The present research aimed to investigate whether adults’ gender bias against women in brilliance-requiring contexts extends to non-Western cultures, and whether this bias also applies to young girls. In Experiment 1 (N = 354), Korean adults were asked to refer an acquaintance for a job requiring either exceptional intelligence (brilliance condition) or a high level of dedication (control condition). A Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression indicated that the odds of referring a woman were 25.16% lower in the brilliance condition than in the control condition, indicating a significant gender bias. Experiment 2 (N = 362) examined whether this gender bias extends to children. Korean adults selected elementary school-aged children for a program requiring either exceptional intelligence (brilliance condition) or a high level of dedication (control condition). The odds of selecting a girl in the brilliance condition dropped by 30.83% compared to the control condition. These results suggest that gender bias against women in intellectually demanding contexts is not limited to Western cultures and, more importantly, extends to young children, which may have cumulative consequences for gender gaps in academic and career outcomes. Together, these results underscore the need to approach how opportunities are framed and how abilities are conceptualized in educational and professional settings, to combat biases limiting opportunities for girls and women in intellectually demanding fields.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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