With a woman about to take her rightful place on the $20 bill, Hillary Clinton killing it in the polls and women and girls outperforming their male counterparts in college admissions, it’s easy to think that sexism is a thing of the past. However, a new study out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education shows that women still face a huge amount of discrimination when it comes to leadership positions.
The study polled teenage girls and boys and some of their parents to understand what types of biases teens had against women as leaders. The findings were shocking: 23 percent of girls actually preferred male political leaders, eight percent of girls preferred female leaders and 69 percent of girls expressed no preference. Of the boys polled a whopping 40 percent preferred male political leaders to female political leaders, only four percent of boys preferred female political leaders and 56 percent of boys expressed no preference.
The good news is that the study also found that this problem could be fixed with some hard work from parent and teachers to reduce bias. For example, white girls were the least likely to support each other in leadership roles. Teachers and parents need to be teaching girls to lift one another up instead of putting each other down.
The study also warned not to “let boys be boys.” Educating boys to be allies to girls in leadership is an important step in reversing the bias. Until the bias is truly reversed, women will face more barriers than men in reaching leadership positions.