Is Robotics Possible for Girls: Gender Stereotypes, Expectations and Choice of Parents

The purpose of this study is to establish the factors that determine the gender perceptions of parents about the possibility and importance for their daughters of preschool and younger school age to engage in robotics.The data will be collected through online survey and survey. The sample included 3 cities - Moscow as a metropolitan city and two small cities in the Orenburg region Gubkin Novotroitsk. Further analysis was carried out on the basis of 1160 respondents who were asked. The results showed that parents are not sufficiently knowledgeable about competencies in the era of digitalization. It was found that parents tend to view technical abilities as a stable trait that cannot be acquired through their efforts. Criteria were identified that increase the likelihood of the parents of their daughters to give their child to technical circles. Thus, the results demonstrated that the probability of giving your daughter to technical creativity circles increases among parents, whose professional activities are related to intellectual work, parents who consider technical knowledge important for solving professional tasks that are required at work, and also important as a scientific field knowledge. The probability of giving a daughter to technical circles increases for parents who do not adhere to gender stereotypes in relation to the STEM sphere and believe that women have higher technical abilities than men. Also, parents of daughters, who are always interested in what knowledge their child gets in extra classes, are characterized by giving their daughter to technical circles.