Children's gender development. A presentation for teachers, parents and educators.

1. Maria Kambouri
University of Reading

2. What is it?
Does it matter?
Who decides?
2

3. By the end of this session students should be
able to:
 Define what it is meant by gender
 Discuss the impact of gender on children’s
development
 Reflect on their own values around gender
3

4. 4

5. “ The knowledge that each
individual belongs to one
sex and not the other and
that certain physical and
behavioural attributes
distinguish the two sexes.”
(Schaffer, 2009)
5

6.  Born with
 Biological
characteristics
 Universal
 Not changeable
 Learned
 Social
characteristics
 Diverse,
culturally
different
 Changeable
SEX GENDER

8. _____ 1. Women give birth to babies, men do not.
_____ 2. Girls are gentle; boys are rough.
_____ 3. Women breastfeed babies; men can
bottle-feed babies.
_____ 4. Doctors are men; nurses are women.
Gender or Sex?
S
S
G
G

9. _____ 5. Boys don’t cry.
_____ 6. Boys are good at math and science and
girls are good at language and history.
_____ 7. When one thinks of an engineer, one
hardly ever thinks of a woman.
_____ 8. Women work two-thirds of the world’s
working hours, produce half of the
world’s food and yet earn only 10% of the
world’s income and own less than 1% of
the world’s property.
Gender or Sex?
G
G
G
G

10. _____ 9. Boys’ voices break at puberty, girls’ do
not.
_____ 10. A girl gets expelled from school for
being pregnant, while the boy who
impregnated her is neither judged nor
expelled.
_____ 11. Kindergarten teachers should be
women; men are not good at taking care
of young children.
Gender or Sex?
S
G
G

11. Gender: refers to the roles and responsibilities
of men and women that are created in our
families, our societies and our cultures. The
concept of gender also includes expectations
held about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely
behaviours of both women and men (femininity
and masculinity).
(UNESCO’s Gender Mainstreaming Implementation Framework, 2003)

12. Gender = social and cultural construction or
interpretation of differences between the sexes
(masculinity/femininity)
Sex = biological distinction/differences (male/female)

13.  Gender identity develops as the child moves
through cognitive stages of understanding.
 Children gradually construct their
understanding of their own gender identity.

14.  Chromosomes. XX = female and XY = male
Or does it?
 Internal organs
 External organs
 For 1.7% of all births the distinction is
unclear.
 Congenital adrenal hyperplasia
 Androgen insensitivity syndrome

15. Discussion
If sex is unclear in science
terms, how or why do we feel
so obliged to place people in
gender differentiated
categories?

16.  Natural and inevitable organiser at the core of
our identity?
 Simply a social construct?
 Deeply embedded psychodynamic internal
model of ‘self’?

17.  Boy or girl? Why?
 Schemas help organizing & sort
 Child uses the knowledge they have
to sort the world into categories
 New information is categorised accordingly
 Not only people.
 Sandra Bem.

18.  Observation of the social world
 Watching
 Learnt behaviour
 Imitation and identification
 Rewards for ‘appropriate’ behaviour
 Bandura

19.  Freud first
 Nancy Chodorow
 Object-relations theory
 Internalize characteristics of what it is to be
female from the mother/child relationship –
nurturing, caring. etc

20.  Object relation theory
 Theory of developing ‘self from a psycho
analytical perspective
 Child build understanding through the
emotions evoked from first experiences of
‘objects’ (e.g. mother’s breast).
 Conflict has to be resolved in order to move
forward

21. What will you wish for….??

22. Gender Equality
Women and men have equal conditions
for realising their full human rights and
for contributing to, and benefiting from,
economic, social, cultural and political
development.
The result of the absence of
discrimination on the basis of a person’s
sex

24.  Does the teacher walk around the
class and talk to girls and boys
equally?
 Does the teacher call on girls and
boys equally?
 Do girls and boys have equal
opportunities to go to the chalkboard
during a lesson?
Teaching-learning process

25. Only boys in the
front with the
teacher?
Or teachers learning
together with the
children?

26. Classroom Environment
 How are girls and boys depicted in
posters and images?
 Balance in the number of pictures of
boys and girls in posters and
decorations?
 How are girls and boys women and men
depicted?
 Balance in the number of pictures of
girls and boys, women and men?
 What about play opportunities?

27. • Reflection of socio-cultural and
historical values of a given society
• Contents of textbooks considered
“legitimate knowledge”
Why Are Textbooks Important?
Gender in Textbooks

29. Think of your work place, your home
and then the wider environment.
Do we live in feminised or
masculinised society?
Is gender visible and does it impact on
what you do?
Spend 10 minutes discussing in
groups.

30. PARITY
equal
participation of
both sexes in
different levels of
education
Focus on access,
is a quantitative
concept
EQUALITY
achievement of
equal outcomes
for women and
men
Broader social
changes

31.  Browne, N. (2004). Gender Equity in the Early Years,
Maidenhead: Open University Press
 Davies, B. (1989). Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales,
London: Unwin Hyman Ltd
 UNESCO’s Gender Mainstreaming Implementation Framework
(2003). Baseline definitions of key concepts and terms.
(http://www.rodicovstvo.sk/buletin/gender_def_Equal_TCA_J
une.htm)
 Ryde, R. (2012). Questioning Gender, London: Sage
Publications Ltd
 Schaffer, R.H. (2006). Key Concepts in Developmental
Psychology, London: Sage Publications Ltd
 Woodhead, M. and Montgomery, H. (2003). Understanding
Childhood: and interdisciplinary approach, Chichester: John
Wiley & Sons Ltd in association with The Open University