MAKING HETERONORMATIVE GENDER IN KINDERGARTEN

Abstract

Deconstructing the negativity that weighs on childhood and the idealization of children as asexual, socially ignorant and innocent beings, the Sociology of Childhood, Gender Studies, and Educational Sciences are put into dialogue to propose their understanding as socially competent beings who are-becoming girls and boys in the networks of relationships among peers, interwoven by affinities and friendships, but also by conflicts, powers, inequalities as by negotiations and mediations. It is also proposed to mobilize the notions of heterosexual normativity and of intersectionality of age, gender, social class, and ethnicity for a more complex understanding of gender relations. The analysis of ethnographic observations carried out in a kindergarten in Lisbon, considered i) the gendering of the space/activities/materials by the educator and the children; ii) the ways in which children “make gender” in their interactions. The findings point to a mismatch in the genderization of space/materials by the educator and children; a social (re)production of differentiations between “feminine” and “masculine” by children according to heterosexual normativity, made by negotiations, acceptances, policing and exclusions between/intra-gender; the overload of the social class and ethnicity conditions in the production of gender inequalities among peers and the resistance of these boys to the hegemonic and heteronormative masculinity model.