Gender in the early years: Boys and girls in an African working class primary school

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Abstract

Understanding the ways in which young boys and girls give meaning to gender and sexuality is vital, and is especially significant in the light of South Africa's commitment to gender equality. Yet the, gendered cultures of young children in the early years of South African primary schools remains a, marginal concern in debate, research and interventions around gender equality in education. This, paper addresses this caveat through a small-scale qualitative study of boys and girls between the ages, of 7 and 8 years in an African working class primary school. It focuses on friendships, games, and violent gendered interactions to show how gender features in the cultural world of young children. Given that both boys and girls invest heavily in dominant gender norms, the paper argues that greater, understanding of gender identity processes in the early years of formal schooling are important in, devising strategies to end inequalities and gender violence.

Research highlights

▶ Young African children between the age of 7 and 8 are active gendered agents. ▶ Experiences of schooling in the areas of friendship, games and violence show how gender is constructed with negative effects for young African girls. ▶ By the age of 7 and 8 young boys are already inserting into masculine conduct premised upon privilege and power while girls are subordinated. ▶ In the context of gender and sexual violence and the scourge of AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, greater attention to gender transformative interventions in the early years of schooling is required.

Introduction

South African schools were not expected to challenge gender inequalities prior to democracy in 1994. Since then, researchers have begun to explore the ways in which gender inequalities manifest in schools (Morrell, 1998, Bhana, 2005). Gender inequalities and violence are considered to be twin epidemics in South African schools, with widespread reports of violence against girls (Wolpe et al., 1997). In the context of the feminization of HIV and AIDS and the calamitous effects of the disease in South Africa, addressing gender inequalities and violence remain a critical concern.

In KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, the setting for this study, the rate of HIV infection at antenatal clinics is reported to be 39% (UNAIDS, 2007, 16), and 10.2% of 15–24-year-olds South African are infected with HIV/AIDS (Pettifor et al., 2004). Sexual coercion, HIV infection and unequal gender relations interweave to produce vulnerabilities for young women. Gender and sexual violence are at staggering levels, with almost 13,268 rapes reported in KwaZulu-Natal between March 2009 and April 2010 (South African Police Services, 2010)

In South Africa the effects of historical apartheid inequalities together with persistent social and economic inequalities have produced a context of high levels of violence. Entrenched views about male privilege produce an understanding the gendering of the disease which makes young African women most vulnerable to violence and risk (Bhana, 2009a). Ideas of masculinity, such as those invested in male entitlement and sexual prowess, are important in studies of vulnerability to HIV infection, violence and prevention.

The ways in which boys construct their masculinities has effects for the form and extent of sexual risk: these constructions include a jostle for power, the use of violence and multiple heterosexual partners. In the context of gender equality and a rights-based political culture in South Africa, concerns have been raised about the high prevalence of HIV and the scourge of gender and sexual violence, and there has been growing awareness of the importance of schools in addressing gender, sexuality and HIV and AIDS (Morrell et al., 2009).

Schools have been regarded as appropriate places to address sexual and gender violence and curb the spread of the disease. Research in South African schools (Human Rights Watch, 2001, Leach and Mitchell, 2006) shows how unsafe such institutions are—they are places where gender and sexual violence are major and habitual problems for girls. While secondary schools have been placed under the spotlight in terms of research and interventions (see Leach and Mitchell, 2006), the early years of primary schooling have been neglected (see Bhana, 2005 as an exception).

In South Africa we have yet to consider more seriously gender in primary schools (Bhana, 2002). This paper addresses a missing face in South African research on gender and education, and turns the focus onto boys and girls in Grade two in an African working class primary school. The paper explores the process through which boys and girls attach meaning to gender and the ways in which they forge their gender identities.

Feminist work has drawn our attention to the fact that primary schools are important places where gender and sexuality are enacted, and a significant site contributing to unequal gender relations (Thorne, 1993, MacNaughton, 2000, Renold, 2005). Thorne's (1993) classic US study of primary school boys and girls shows how gender is actively policed in producing dominant versions of masculinity and femininity.

While it has been found that children in primary school appropriate gender stereotypes, the border that separates children is also delicate and fragile. Boys and girls do gender maintenance work, separating from each other as the dominant understanding here is that boys and girls should be apart. Renold (2005) argues that romance, love and kissing are significant cultures in the primary school, even though teachers ignore these as frivolous and childish activities. In this paper we will show that gender borders are broken through the formation of games and friendships, but at the same time gender stereotypes are constantly policed and maintained.

Scholars working in gender and education in South Africa (and Africa) have tended to ignore the question of children's agency and the meanings ascribed to gender and sexuality. There is a complete silence in the South African literature on young boys’ and girls’ gender investments (see Bhana, 2002, Bhana, 2005 as exceptions). It is argued in this paper that the investment in dominant norms increases gender polarities, but this process is fraught with ambiguities and contradictions. As the paper will go on to show, gender norms are created, resisted and recreated.

Many conservative proponents of children's development argue that gender and sexuality are abstract concept and the association with childhood problematic (Tobin, 1997). The idea of innocence is a somewhat unyielding representation of childhood, and the continued emphasis on children's sexual innocence reflects the discomfort of adult society in recognizing children as agents.

The policy context which embeds South Africa's commitment to gender equality is slowly denting the representation of childhood as a stage and phase of innocence. So, too, is the context of AIDS. Girls’ relative disempowerment, as described earlier, with regard to boys and men is a critical factor in the feminization of the disease—placing gender and sexuality at the centre of the HIV prevention challenge. In South Africa, education policy now compels teachers to address AIDS and social equality. In early schooling sectors this requires that teachers work with young children, instilling (for example) habits of behaviour appropriate to gender equality and the formation of peaceful gender relations—and is especially significant in the context of the HIV and AIDS (Bhana, 2007).

This study makes visible three areas of school cultures in which gender and sexuality are implicated: friendships, games and violent gendered interactions. These areas might appear frivolous, particularly to those who deem young children as innocent and without gender and sexuality. Yet as the new sociology of childhood (Corsaro, 2005) argues, these are important sites through which children as social actors become visible.

The sociology and psychology of childhood has traditionally viewed this phase as quite distinct from adulthood, and has constructed children as people in a stage of transition, as not fully developed, as “blank slates” who need to be spoken for. Against this view, the new sociology of childhood has argued that children are active agents, and research underpinned by children's agency is attempting to give them a voice and to hear what it is like being a boy or a girl from their points of view (Jame and Prout, 1997). This paper builds on the literature in the sociology of childhood and foregrounds the ability of young children to exercise their agency, addressing a neglected area of work in the research on gender and the early years.

The focus in this study is on young African boys and girls in a poor, working class township context. The social context from which children in this study emerge is important, since it affects the ways in which gender relations are forged. For African children in poor social contexts, the effects of apartheid and colonialism, for example, and the persistent levels of poverty and unemployment in the country are important co-factors in the experience of gender and childhood sexuality.

What we intend to do in this paper is to focus on ways in which friendships and play are significant areas through which boys and girls actively negotiate being and becoming a boy or a girl. Bhana (2002) has begun to show how primary school sites are both gendered and sexual arenas. Girls and boys actively learn as they engage with the formal and informal processes of schooling as gendered and sexual agents. Bhana's work illustrates the ways in which young children in the early years of primary schooling take on normative gender roles, separating as they do but also coming together as they tease, mock and play with each other.

This paper is situated within this developing work in South Africa and, like Bhana, attempts to understand the making of gender in the early years of South African schooling. With specific attention to a working class African township school, this study attempts to investigate how Grade two boys and girls understand gender, and the implications of this for addressing gender equality in the primary school (see Nzimakwe, 2009).

Section snippets

Gender and young children

Being a young child is often perceived as a space where children are untroubled and untouched by the cares of the (adult) gendered world. Although this is not true about children in this study, for some theorists children are seen to be without knowledge about gender and sexuality. They are seen as too young to understand such issues (see Tobin, 1997). This study is in agreement with Renold (2005), who sees children as active rather than passive agents in constructing their gendered cultures.

Research methodology and design

This research was qualitative in design and the intention was to understand how Grade two boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 8 years make meaning out of gender. The study was conducted in an African junior primary school in Durban, South Africa. The school is located in greater Durban, within close proximity to a township area. Learners come from neighbouring townships in greater Pinetown, Durban, and others from squatter settlements in the area.

To investigate gender in the early years,

Gender, friendships and sexuality

Friendships were highly gendered and membership of friendship groups often followed stereotypical formations. As Thorne (1993) notes, despite opportunities to develop cross-gender friendships in schools, girls and boys have shown a strong preference to maintain gender normative boundaries. Even when children play team sports, Thorne argues, girls more often choose players according to who is a friend rather than who is more skilled at the game.

In this study the girls made it clear that there

Gender games

In this section we show how games are deployed in ways that break gender boundaries but also contribute to separation. Playing games is often regarded as a regular, everyday feature of primary schooling, and often not taken seriously (see Thorne, 1993, Bhana, 2005). At the school under study, several games were played and were highly gendered. Masigcozi (house-house) involved playing mothers and fathers, through which both boys and girls participated as imagined heterosexual adults in a family.

Violence against girls

As seen in Bhana's study (2005), violence is prevalent in South African primary schools and is almost always gendered; in the main, young boys were the perpetrators of violence in this school.

Nompilo (g):Casa was hitting us in class, and slapping Sindy and I. They were hitting us with pipes.
Wendy (g):They [boys] throw stones at us.
Nokuphiwa (g):They kick us.
Wendy (g):They trip us.

There were many examples illustrating the ways in which girls were disproportionately the victims of violence in the

Conclusion

In this study of gender and sexuality in the early years of primary schooling, we demonstrated the ways in which gender and sexuality operate through friendships, through routine games children play, as well as through violence. We have made visible the voices of young children often not considered in research in gender and education in South Africa.

Boys and girls in this study often policed their boundaries, although the boundaries that separated boys from girls were fragile. Boys and girls

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