Reducing gender stereotypes through a digital positive youth development game

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe a newly developed digital positive youth development (PYD) game and discuss its effectiveness in understanding and reducing gender stereotypes and biases among junior secondary school students. The game, “male and female dichotomy”, allows students to explore gender stereotypes on “appearance”, “behavior”, “occupation”, and “traits” (ABOT) based on Deaux and Lewis’ gender stereotyping model. The design of the game is described after a review of relevant literature. The game guides students to examine the social demands and expectations of men and women in today’s world, and it enables them to reflect on how gender norms and their perceived gender stereotypes affect their perception on both genders. The game has been piloted in secondary schools in Hong Kong and is available free of charge upon request for non-commercial purposes. Two users who study in Shanghai and the United States were invited to review the game. Initial findings revealed that the section on “occupation” and “traits” were beneficial in the learning process, and the users became more aware of their gender biases. More research is needed to investigate the effectiveness of electronic game-based learning (GBL) in reducing gender stereotypes and biases among children and early adolescents.