An Investigation into Gender Bias in Educational Software Used in English Primary Schools

There is continuing evidence of gender bias in the use of computers in schools. Boys' greater access and confidence is multidetermined; however, one factor is the nature of the packages themselves and the imagery they deploy. Unlike the computer games sector where images remain crudely sexist, educational software providers have developed software which use 'androgynous' humanoid figures where gender-stereotypical features are absent. There is, however, no social or cultural warrant for human representations which are non-gendered. We hypothesised that children would have no notion of genderless persons and would assign gender to the figures, reverting to male as norm, but that girls would be more likely than boys to identify androgynous computer characters as female. In our study we asked primary school children to talk about the images, making up names and describing them. Content analysis of the data was used and a gender constancy test was included as a check for validity. A small pilot study supporte...