There are 2.18 billion people (est. UNICEF, 2004) aged 18 or under in the world, for a total of more than one billion living girls. From birth, girls are a slight minority due to both natural factors (the human sex ratio has been observed since the 1700s as approximately 1,050 boys for every 1,000 girls) and due to sex selection on the part of parents.

Although the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights specifies that "primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all", girls are slightly less likely to be enrolled as students in primary (70% enrollment vs. 74% for boys) or secondary education (59% vs. 65%). This disparity is targeted to end under the Millennium Development Goals and has closed substantially since 1990.

In all cultures, girls have been socialized into gender roles. Girls have traditionally been associated with playing with dolls and toy cooking and cleaning equipment, while boys have been associated with toys and games that require more physical activity or simulated violence, such as toy trucks, balls, and toy guns. Girls are less often encouraged to pursue sports, with the exception of sports that might be considered "feminine," such as figure skating or gymnastics; or those considered "gender-neutral," such as tennis. They may be prevented from participating in many of the same activities that boys participate in at the same age, as a matter of protecting them from perceived outside dangers, such as boys and men, or anything that may cause physical injury. Sometimes boys are presumed to be more responsible than girls, except in the cases of caring for younger children, which is sometimes thought to be instinctual in girls. Girls, as a group, may be perceived as being more docile than boys, and as being less capable of rational decision making and more governed by emotional responses.

The reasons for this perceived difference in the behavior of girls and boys are a controversial topic in both public debate and the sciences. The idea that differences in gender roles originate in differences in biology originates from 19th-century anthropology; more recently, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have turned to this problem to explain those differences by treating them as evolutionary adaptations to a lifestyle of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies. For example, the need to take care of offspring may have limited the females' freedom to hunt and to assume positions of power. Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge University professor of psychology and psychiatry, argues that "the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, while the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems."


On the other hand, feminists have argued that gender roles are the result of stereotypes and socialization rather than any innate biological differences. Owing to the influence of (among others) Simone de Beauvoir's feminist works and Michel Foucault's reflections on sexuality, the idea that gender was unrelated to sex gained ground during the 1980s, especially in sociology and cultural anthropology - an idea that has taken hold in transgender groups.

The biological viewpoint of gender roles is not that all gender distinctions result from biology, but rather that biology has an influence. Some feminists deny this, but many feminists agree that both biology and upbringing have an influence on gender roles, with the question being the relative importance of each. This conflict is often called nature versus nurture.

Several studies, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD, have shown that, in developed countries, girls usually obtain better scores than boys do in secondary schools in Literature and Language, boys on the other hand tend to score higher in mathematics. However, their choices afterwards in postsecondary school are often very different and lead them to less socially recognized professions. Relatively few girls become engineers, though in the USA, more do become doctors.

Portrayals of girls may reflect their standing in the artists' culture, and a brief overview of different views of girls in different art periods gives a sense of girls' roles in societies around the world and at different points in time.


Egyptian murals included sympathetic portraits of young girls of royal descent.

Ancient Greek classical art and literature paid scant attention to female children, though there are many poems about boys. Only Sappho's poetry includes love poems addressed to girls.

In European art, some early paintings to feature girls are Juan de Flandes' Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1500–1510 (shown at left); Frans Hals' Die Amme mit dem Kind in 1620; Diego Velázquez' Las Meninas in 1656; Jan Steen's The Feast of St. Nicolas, circa 1660; and Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Later paintings of girls include Albert Anker's portrait of a Girl with a Domino Tower and Camille Pissarro's 1883 Portrait of a Felix Daughter.

In American art, paintings that feature girls include Mary Cassatt's 1884 Children on the Beach and Whistler's Harmony in Gray and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander and The White Girl (shown at right).

As in art, portrayals of girls in literature can reflect the social norms of the time at which they were written. Many novels begin with the childhood of their heroine. Examples include the titular protagonist of Jane Eyre, who suffers ill treatment; and Natasha in War and Peace, who is sentimentalized. Other novels include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which has a young girl as protagonist; and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, a controversial book about the relationship between a girl and a grown man. Memoirs of a Geisha was written by Caucasian American Arthur Golden. However, it has been deemed an accurate representation of geisha life in the early 20th century Japan. The book starts as the female main character and her sister are dropped into the pleasure district after being separated from their family.

Most early children's stories focused on boys, with the notable exception of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, whose photographs of little girls are part of the history of photographic art.