Episode 1 No More Boys and Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?

We live in a country where men and women are meant to be equal -

same pay, same careers, same opportunities -

but children as young as seven

think the boys and girls are fundamentally different...

I think boys are cleverer than girls.

Men are better at, like, being in charge?

I would describe a girl as being pretty.

..and that these differences will define the lives

they live as adults.

If the woman has a child,

the men have to go to work and earn some money.

Men are more successful because they could have more harder jobs.

I don't believe that biology alone can explain these differences.

I think the answer lies in the society we live in.

I'm Dr Javed Abdelmoneim.

What if they called you all sweet pea?

ALL: No!

I'm going to find out if by turning a class of seven-year-old primary schoolchildren...

-What are we doing?

-..gender neutral...

You've got to start going to the same toilet.

ALL: No!

..I can change the way they think about themselves...

Everyone can have a chance to do what they like.

..and the way they think about their future.

I do not like reading but I like reading that book.

And if I can do that,

perhaps there's a chance of making their adult lives really equal.

"Made to be underpaid" - would you dress your daughter in that?

It kind of makes...

Something that seems so innocent not really that innocent after all.

But it isn't going to be easy.

I don't want to do it anymore!

I want it to go back to boys and girls.

They didn't think I could do it at first.

What we're trying do could actually be very difficult.

I think you're going to struggle.

Every child deserves the same opportunities in life,

but unless we stop treating our boys and girls differently,

that simply isn't going to happen.

This is Lanesend Primary School on the Isle of Wight...

Can you please line up ready for assembly?

..a local school with a good academic record...

..run by headteacher Caroline Sice.

Good morning, everyone.

ALL: Good morning, Mrs Sice.

300 boys and girls, ranging in age from five to 11.

Graham Andre teaches one of the two year three classes.

Right, how could you describe the gladiator?

-Mr Andre.

-How are you?

Sorry to interrupt...

23 seven-year-old children, who were born between 2008-2009.

-Hello, everyone. ALL:

-Hello!

The same time that the UK was drafting the Equality Act,

the most comprehensive legislation

anywhere in the world against sex discrimination.

Would you like to share what you've written?

These children have lived their entire lives in a world

that says it wants men and women to be treated the same.

Get things written down.

But is that how things really are?

Come on, Amber, give it a go, love.

Maisie, what we're doing, love,

is we're saying we're gladiators, so we're describing what we're seeing.

It seems to me that if we treat boys and girls differently

that's how they will see themselves.

Nancy. Finger spaces, of course, my love.

We always needs finger spaces.

But if we treat them the same, maybe we can transform their views

and alter what the future might hold for them.

So what do the children in Graham's class

think about how different or similar they are?

Men are better because they're stronger

and they've got more jobs...

I think.

I would describe a girl as pretty,

lipstick,

dresses, love hearts.

Boys can only do football.

Why is it only boys can play football?

Because they're fitter and stronger.

I think strong is a boy word because

they can fight lots of people.

Right, tell me, who's more important - girls or boys?

Morely like boys because they can protect girls more.

I think men are more successful

because they could have more harder jobs

and they would earn more.

I think men are better at,

like, being in charge.

I think boys are cleverer than girls because

they don't...

they get into president easily, don't they?

Louis?

I think, from the moment they're born,

they are aware of gender.

Those children are becoming that mind-set, this is what they are,

the boys will play football, the girls will do drawing and art.

They will tell me what jobs they can or can't do,

so it's very much that they've still got very set views

on what is acceptable for their gender.

Shhh!

Right, Riley, we need to be quiet.

Everyone.

It's common sense

that there are basic biological differences between the sexes,

but do these differences explain the way the children think?

To find out, I've come to see Professor Gina Rippon,

one of the country's leading experts in neuroimaging,

to see if there's something about how the children's brains work

that could explain it.

What are the differences between boys' and girls' brains, anatomically?

The 64,000 question.

Structurally, there appears to be very, very few differences,

which is quite a surprise to a lot of people who have assumed for hundreds of years

that males and females are different because their brains are different.

So you couldn't look at a brain scan and say,

"That's the brain scan of a male or a brain scan of a female."

That really doesn't explain why boys and girls might behave differently,

then, if you say the structure of the brains are...

There's no differentiation between the structure.

Well, the other thing that we now know

about is that the brain is very, very plastic,

mouldable, changeable,

that something isn't necessarily fixed and invariant,

which was always thought about the brain.

What we now know is that brain development

is very much entangled with society, experiences, upbringing,

and the differences we're seeing are not because they were

determined at the moment of conception.

It's because this hungry brain arrives in the world

and the world is instantly plunging it into a tsunami of pink and blue,

and I think we have not been aware, until recently,

of how big that influence is.

If Gina's right,

the differences between boys and girls aren't set in stone.

They're there because their experiences have taught them

different skills and mental attitudes...

Can you phone people on your phone and text and stuff?

-No. I haven't got a Sim card or any credit.

-Haven't you?

..which means I should be able to reduce the differences

between the boys and girls in Graham's class of seven-year-olds.

What I need the boys to do is some pictures because the girls at the moment...

Research at Stanford University has said that seven is a key age

for children because it's at this point that they are beginning

to have fixed ideas

about the differences between a man and a woman.

Excellent! Amber, would you like to share yours?

But not so fixed that they can't still be changed.

Five and two, they'd be quite loud.

Think about the patterns in the twos and the five times table.

-Riley?

-Ten.

So I've asked Dr Stella Mavroveli from the Psychometric Lab,

University College London,

to run a series of tests

to gather some data measuring these differences.

So, I am a scientist.

I work with children and adults and I help them learn a little bit more

about themselves, and you will be helping us learn a lot more about children your age.

These tests will look at the differences between the boys and girls when it comes to...

One is only men,

two is only women, and three is both men and women.

So these are jobs, OK?

..their levels of self-esteem...

..how clever they think they are, known as perceived intelligence.

..their understanding and levels of empathy...

If my mother is happy, I also feel happy.

..assertiveness...

..and how good they are resisting impulses to act -

a trait that is linked to aggression,

bad behaviour and lying...

You will be allowed to eat one sweet,

but then you've got to leave the rest until the end of the day.

-No!

-No!

-Yay.

Right, we need to get back on with our maths.

I'm protecting mine.

The wall might stop them.

Then the Roman couldn't get in there.

..and how much vocabulary they have to describe their emotions.

Happy.

Excited.

Joyful.

Smiley.

Funny. Joyful.

Um...

Fun. Family.

Love.

Excited. Enjoyable.

Er...

I don't know.

Can't think of any.

I can't think of any.

Graham also scored each of the children

for levels of classroom behaviour, hyperactivity and poor conduct.

Thank you so much. You've done amazingly well.

I'm collecting them.

Stella has sent me the results of the week of tests

and they are shocking.

I'm seeing here evidence

that the girls significantly underestimate

how clever they are and have less self-esteem and self-confidence,

and the boys can't seem to express their emotions, except anger,

which is really disturbing.

And the girls seem to use words such as, ugly, lipstick, pretty -

so everything to do with looks to describe themselves.

I'm disappointed by these results.

Gina has told me that boys' and girls' brains are the same,

so there's absolutely no biological reason

why the results should be like this.

What is really worrying is that Lanesend is a school

like any other in the country,

so if these results are true for them,

then they're probably true for every other class in every other school.

So I'm heading back to the Isle of Wight,

where, for the next five weeks,

I'm going to stage a number of classroom interventions.

When you think about love, what does it remind you of?

Maisie, what does it remind you of, love?

These are designed to tackle the differences I've seen in the boys

and girls in our series of tests,

and change them when Dr Stella retests the children

at the end of the term.

Can you sit, properly, please, Amber, love?

Cara, love, what does love remind you of?

And to ensure that any changes that take place

are down to my interventions,

we're going to use the other year three class as a control group.

They will be tested at the beginning and at the end,

but, apart from that, they'll have a term of normal lessons.

The girl would be Summer and a boy would be Sonny.

I'll teach you all how to be Jedis.

But before I do anything, I want to talk to Graham,

to find out if what he knows about the children ties up with what I've found.

So this is a really interesting thing, I think.

It's something called perceived intelligence.

-Right.

-OK? So there was a little test and the object was to ask them

what score they thought they would get.

-That's right.

-And overall, many,

many more girls underestimated what they would achieve than the boys.

-Right, OK!

-And, actually, three times as many boys overestimated what they would achieve...

-Wow!

-..when compared to the girls.

Girls underestimate their ability and boys overestimate.

And, in fact, one of the girls, Lexi, there,

estimated she would only get three out of ten,

-but actually scored nine out of ten.

-Wow!

Ditto for Grace and Tiffany, there.

I definitely think that's something that we do see within class,

that the boys actually have this greater belief

in their own abilities

and the girls seem to be a bit more quieter about it all,

and Tiffany, Grace and Lexi, I can see,

they're girls, actually, that are quite low on confidence.

Grace came to us from a different school and she was really low

on confidence, especially when it came to things like maths.

The most telling for me, personally, was the emotional vocab.

So we gave them a word and we asked them to give a number of words

-associated to that.

-Right, OK.

And across all of these emotions, bar one,

-the girls scored more than the boys.

-Wow.

And the only one they didn't score more on was angry.

-Wow!

-So boys had more words to describe angry than girls.

-Yeah.

-But, already at this point,

something's happened somewhere that girls can express their emotions

much more. And do you see that in class?

Yeah, we do, actually.

It's harder for the boys to express their feelings.

You can ask them, they get angry sometimes and you can say to them, "Why is it you are angry?"

And they're like, "I just am. "I just am angry!"

It wasn't just differences in intelligence or emotion

that were revealed in our testing.

For self-esteem, 50% of the boys described themselves as "the best",

but only 10% of the girls,

with one girl describing herself as "ugly."

Girls also had low scores for self-confidence,

while boys struggled with empathy.

It was a shock looking at some of the data in the assessment

that came back. There are some big challenges there for the children,

especially the girls, that underestimated their own ability.

And, also, there are some quite biased views about what boys

are expected to do and what girls are expected to do,

and I'd really like to change that.

That's the only thing I'm really nervous about -

that actually we do this and nothing happens -

because I really want there to be a difference.

Oh, you got a big bit!

Nancy, quick!

The first thing I want to do is address the differences

that the children told me about themselves.

Wherever they look, I want them to be faced with things

that highlight their similarities and not their difference.

Knock, knock! Mr Andre.

-Hello, Javad.

-How are you all?

CHILDREN SHOUT

Do you know what we're up to?

ALL: No.

Right. What we're going to do

is we're going to try and change the classroom.

We're going to ensure that the boys and girls are treated equally

because you can all do as well as each other.

So, here, we've got some boards,

which you're all going to help put up,

that says that boys are strong...

Yeah!

..but so are girls.

-Yeah!

-Girls are strong!

Let's start putting some stuff up, then.

You could put it the table.

It doesn't have to stay there for ever, it could change every week.

Where's the best place to put this sign so that people see it?

These signs have been written to challenge what the children themselves

have told me about how they view boys and girls.

Where do you think it would have the best impact?

-What does yours say?

-Girls are clever.

Do you agree, girls are clever?

-Yeah.

-Great.

-How about this one goes here?

-I think that's a good idea.

-Who had this one?

-Finlay.

-Good job.

Yeah.

That's good.

It looks like it's just a few words on the walls,

but it's about more than that, it's about the language, the climate,

the environment in which the children find themselves.

They're now receiving lots and lots and lots of small messages,

together, the sum of which is far greater than their parts,

and it's telling them boys and girls are equal.

They're in there for many hours a day, most of the days of the week,

so it's a big thing.

The biggest influence in the classroom is Graham.

You two guys...

I want to find out from headteacher Mrs Sice

how she thinks he does at treating the children the same.

Mr Andre is a great teacher,

but his biggest strength is his relationship with the children.

He knows those children really well.

However, when we were doing observations,

when he was asking questions and gathering answers,

often would ask more boys than girls.

Why do you think, fellas?

And this is what we had picked up in observations with him.

So, yeah, really important to see if we could change Mr Andre and ensure

his children were getting an equal sort of experience in his classroom.

I've got an idea that I think will do just that.

What do you think this might be?

What does it say on there?

Grace! Oh!

What does it say on there?

-Maisie.

-It says our names!

-Ryan.

One of the most telling findings in the testing

was the girls' low levels of academic self-confidence...

It's got your names on it.

..which is partly expressed in the confidence

that they have to speak up in class.

We know that you might be skewed towards letting one of the kids

answer a question if they're noisy or loud,

so this is a way of making it entirely fair

and straight down to chance.

Brilliant. So if I pull one out and say, "Riley,

"do you think it is a good idea?"

-Yeah.

-You think it's a good idea?

Yeah, it landed on me.

Of course it's a good idea!

And we are going out now actually for a bit of an early break.

Lily? Come on, love.

Anthony. What's up, mate?

There's little point in doing all I can to even out differences

when, every time Graham opens his mouth,

he uses names that massively reinforce

the idea that boys and girls are different.

Have you ever noticed that Mr Andre calls you boys "mate" or "fella"?

-Yeah.

-He calls me mate sometimes.

-Does he?

-But you're not a man!

Oh!

So is "mate" only for men?

-Yeah.

-No.

-OK, what about this -

what if Mr Andre called you all sweet pea?

-Oh, no!

-Yeah!

-Why not?

-That would be weird!

Sweet pea is the name for girls.

That would be so weird!

From those reactions,

it's clear that this kind of language has power...

..so I want to challenge Graham on his use of "love" and "mate".

We counted through one of your morning sessions

-the number of times you called girls "love", "my lovely", "darling", "sweet pea"...

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-..it was 104 times.

Really? Ah, yeah.

And the boys, you called the boys "mate", "lad", "fella" or "sir".

-Right.

-That was 47.

OK. Do you know? I'm really aware that I do this.

It's also the fact that you do tend to endear yourself

-to the girls twice as much as the boys.

-Right.

Crumbs, that's a lot, isn't it?

It's sort of ingrained, it's something I do,

so I find it really hard not to do it!

It's all too easy to laugh this off as not really mattering,

but constant reminders of difference sink in

and have a lasting effect on the children.

I've got an idea for a way the children themselves

can help Graham change his ways.

-It's a face.

-What do you think it might be?

Here we go. So...

We've noticed that Mr Andre likes to call some of you "love"

and "sweet pea", and some of you "mate" and "fella".

We're going to put this up

and every time you hear him say "love", or "mate",

or "sweet pea", or "fella", or "my darling",

you can put a sad face next to whichever one that he's said.

-What do you think about that?

-Yes.

-Yes!

-I like it!

-All right, but you've got to be honest with this.

You have to be honest.

If I stand any chance of effecting change then everything that marks the children apart as different

based solely on being a boy or a girl needs to be gotten rid of,

and nothing will do that more than pet names like "love" and "mate".

So, yeah, you've seen the small things that we've put up all around the room

and how we're going to change the words we use.

So a small beginning, but this is your new classroom.

-What do you think?

-I like it!

-It's just the beginning, Ronnie.

-What?!

-I know!

It's been an interesting day today, with Javid coming in.

I am a bit worried about the board at the back of the classroom.

I think cos the kids are part of that, too,

they're going to keep an eye on me and help me to do that,

and I know it's for the greater good.

I know it will have an impact on the children.

Would you like dinners, Louis?

Go and get yourself a form. Thank you, Riley.

I look forward to seeing him.

It's a new day at Lanesend Primary School.

Look, two minutes and he called me "miss".

Mr Andre's messed up.

And already Graham is struggling with the pet names.

How long did it take you to say love?

It was about two minutes, Lily, wasn't it, this morning?

It was a real accident, as well.

-Lexi, you all right there, love?

-You said "love"!

You just called Lexi "love"!

Lexi!

It's much harder than I thought it was going to be.

Although, to be fair, I do honestly think two's not too bad.

I would have, by now, looking at 23 children,

I would have called each one of them a term of endearment, I think,

at least once this morning,

so two's not too bad, but it's still not great.

It's really, really, really hard.

I really have to think about what I'm doing.

Despite the changes I've brought to the classroom

proving a little challenging for Graham,

he has a project of his own he wants the children to help with.

So we've been talking about the different changes

that we've made in our classroom.

We've got these signs around.

But we need to change our cupboards because, at the moment, we've got

a cupboard for the boys and we have a cupboard for the girls.

So what we want to do is we want to change that.

We want to change it so actually, when you come in,

you can put your coat in whichever cupboard you want to.

So what we are going to do is paint.

THEY GASP

Right! Jay looks like Joseph in his technicolor dreamcoat.

We need to decorate it.

I'm doing a butterfly.

Painting a cupboard might seem a bit small, even ridiculous,

but every time the children have a difference pointed out to them

and then removed, it reinforces that they are the same.

Can we make the cupboard into one big one?

I think you should cut off the middle bit

and then put them together.

We just have a boys' cupboard and a girls' cupboard, actually, I don't know why we've done this.

It's always been the same.

Because they're part of the process,

because they've been able to paint it,

I think they will start to mix it up a little bit.

-There we go.

-Brilliant. Do you think you've done a good job?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, I think you've done a good job.

Excellent. And can you please line up at the door?

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to queue up for assembly

and I'm going to pick a ball out and this person will be the line leader.

We could have a different person each day, couldn't we?

-Bella.

-Yes!

-There you go, Bella.

It's an encouraging first step to see the children and Graham

being challenged by the changes I've made in the classroom.

But next I want to tackle one of the questions

that all children have an answer for.

When I grow up, I want to be a Formula 1 driver.

When I grow up, I want to be a pop star because I like music.

I'd like to be a RAF pilot.

I want to be a teacher.

As part of our testing, the children were given a long list of jobs,

these range from ones that are traditionally thought of as either female or male,

like baby-sitter and plumber,

to less obvious ones, like baker or dentist.

We then asked which jobs a woman would do.

I think a hairdresser,

a baby-sitter and a nail designer.

And which would a man do?

Football player, tennis pe...

Um... Tennis people.

Captain of a ship.

What was shocking was just how certain they were

that these jobs were only for men or women.

And I think a hairdresser is a girl job

because it's a girl job.

I think a firefighter is for a boy

because they need to hold up big ladders what are really heavy.

Boys can only be police officers

because they're faster, so they can catch the robbers.

If you thought of a nurse being a boy,

it kind of sounds a bit weird

and it would kind of look a bit weird, as well.

On one level, this sounds like harmless kid's talk,

but at just seven years old, there is no doubt in their minds -

some jobs men do and some women do,

and that is limiting.

All right, year threes, would you like to stand up?

I want to try and show them

that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

Here we go, I'm going to show you this,

and on this are four jobs.

Over here there's a ballet dancer, a magician,

a make-up artist and a mechanic,

and what I want you kids to do is to get as creative as possible.

Draw in their body, draw in their arms.

Imagine what tools they might need,

imagine what colour hair they've got,

what clothes they wear.

I also want you to do one thing, which is really important,

I want you to give them a name. Ready?

ALL: Yes!

I'm doing a magician.

I need a...

You want to make them naked?

You can do that. How many mechanics do you know that work naked?

-Trillions.

-OK.

The jobs I've chosen aren't really the important part.

I'm not trying to turn all the girls into wannabe magicians,

but what I do want to do is to explore the kind of rigid thinking

they showed in our testing.

So you're thinking about who might do this job, yes?

-A girl.

-A girl, OK.

I would put them in a normal job,

like a make-up artist would normally be a girl

and a car mechanic would normally be a boy.

Your magician is a mister, I see you've written here.

-He's going to be Mr and then Bubbles.

-OK.

And my car mechanic, I might call him Diamond Steve, I'm not sure.

This is Hayley, she's a ballerina

because most ballet dancers are a lady.

My make-up artist is a woman,

she's going to have a mirror and lipstick

cos it's make-up and lipstick's make-up

and usually you have mirrors for make-up.

Yeah. It's basically a woman cos it's usually a woman.

And the ballet dancer's called Anne

because lots and lots and lots of ballet dancers are girls.

It's surprising how fixed the children's ideas are.

Almost without exception, the mechanics and magicians are men

and the make-up artists and dancers women,

but there is absolutely no reason why that should be.

So I want to show them an alternative.

Are we ready?

Come in. Come in.

Come in. You've all got your hands to your mouths, huh?

So you were drawing four people earlier, weren't you?

-ALL: Yes.

-Are they the people on our sheets?

Why don't you introduce yourselves and we'll find out?

Hello, so my name's Rob and I'm a make-up artist.

I'm Andrea and I'm a car mechanic.

Hello, my name is Dane and I'm a dancer.

Hello, I'm Karina and I'm a magician.

-What?

-Is that surprising, Riley?

-Yeah.

-Come forward and meet them all properly, come on.

Right, you five ladies, would you like to come with me?

Yeah.

Everybody stand back then.

I am a magician.

Whoa!

So my name's Rob and I work on films like Star Wars and Avengers.

-Star Wars!

-Yeah!

Meeting role models can be hugely influential.

-Turn.

-Like this or something?

Let's see. And go.

Very good. Very good.

Because what we learn from them

is more likely to change our behaviours and beliefs.

-What is that?

-It's part of the exhaust

and what it does is it collects all the nasty soot.

Is it really, really hot?

It gets incredibly hot.

-Have you girls ever met a female mechanic?

-Yes.

-No.

-No.

-Where have you met one?

-Ah!

-You've met me!

So, Lexi, have you enjoyed meeting the mechanic?

Yes. I think that it's really cool that it's a girl mechanic.

So sometimes, we might have to paint on a little black eye

because someone in the film, it might happen that they get punched in the face or something.

Yeah, like Thor's brother Loki when they're fighting.

Yeah, like with Loki, yeah.

Yeah.

I like it cos a boy gets the chance to be make-up artist,

not always a girl.

Oh, looks sore, doesn't it?

-It was tickling, wasn't it?

-And turn left.

And drop to the floor. And fall down. And up. And turn. And finish.

Very good, very good.

Who's been the coolest person you've met?

It's got to be the dancer because...

I don't know why, I just like it.

I think they're everyone jobs

because everyone can have a chance to do what they like.

This was not a hard thing to do,

to get some people in a room and show the children

that there's an alternative

to what they think as the inevitable path for men and women.

By making them face their own assumptions,

we've made a lasting change.

Boom. High five, double.

Yeah.

It would be easy for schools

to do something like this, but they aren't

and that means another generation of children growing up

with fixed and limiting ideas about what they can achieve.

So what do we need to say to all these wonderful people who have come to see us this afternoon?

Thank you!

-Bye! Bye!

-I do apologise for some of your children,

what's happened to them this afternoon, I don't know,

but they have lots of things they can tell you about today.

It's been amazing today.

-Did you have fun?

-Yeah.

-Let's have a look.

-I saw...

It looks really real!

-It's a painting!

-A lady magician, a lady car mechanic,

a male dancer and a male make-up artist, which done this.

-Were you surprised?

-Yeah.

I think, if we did the same activity that we did earlier again tomorrow,

then you'd get a whole different set of pictures on those bodies.

I'm sure you would.

I actually think this could be a step in the right direction

of a change in their views.

Bye.

While changing the children's perceptions is a start,

I think it's just one part of the problem.

In our testing, the girls scored 30% lower than the boys

in self-confidence in maths.

Two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

The ability to process and understand numbers,

shapes and how objects fits together,

known as spatial awareness, is key to success

in a number of traditionally male-dominated professions.

According to the Office of National Statistics,

less than 10% of engineers and 20% of architects are women.

I want to know why it is that men dominate

it when comes to spatial awareness.

People are very interested in the fact that on average

girls tend to do worse on what we call spatial tasks

and it seems to be very much a function of encouraging boys,

or boys having more experience with visual and spatial skills.

They've got their heads stuck in a Lego instruction book, for example.

So people have looked at whether or not

you could improve performance by training,

so these are scans of girls who had opportunities to play Tetris

intensively for three months

and what they found was that their spatial skills improved

and actually there were structures in the brain which changed.

So it's physically changed in response to Tetris training.

Yes, the cortex has got thicker -

to put it in simple terms.

So a male child might be much more encouraged

to play with games that are to do with spatial awareness,

so the brain has rehearsed and practised that,

develops more and actually the child becomes better at it.

-Yes.

-And we know that practise it makes perfect.

Yes. And also, if you're better at something, you enjoy doing it more.

No!

Gina has given me an idea of how I can brain-train my class to even out

these differences and build their confidence

in their abilities that affects subjects like maths and science.

Spatial ability is a key component in the stem subjects,

the subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths,

and those subjects are crucial for future careers

potentially in engineering, architecture, even surgery.

OK, kids, what we're trying to show today is to see if any of you

are better than the others at spatial awareness -

being able to look at physical objects

and seeing how they relate to each other -

and Mr Andre and I are going to have a quick test now.

-Are we? Excellent.

-Yeah.

-Hang on, here we go.

-Shh, shh.

-Listen.

-Look at these big colourful shapes again.

-Wow!

-This is a Tangram puzzle.

Mr Andre and I's task is to make this shape out of these.

Right. So shall we go for the ends first?

So if I... One...

Tangram puzzles use seven geometric shapes

that can be arranged into various complex patterns.

A green triangle that needs to go...

To be good at it, you need to be able to manipulate shapes,

understanding how they fit together

and how they change when you flip or rotate them.

-There we go.

-Wow. That took some thinking, didn't it?

This trains the temporal lobes of the brain

that are responsible for processing shapes.

-There we go.

-That was good.

-Teamwork.

-Well done.

Teamwork!

Now, you're each going to get one,

and you're going to practise right now with one particular shape.

OK, this is the shape I'd like you to make.

You've got it in front of you. What does it remind you of?

-Boat.

-A sailboat. Yeah.

Away you go.

This looks easy.

I've given the children ten minutes

to try and reproduce the shape that looks like a ship.

If you're a boy who's been playing

with Lego or Minecraft his whole life,

you're much more likely to be better at this type of task

and more confident in it,

and have confidence in those subjects like maths and physics.

-Done! Done!

-It looks like the boys have done it before.

So is it that they're more practised at it, more rehearsed?

And the point of this is to give them all an even playing field,

in terms of rehearsal,

-practise and exercising that part of the brain.

-Yeah.

Grace, these are even wrong.

Both Grace and Tiffany scored in the bottom half of the class when tested

on their self-confidence in maths.

Which point comes off?

Look at that point in the shape of it.

On the sheet it doesn't look the same as the...

same shapes as the wooden block ones.

There's a couple, actually.

-Tiffany's really struggled.

-I think, you know, 15 minutes a day,

ten minutes a day, not long out of the school day

could really help exercise this and get them all up.

These are great maths problems as well, you know.

Would this fall into your numeracy type...?

-Absolutely.

-Brilliant. Brilliant.

There's clearly a huge gap between boys and girls,

which I hope this intervention will go some way to closing.

There we go, I'm done.

Graham's class isn't unique.

It's worrying to think that the difference I've seen here

could well be found in other classrooms in the country.

And I don't think people are doing enough,

leaving generation after generation of little girls

excluded from future careers that require abilities in stem subjects.

It's five to three.

It's home time already.

So, Riley, Louis and Cara, off you go to games club.

The rest of you can go home.

It's easy to think that boys are just better

when it comes to developing their spatial awareness skills.

That girls don't like playing in that kind of way.

They naturally prefer dolls to boys' toys.

I want to put that to the test

because I'm pretty sure that that idea is rubbish.

Toys are just toys.

So I'm going to conduct an experiment -

something a little unorthodox.

I've gathered some babies and swapped their clothes.

For the next couple of hours,

Marnie becomes Oliver

and Edward becomes Sophie because I want to see the kinds of behaviours

and assumptions adult volunteers make

when they think they're playing with a little boy or girl,

even when they're not.

Look at this.

Look at this. Would you like a dolly?

Shall we go for the dolly? There's a good girl.

You're a good little girl, aren't you, Sophie?

Look, what does this say?

"Sweet dreams."

"Sweet dreams."

Oh, and what's this?

Ooh! Look at this, Sophie!

What's startling is the assumption that,

because Edward is dressed as a girl,

the adult thinks he wants to play with the soft toy.

Meow, meow.

Not the toys that encourage understanding

shapes or being physically confident.

Do you think she had any favourites?

Yes, I do. I think she liked that pink dolly the best.

If I were to tell you actually that Sophie is Edward...

-Ah!

-..does that change anything?

I maybe thought, "Oh, this is a little girl,

"so I have to give her little girl things."

-You made the choice for this infant to play with that doll.

-Yeah.

What I'm saying is,

when adults choose for the children how they play,

what with, what role they're going to have

then they're going to end up there.

-Yes.

-One, two, three.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep!

What do you want to play with?

Do you want to see my robot?

She's picked the robot, the car, the puzzle game.

I think she's been much more physical in handling the child

than the other adults have been with girls.

Say hello.

Say hello.

Hello.

Hello!

What's this one?

What's that one do?

Is that a robot?

What about this one?

You like that one.

What does this one do?

Right, OK.

Oliver.

-Oliver.

-You've gone for, you could say, boy toys...

-Possibly. Possibly.

-..for this boy.

Possibly, in my subconscious.

For me, I was just going for what was around me,

but perhaps my subconscious was automatically playing a trick on me.

If I tell you that he is actually a girl.

-Really?

-Yes.

Oh, wow! That's really interesting.

I suppose it's because of the stereotype.

And then that changed your behaviour towards the child.

-Yes, it did. It did.

-And your behaviour was quite directive.

-I can't lie.

-So how does that make you feel?

You changed your behaviour.

Really shocking, because children today,

we're trying to teach children that you can be what you want to be,

but yet we're still forcing an identity on a child.

This identity based on how we think a child should act isn't harmless.

It has much deeper and longer-lasting consequences

than choosing which toy to play with.

Gender differences in emotional health.

So here, it says women with anxiety disorders are more likely

to internalise, which results in typically loneliness,

withdrawal and depression.

Men, on the other hand, are more likely to externalise,

which leads to aggression, impulsive behaviour,

coercive and noncompliant behaviour.

There's an article. "Are men natural-born criminals?

"Prison numbers don't lie."

So less than 5% of the country's prison population is female.

People who research masculinity in prisons.

"Men don't cry. Men take it on the chin. You can't be soft."

Simply being born a boy

means you're much more likely to end up in prison,

but then they're much more likely to earn more than a girl.

The gender pay gap.

There are less women full stop in the top 100 companies

as bosses than there are men called John.

The sum of all these statistics...

Well, there's potential for it to be really quite sinister, or insidious,

if you don't stop to think about why.

These statistics have really brought it home to me that some children

across the country have a difficult and uncertain adult life because of

what we tell them it means to be a man or a woman.

I'm determined more than ever to make a difference

for Graham's class, so I've asked him to have another look

at his classroom to make sure every last bit of difference is removed.

It's not something I've thought about before,

so it's things like the superheroes.

These books are really aimed squarely at the boys.

It is the boys that go for them...the majority of the time.

Very occasionally, a girl will,

but it is quite a gender-based bookcase,

which doesn't really give out the right signals.

Graham is right to be concerned.

A study by the Florida State University

found that, in 6,000 books, only 31% had a central female character.

I just wonder up and down the country

how many class book shelves are just like this.

It's hard. What do we replace these books with?

While another study found that the boys featured in the stories

celebrated negative traits, like excessive competitiveness...

What's more important? Friendship or winning?

Winning, because you might get money.

..and aggression.

I think it's better to be a boy

because girls don't like guns as much as boys.

And I think reading books with passive princesses

and aggressive heroes makes it all the more likely

for the children to accept these behaviours as normal.

Do you think boys are braver than girls?

Yeah, because sometimes girls are frightened

and sometimes boys are not.

What are girls better than boys at?

Being pretty...

..and wearing dresses.

I'm really keen to change Mr Andre's classroom

into a space full of messages to counter those ideas,

so these books are really going to challenge

some of the traditional roles.

There's a book here where the princess

saves the prince from the monster

and that's really good to just give them an idea

there are different characters out there.

Shh! And listening carefully.

I've left these books for Graham's next reading class.

"Chapter three.

"No-one knew the princess in Black Secret except her faithful steed."

OK, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask some of you to tell us

about the book that you've been reading.

This girl called Stella,

she always dreamed that she caught the googly moogly.

What sort of things did she need to show to go and catch the googly moogly?

What did she need to be, do you think?

-Confident.

-Confident.

-What else did she need to be?

-Brave.

And do you think she was brave?

Right, Bella.

Our story is The Princess In Black and The Perfect Princess Party.

There's a princess,

and she has this special ring that tells her if there's monsters

attacking, and there was a monster attacking, and she saved people.

Wow. So she's like a normal princess, but she's got superpowers,

-is that right?

-Yeah.

-Do you prefer her when she's like this...

or do you think she's better when she's like that?

-That one.

-Why do you like that princess better, then?

Because the other one is a bit too girlie girl.

The other one's a bit too girlie girl and this one's...

She has to be quite brave, I should imagine, yeah?

I do not like reading, but I like reading that book.

So you don't like reading much, but you really liked reading this book? That's really good, Bella.

The frustrating thing is just how easy this is.

It only takes a few books to change the children's minds,

to offer them alternatives to macho men and passive women,

which should affect the boys' empathy and the girls' self-esteem

when we retest the children - and, if they keep reading,

I hope well into adult life.

Do you think these books are better than our last books?

Thumb up. Excellent.

So I think these new books are a real hit, don't you?

-Yeah!

-Yeah, excellent.

Fantastic. Can we carefully line up at the door, please?

So, Lexi, you've got to do the vote

and you've got to choose a 100-word challenge.

To be honest, I'm really proud of what I've done so far.

Just to have this number's good.

Graham might be feeling positive, but I'm keen,

two weeks into my time at Lanesend,

to hear what changes he's seeing in the children.

And do you think they've noticed some changes?

Yeah, I do think they've definitely noticed changes.

They're taking it on board.

They are making links between, you know,

these positive signs and things that we're saying in the classroom.

I think what will be interesting to see at the end,

to see how much they've changed in a relatively short space of time.

Has there been any resistance from one or two of them?

No, not really.

Not with anything that we've done yet but, you know...

You don't know what's to come.

Exactly. It's still early days!

Next, I want to challenge another of the areas from our testing -

what the children think about strength.

I'm going to say some words.

-Yeah?

-And I want you to say if they're a boy or a girl word.

Strong.

Boy.

Weak.

Woman.

Girl!

Strong.

A boy word,

because they're stronger than girls.

Boys.

Boys, because they run round more.

Boys, because they go to the gym more.

I think strong is a boy word because

normally boys have really strong muscles.

If you look at the world's strongest person, he's a boy.

In the children's minds there is no doubt - boys are stronger,

they've got bigger muscles, and girls aren't comparable in any way.

As a doctor, I've got an understanding of our bodies,

how we grow, how we change,

and what I know is that there's actually no difference

in muscle mass and strength between boys and girls

right up until the age of puberty.

But strength isn't just about biology.

Our testing showed that the boys had limited vocabulary

around expressing their emotions,

that they linked being strong with not showing how they felt.

-Do you cry?

-No, but I do get angry.

And what happens when you get angry?

Ah, I try breaking my bed

and I break my Lego.

-Do you cry?

-Yeah.

I think girls cry more because, erm,

because boys are stronger and they can hold their tears in.

What about crying?

-Do you cry?

-No.

Is it OK for boys to cry?

No, because they're strong.

These children have such different ideas when it comes to strength

and there really is no reason for it.

I want them to understand just how similar

they are in terms of physical strength,

even if that forces the boys to challenge the belief that they

will always come out as the strongest,

so I've built a little surprise for them - on their playing fields.

Let's march.

Right, come around here.

OK, kids, now we are going to...

-test your strength!

-Yes!

-How hard do you need to hit to get ten?

-Sh, listen.

But before we get to doing that, you've got one minute now.

I want you all to line yourselves up, from strongest to weakest - go.

Everyone's running to the left!

So I want to see a line.

Addy says he's in the middle.

-I am not strong.

-Me, too!

Kara puts herself at the end.

No, I'm stronger than you!

-How do you know?

-I'm stronger than you.

Mr Andre, they won't let me go where I am now!

Why, do you think you're the strongest, then, Riley?

-Pushed me out.

-Move over a bit.

-Yeah, but I'm trying to get into my...

-Boys, we're not fighting.

They won't let me go there!

There's been a bundle for who's the strongest.

A little scuffle for the boys,

trying to put themselves in the strongest position.

No compromise, but there's certainly a preponderance for boys

at the strongest end and girls at the weaker end.

Knowing that these children are more or less equal

when it comes to their biology, this isn't really about strength.

Right, thank you very much for doing that.

Now, come back together.

I believe it's about the children's self-confidence

and levels of self-esteem.

So, I'm going to ask each one of you to tell Mr Andre and I

what you think you're actually going to score.

-Ronnie, what do you think you'll score?

-Ten.

-Ten?!

Our tests showed that the girls massively underestimated

what they thought they could achieve.

Lily, you think you'll score...

-Five.

-OK.

Tiffany, what do you think you might score?

Five.

But with a simple demonstration of how strong they really are,

I can challenge that and hopefully improve their levels of confidence.

-Lexi?

-I think I'll score a five.

What do you think you'll score, Bradley?

-Nine.

-Riley, what do you think you'll score?

Ten. I'll break the bell.

-OK.

-Some quite high predictions there.

Yes. Now, kids, thank you for doing that.

One by one, you're now going to come up and test your strength.

They will each have three attempts to ring the bell.

What happens if we miss the button?

-If you miss the button, that's it.

-You'll just have to put zero.

Yeah, absolutely, Lily.

OK, Orion.

Choose your weapon.

-Thor's hammer!

-Three goes each.

Hand-eye coordination - concentrate.

Two.

Two.

Four!

Go, Bella.

-Yes.

-Oh, five.

Hey!

Well done, Bella.

That's close to a ten, wasn't it?

Oh! He missed it.

Go on, Louis, give it a good effort.

Go for it, Lily.

Oh!

Lexi, have you had a go?

Come on, Lexi.

Lexi estimated that she would score just five out of ten.

You can do it, Lexi.

BELL DINGS

SCREAMING

All right, Lexi. Well done, Lexi.

Sh!

Hey! Are you all right, Lexi?

-What's up? Are you a bit overwhelmed?

-Yeah.

Crying because you're happy?

Why are you happy, then, Lexi?

Because I didn't think I could do it at first.

Yeah, and you're really happy because you did?

We're really happy because you did, too.

Is it happy tears?

That's all right, then. We don't mind happy tears.

That's brilliant, Lexi. Well done, you.

-Excellent!

-Lexi, I'll get you a well done card

and I'll send it at your house.

Next up, Riley.

He has predicted hitting the bell and getting a maximum score of ten.

I'm going to break that bell!

-Come on, then, Riley.

-Move!

Good luck, Riley.

-Oh.

-Does that count?

-Yeah!

-I can't hit it!

-Oh!

-I can't hit it, I can't hit it.

Don't worry, Riley.

HE CRIES

I can't hit it!

HE SCREAMS

When we tested the boys,

63% of them had problems dealing with their emotions,

including Riley.

Why do you think that happened?

Why are you kicking the hay? HE SCREAMS

I don't want to do it any more!

But do you think you're going to get a chance

if you do it again at the end? Of course you are, yes.

Yeah, but it wouldn't count as my proper score!

Why do you think it didn't work?

Oh, I don't know! But it won't count as my proper score!

No, it doesn't matter. It's all about trying, isn't it?

Why are you so upset now?

Because I always get ten on them.

Aren't you even happy that your friends did well?

-No.

-Why not?

I always win everything!

So you...you're quite competitive, aren't you?

So, listen, when you throw yourself on the mud like that,

what's that achieving?

-Don't know.

-Why do you have that reaction?

Because I'm angry.

Riley was overconfident

and, of course, he got upset in front of the whole class

not scoring anything.

He doesn't use words to describe negative emotions

and that's quite telling.

-Shh! Listen.

-Right, what do we see here?

Look at Grace. She thought she'd get six - she got ten.

Kara thought she'd get six - she got ten.

-Ronnie, Bradley...

-Lily, Lexi - down here, Lexi, five...

So many of you got ten.

What I want to tell you is this -

at your age, boys and girls have exactly the same strength.

-But we all got different scores!

-As long as...

That's a good point, Kara.

If you're the same size as another boy or girl,

your muscles are exactly as strong as each other.

So what do you think about that?

Boys and girls are as strong as each other!

SHOUTING

Not a surprise, and good for them,

to see the boys having confidence in themselves and estimating

they'll score highly.

But with the girls - why do they underestimate themselves?

Six of the girls thought they'd score six points or less

and, in fact, five of them then scored ten.

So they are achieving what the boys can achieve.

They're seeing that they can do that,

but they don't have the belief in themselves in the first place,

and hopefully all that we're doing is going to change that.

I can't get it!

I thought I was going to get a five and I was happy crying

because I got a ten.

I feel really happy and proud of myself.

Before I did this, I think that boys were stronger than girls

because everyone just said that,

but now I think that girls and boys can be strong.

Seeing the girls actually coming up and achieving as good,

if not better - most of them were far better -

but I think actually that's probably instilled in them that confidence,

so actually to see that change, and I think it is a real change,

it's exciting.

Well done!

Lexi's done it.

But today hasn't been a total success.

-Riley?

-Can I have another one?

-Well, I think you can in a minute, yeah.

Do you know what? The first time you do it and,

if you miss, take your time, OK?

And be positive.

You can do it.

Although Lexi's had a really nice breakthrough,

this represents a big setback for Riley

and there are 23 children in the class.

I've been here two weeks, three weeks.

I'm worried that all I've done is upset a load of kids

and none of this is having the slightest effect.

I've realised just how entrenched these differences are

for boys and girls and that interventions

in the classroom aren't going to be enough.

Do you like being a girlie girl?

-Yeah.

-..I take the fight home to the parents...

Because it's all very pink and girlie.

Wow! ..challenging them...

Yes, I'm afraid that has to go.

-..and the children...

-He said, "Look, Mum, I've got a handgun -

"you can't take this one off me."

..before finding out if I have succeeded...

I want it to go back to boys and girls.

..with my class of gender-neutral seven-year-olds.

I've turned these kids into monsters.

The girls... They were never like it before!