than children, it cannot be treated as a direct continuation of the earlier drawing research.

A Drawing Cannot Predict A Child’s Future

The researchers themselves acknowledge the limitations of these studies. The 2018 analysis relied on one measure and included American studies only, while the 2025 study followed just 69 children.

A drawing provides a snapshot of what a child expects or imagines at a particular moment. It cannot reveal everything that child believes, and it certainly cannot predict whether they will eventually choose a career in science.

Still, patterns across tens of thousands of drawings and several decades are difficult to ignore. The biggest finding may be the change itself, because an image that was once almost entirely male has become far more varied.

The Images Children See Still Matter

When the 2018 findings were released, Uttal offered a straightforward recommendation for parents and teachers. He said children should be presented with multiple examples of female and male scientists across science courses, television shows, and everyday conversations.

Children encounter ideas about careers in far more places than classrooms. They see them in books, films, news stories, documentaries, school materials, and the people chosen to represent expertise.

A broader picture can come from simple, everyday examples:

• Classroom materials: Include scientists from different genders and backgrounds.
• Media: Show researchers working in a range of scientific roles.
• Conversation: Talk about what scientists actually do in their daily work.
• Real examples: Introduce children to scientists working in visible fields today.

The goal is not to replace one stereotype with another. It is to give children a more accurate picture of a profession filled with people from many different backgrounds.

What Children Draw May Reveal The World Around Them

A six-year-old may approach a blank sheet of paper with a much wider idea of who can be a scientist than an older teenager. Over time, repeated images and expectations can narrow that picture.

The encouraging part is that the stereotype has already shifted dramatically once. The people children see in classrooms, laboratories, television programs, and everyday life are shaping the next generation’s idea of who gets to wear the lab coat.