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Today you learn about what children's drawings over the years can tell us about society's views on gender.

Then today's guest, Dr Tony St. Ledger,

will tell us why researchers are beginning

to study the eye microbiome.

Let's eye some curiosity.

It goes without saying that the way we see gender has changed in recent decades and new research shows a pretty surprising way you can see this in children's drawings

For a study published in July 2019, psychology researchers in Germany discovered that the way children draw men and women has changed in the last 50 years.

What their findings tell us about the way gender representations change over time is pretty interesting, so let's get into it.

Back in 1977, researchers asked 839 German first graders to draw pictures of people.

And in 2015, they asked 278 first graders

to do the same thing.

Then the researchers collected all of those drawings

and narrowed down their sample size

to make sure the drawings ended up coming from a roughly 50-50 split of girls and boys.

The researchers categorized all the drawings they could identify as male or female and then looked at how details the children included could be gendered,

details like hats, necklaces, and bow ties.

And there were some pretty big differences in the pictures researchers were able to identify as male or female.

The 1977 drawings appeared to be 70% male and 18% female.

But in 2015, the gender split evened out to 40% male and 47% female.

Even more striking, in 1977, just 34% of girls

...