Andrea Vial
@avial.bsky.social
Social psychologist studying gender disparities at work and beyond. Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi. Yale & Hunter College alumna. Born & raised in Argentina 🇦🇷
For context, female words (e.g., characters) increased over 6 decades (great!) but numeric representation is only part of the story: seeing more fem. chars but in stereotypical ways may reinforce kids’ beliefs in unequal gender roles. Progress in gender rep. in media depends on where one looks 6/8
July 25, 2025 at 9:36 AM
For context, female words (e.g., characters) increased over 6 decades (great!) but numeric representation is only part of the story: seeing more fem. chars but in stereotypical ways may reinforce kids’ beliefs in unequal gender roles. Progress in gender rep. in media depends on where one looks 6/8
But our results are NOT fun: Words associated w/ boys/men appear more oft. as grammatical agents (“doers” in a sentence) vs. words associated w/ girls/women. Of 10 times that someone is described as a “doer”, 6.4 it's a male character (vs. only 3.6 female char). This bias hasn’t budged in 60ys! 4/8
July 25, 2025 at 9:36 AM
But our results are NOT fun: Words associated w/ boys/men appear more oft. as grammatical agents (“doers” in a sentence) vs. words associated w/ girls/women. Of 10 times that someone is described as a “doer”, 6.4 it's a male character (vs. only 3.6 female char). This bias hasn’t budged in 60ys! 4/8
What children see and hear in media shapes their worldviews. We covered kids’ TV shows from 1960 to ~2020. Many of us grew up with these shows, even outside the US (a bunch of my personal childhood favorites are in our dataset, which made this project pretty fun) 3/8
July 25, 2025 at 9:36 AM
What children see and hear in media shapes their worldviews. We covered kids’ TV shows from 1960 to ~2020. Many of us grew up with these shows, even outside the US (a bunch of my personal childhood favorites are in our dataset, which made this project pretty fun) 3/8