Learn about what children’s drawings over the years can tell us about society’s views on gender. Plus: Dr. Anthony St. Leger explains why researchers are beginning to study the eye microbiome. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how the way children draw men and women has changed in the last 50 years: https://curiosity.im/31G6SXy Additional resources from Dr. Anthony St. Leger: Bacteria live on our eyeballs – and understanding their role could help treat common eye diseases | The Conversation — https://theconversation.com/bacteria-live-on-our-eyeballs-and-understanding-their-role-could-help-treat-common-eye-diseases-116126 Anthony St. Leger, PhD | University of Pittsburgh Department of Opthalmology — http://ophthalmology.pitt.edu/people/anthony-st-leger-phd Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about what children’s drawings over the years can tell us about society’s views on gender. Plus: Dr. Anthony St. Leger explains why researchers are beginning to study the eye microbiome.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how the way children draw men and women has changed in the last 50 years: https://curiosity.im/31G6SXy
Additional resources from Dr. Anthony St. Leger:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/your-eye-microbiome-w-dr-anthony-st-leger-and-what-childrens-drawings-say-about-gender
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about what children’s drawings over the years can tell us about society’s views on gender. Then, today’s guest Dr. Tony St. Leger will tell us why researchers are beginning to study the eye microbiome.
CODY: Let’s eye some curiosity.
The Way Children Draw Men and Women Has Changed in the Last 50 Years — https://curiosity.im/31G6SXy (Ashley)
It goes without saying that the way we see gender has changed in recent decades. And new research shows a pretty surprising way you can see this: in children’s drawings. For a study published in July 2019, psychology researchers in Germany discovered that the way children draw men and women has changed in the last 50 years. What their findings tell us about the way gender representations change over time is pretty interesting, so let’s get into it. Back in 1977, researchers asked 839 German first graders to draw pictures of people, and in 2015, they asked 278 first graders to do the same thing. Then, the researchers collected all of those drawings and narrowed down their sample size to make sure the drawings ended up coming from a roughly 50/50 split of girls and boys. The researchers categorized all the drawings they could identify as male or female, then looked at how details the children included could be gendered — details like hats, necklaces, and bow ties. And there were some pretty big differences in the pictures researchers were able to identify as male or female. The 1977 drawings appeared to be 70 percent male and 18 percent female, but in 2015, the gender split evened out to 40 percent male and 47 percent female. Even more striking, in 1977, just 34 percent of girls chose to draw people of their own gender. In 2015, that number rose to 85 percent. At the same time, the newer drawings of women were more stereotypically feminine than they were in 1977, with more dresses, more jewelry, and more feminine hairstyles. That didn’t happen with the masculinity of male figures. So why these changes? According to researchers, the proportion of drawings from 1977 that depicted men suggest that back then, children heard the word "people" and thought "men." So as gender equality has risen, so too have children's drawings of women as "people." The researchers were a little less certain why the feminine attributes were more prominent, but one possibility is that stereotypically masculine accessories like weapons are looked down upon by teachers, and these children made these drawings in class. Another possibility is that feminine attributes have risen in status over the years. But the main thing to take away from this study is that gender representations — and children's understanding of gender — change over time, thanks to marketing, education, and societal values. We can turn to children's drawings of people to understand how they see the world around them and how that world might be changing.
[SKURA]
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Interview Clip 1 - Eye microbiome 101, how antibiotics work on it [3:58] (Cody)
CODY: New research into the eye microbiome could help us prevent and treat ocular diseases. I’m talking about stuff like conjunctivitis, more commonly known as “pink eye.” Which I’ve never had, but I hear is not very fun. [ad lib]
Well whether you’ve had pink eye or not, we have a special guest to help you understand how studying the eye microbiome can help us treat it. Tony St. Leger [ledger] is an assistant professor of opthalmology and immunology at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and in June, he published a piece in The Conversation on this very subject. He’ll tell us about some of the surprising discoveries researchers have made so far. But first, here he is with an overview of how your microbiomes work.
[2:38]
CODY: So they looked at some mice that were short on an immune factor that controls bacteria. Those mice developed a pretty bad case of pink eye. Then, when researchers gave them a special antibiotic, their eyes got a whole lot better! That’s all well and good, but there’s a potential implication for human health, too.
[1:20]
Antibiotics, man… gotta be careful with ‘em! Hopefully more research into how the eye microbiome works can help doctors make the right calls when treating conditions like pinkeye in the future. Again, that was Tony St. Leger, assistant professor of opthalmology and immunology at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. We’ll put a link to learn more about Tony, including the full article he wrote on this for The Conversation, in today’s show notes. This was the first half of our interview, and you’ll hear from Tony again tomorrow as we wrap up our discussion on the eye microbiome.
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today.
CODY: Today we learned that kids are drawing men and women differently these days. And it shows how our understanding of gender changes over time, thanks to marketing, education, and societal values
ASHLEY: And, that studying the eye microbiome is helping us understand how to treat conditions like pinkeye — and how we should be properly prescribing antibiotics.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!