Do children consider male authority to be more legitimate than female authority?

By the age of four, children already understand that male figures more often hold power than their female counterparts in mixed-gender interactions¹. Nevertheless, do they simply witness this inequality, or do they consider it as legitimate?

To address this question, a research team from the CNRS, the University of Lorraine and the Université Grenoble Alpes² individually exposed children³ aged 3 to 8 to interactions in which a character, sometimes male, sometimes female, was in a position of power over another⁴. In each scenario, the children were given an odd number of stickers to distribute between the two characters. By choosing which one to favour, the children revealed their views on this inequality. Giving more stickers to the character in power signalled recognition of the legitimacy of their position, whereas favouring the subordinate character reflected a desire to restore some form of justice within the relationship.

Conducted with a panel of 653 children, this experiment did not show any bias towards male characters in positions of power. However, the results suggest that age influences choices. Younger children tended to favour characters in positions of power, whether female or male, while those aged 7 to 8 generally preferred subordinate characters. This study also highlighted that children tended to favour characters of their own gender. This behaviour was particularly pronounced among girls, who showed a stronger preference for females than boys did for males.

The results of this study, published in Child Development, suggest that children aged 3 to 8 do not show greater approval of male power. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to verify whether a legitimisation of masculine power could appear in other situations or other cultures, or whether such biases develop at a later age.
 

Notes :

1. According to the following study conducted in France, Lebanon, and Norway: How Preschoolers Associate Power with Gender in Male-Female Interactions: A Cross-Cultural Investigation. Charafeddine, R., Zambrina, I., M., Triniol, B., Mercier, H., Kaufmann, L., Clément, F., Reboul, A., Pons, F., & Van der Henst, J-B. Sex Roles, 83, 453-473, (2020). 
   DOI: 10.1007/s11199-019-01116-x
2. From the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CNRS/Inserm/Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Université), the Interuniversity Laboratory of Psychology (Université Grenoble Alpes/Université Savoie Mont Blanc), the Laboratoire de psychologie et neurocognition (CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes/Université Savoie Mont Blanc) and the Lorraine Laboratory of Psychology and Neuroscience of Behavioral Dynamics (University of Lorraine).
   This study was funded by the ANR as part of the CHILD-GAP project: https://anr.fr/Projet-ANR-21-CE28-0014
3. Homogeneous mixed sample of children from various social backgrounds attending different state schools in the Lyon region.
4. By imposing the games they prefer on the other character.