The Complexity of the Construction of Gender
Children’s construction of gender at Dutch elementary schools
Name Merel Duin
Student number 10548874
Univeristy University of Amsterdam
Track Sociology: gender, sexuality and society
Faculty Social and Behavioral Sciences
Supervisor M. Cottingham
Second reader S. Bracke
Date July 9th, 2018
E-mail mmduin94@gmail.com
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Table of contents
Summary 5
Chapter 1 Introduction 6
Chapter 2 Previous research and gender as a social structure 9
2.1 Self-perceived gender typicality, hidden school curriculums and peer culture 11
2.2 Gender as a social structure 13
Chapter 3 Who, where, when, how? 17
3.1 The analysis process 20
3.2 Role of the researcher 22
Chapter 4 The institutional dimension 25
4.1 Teachers’ opinions regarding boys and girls 27
4.2 The policies of the school 29
4.3 Conclusion 32
Chapter 5 The interactional cultural level 35
5.1 Children’s peer culture 35
5.1.1 Gender play 37
5.1.2 Conversations between peers 40
5.2 The hidden curriculum 44
5.3 Conclusion 47
Chapter 6 The individual level 49
6.1 Children’s dress-up and adornment 49
6.2 Children’s drawings and their interpretations 52
6.3 Conclusion 57
Chapter 9 Conclusions and discussion 59
References 65
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Summary
This Master thesis explores how children, using Risman’s conceptual framework of gender as a social structure, construct gender at two different Dutch elementary schools. To this date, research regarding children and the construction of gender has focused on a part of gender, such as play, the body or gender segregation in peer cultures. However, little attention has been paid to researching children’s construction of gender on the level of a social structure. In doing so, gender is brought to the same analytical level as politics and occurs simultaneously at the micro, meso and macro level. Methods: partially participant observations of a total of 53 boys and girls and their teachers were conducted at an inter-confessional school and a vrijeschool in a small town in the Netherlands to gain insight into how children on the individual level and the interactional cultural level construct gender. Additionally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with the two teachers and two directors of both schools to see how gender is constructed at the institutional domain. Results and conclusions: Gender in the institutional domain is seen as an ideology, as a certain belief regarding appropriate roles and rights of men and women in a certain society. It appeared that the vrije school holds a more liberal gender ideology, wherein gender is seen as open rather than two separate genders. The inter-confessional school, on the other hand, has a more traditional gender ideology, wherein gender is conform to biological sex.
Gender on the interactional cultural level is defined as a set of normative and expectations regarding men and women. At both schools, gender is simultaneously seen as consisting of two separate categories, based on the gender ideology at the institutional domain, as well as a continuum wherein boys and girls can behave the same. Based on how the teachers interacted with the children, it became apparent that both teachers performed a hidden curriculum – covert lessons that are used for social control – that gendered both the bodies of boys of girls, with a focus of boys in particular. Nevertheless, both boys and girls played with the same things rather than gender specific toys based on gender stereotypes. This shows that gender is also seen as something that is open, wherein boys and girls can play with the same things and behave the same, without being reproved for it.
Gender in the individual level is defined in the way how individuals see themselves as as masculine or feminine and how they identify with it. On this level, children see themselves as gender conform based on how they dress and portray themselves through drawings. Nevertheless, some boys adorned themselves with earrings and nail polish, showing that certain adornments transcended the gender categories of feminine and masculine, opening the categories of gender.
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The different levels influence each other as well. Especially at the vrijeschool, the institutional domain interacts with the interactional cultural level through the anthroposophy’s mentality of ‘becoming who you are’, which encourages children’s inner development and sense of self. Additionally, the institutional domain influences the individual domain here through the anthroposophical belief that humans have 12 senses, whereby particularly the ‘life span’ focuses on self-perception through the experience of the body, creating an own identity. Besides the institutional domain influences the interactional cultural level through the gender ideology at both schools, the interactional cultural level also interacts with the individual level and vice versa. The interactional cultural level influences the individual level by differentiating between the bodies of boys and girls, constructing gendered bodies. The individual level interacts with the interactional cultural level through how children dress themselves, influencing the process of how individuals look and behave towards them.
Concluding, children at both schools construct gender as something open, something that is a continuum where boys and girls can show and prefer the same things. However, due to the separate boys’ and girls’ peer cultures with their own values and the hidden curriculum by their teacher at the inter-confessional school, it is likely they are going to see gender as two separate categories, wherein boys behave masculine and girls feminine. At the vrijeschool, there is a significant focus on the construction of self, on developing who you are. Based on Martin’s argument that children’s body are similar at a young age, gender is not central to their bodies, whereby children are able to construct a sense of self without gender being a part of it. This leads the children to belief that gender does not exist in two separate categories based on sex, but rather as a continuum, an open concept wherein boys and girls can show the same behaviors, preferences and doings. However, with the hidden curriculum in place, it is not a matter if but when the children come to see gender as two separate categories.
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Chapter 1 Introduction
In 2001, the Netherlands was the first country that legally permitted same-sex marriage (Kuyper, 2018, p.4). Since then, more countries have recognized and permitted same-sex marriage but, at the time, it was seen as something revolutionary. The ‘Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau’1, a Dutch interdepartmental, scientific institute that executes social-scientific research, shows that the Dutch population generally has a positive attitude towards homosexuality (Ibid.). Since 2006, the SCP researches views on homo- and bisexuality in the Netherlands and Europe and since 2012 they also include views on gender diversity (p.6). The SCP defines gender diversity as the variety of expressions and experiences within the aspects of gender identity (the feeling of being a man, woman, both or none) and gender expression (clothing style, appearance, behavior, use of voice, etc.) (Ibid.).
In the report of 2017, the SCP shows that an average of 9% of the Dutch population has a negative attitude towards gender diversity. During a first encounter with a person, forty-five percent of the Dutch population wants to know if someone is a man of a woman, 14% of the Dutch population rather doesn’t want to be associated with people of whom it is not clear whether they are man or woman and 20% of the Dutch population believes that there is something wrong with people who do not clearly identify as a man or a woman (p.32). On the other hand, an average of 57% of the Dutch population has a positive attitude towards gender diversity. 53% believes that there is nothing wrong with people who do not clearly feel man or woman and 62% of the Dutch population would like to associate with people of whom it is not clear if they are a man or a woman.
Although there is, on average, a positive attitude towards homo-, bisexuality and gender diversity, the SCP acknowledges that the (social) media and the social debate sometimes show other opinions. During the past years, there have been some homo related incidents in the Netherlands, such as violence against two men near the ferry behind Amsterdam central station, the distribution of anti-homo flyers in Amsterdam (Kuypers, 2018, p.5), and violence against two men in Arnhem. Regarding gender, there has been a huge backlash against the HEMA, a Dutch company that decided to make their children’s clothing department gender neutral (RTL Nieuws, 2017; Witteman, 2017) – transforming it from a separate boy’s and girl’s clothing department into a combined kids’ clothing department – and against the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (the Dutch railways) for using gender neutral language (Elsevier, 2017). The word ‘genderneutraal’ (gender neutral) was even elected most annoying word of 2017 (NU, 2017).
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How is this paradox possible? Gender is seen as a central aspect of an individual’s identity (Patterson, 2012, p.422). It is therefore understandable why people would resist changes in society regarding gender, because no matter how positive one is regarding gender diversity, Western societies are still built on two categories of people, namely, ‘women’ and ‘men’, which leads to still having two distinct sexes and two distinguishable genders (Kuyper, 2018, p.32; Lorber, 1993, p. 569).
The idea that gender is a social construct and not something that is biological, innate and fixed has been accepted by the social sciences for decades (Lorber, 1993; West & Zimmerman, 1987). But although social inquiry has dedicated itself to researching the social construction of gender, not every research has devoted itself to showing how gender is constructed, and more importantly, how individuals construct gender. Prior research suggests that children can already differentiate gender at the end of their first year, and that between the age of 2,5 and 3 years, children attain gender constancy, meaning that they can identify their own gender along with the gender of others, which remains invariant across time (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1306; Egan & Perry, 2001, p.451). This makes me wonder: why can gender be so restrictive? But more importantly, how do children even construct gender? The latter question will be the basis for this research and will be elaborated further in the next section.
This research has the following outline: firstly, I will discuss previous research and show how they falls short by only providing a partial answer to the question of how gender is constructed by children. Secondly, I will present the conceptual framework of gender as a social structure by Barbara Risman (2004) and show how I believe this is a way of providing a more complex answer to the question of how gender is constructed by children. Thirdly, I will present my methods and analysis, and give my idea of the role of the researcher within research. Lastly, I will evaluate my findings and look back at my research process for further research.
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Chapter 2 Previous research and gender as a social structure
Although the SCP already defined gender in the introduction in relation to diversity and identity, it is wise to also give a broad, widely accepted definition of gender, which here will be provided by West and Zimmerman (1987). They define gender as ‘the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category’ (West & Zimmerman, 1987, p.127). Opinions differ regarding the extent to which gender is something that can be managed or something that happens unconsciously, but the fact that gender is something that is socially constructed rather than solely biological is generally accepted within the social sciences (West & Zimmerman, 1987; Lorber, 1993). This view rejects (socio-)biological explanations of sex and gender that holds contemporary explanations of gender inequalities intact (Shilling, 2012, p.51). (Socio-) biology argues that genes are key in establishing differences between men and women through their impact on sex hormones that influence the brain (p.53). Genes here are used as an explanation for traits like aggression, intelligence, and (male) dominance. However, is that the action of single genes cannot explain complex characteristics such as, for instance, the ‘personality’ of a person. Joel et al. (2015) state that there is no such thing as a male of female brain, but that every brain is a completely unique mosaic of characteristics that to a greater or lesser extent can be feminine or masculine. Nevertheless, sociobiology continues to link genes to character traits: ‘justifying dominant notions of identity and other social categories on the basis that they are both natural and desirable’ (Shilling, 2012, p.52). They are seen as natural because genes are supposed to be the primary causal factor for any social events or patterns of behavior in society (Ibid.). Dominant ideas for social relations and identities are also desirable because, adopting Darwin’s point of view on natural selection, genes are seen as responsible for producing certain individual features that are best suited for survival in society, irrespective of whether they create inequalities and oppression of certain minority groups (p.53).
This point-of-view is applied similarly in relation to sex. In West and Zimmerman’s article, they define sex as ‘a determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria or classifying persons as females or males (1987, p.27). But in the (socio-) biological tradition, ‘sex’ is seen as two mutually exclusive and natural categories of ‘female’ and ‘male’, based on the fact of whether newborns possess a penis or not (Shilling, 2012, p.55). A penis is present when the genetic makeup is XY and absent when the genetic makeup is XX. However, the genetic material of individuals is not exclusively divided into those categories; other genetic combinations exist such as XO (a female without sex
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hormones), XYY and XXY (only males) (Ibid.). These varieties are described as ‘syndromes’, but are proof that the ‘mutually exclusive and natural categories of female and male’ don’t exist.
These explanations are part of a rather specific branch of biology, yet they are frequently used to justify differences between men and women’s social identities and behaviors in society. This is in line with the traditional view on gender, gender stereotypes and roles in Western societies. Gender stereotypes ‘are widely held beliefs about characteristics deemed appropriate for males and females’ (Berk, 2013, p.530). Gender roles are simply seen as the reflections of these stereotypes in everyday life. Instrumental traits, such as being rational, competitive, aggressive2, dominant, out-spoken, or confident are considered to be stereotypically masculine, while expressive traits such as being emotional, passive, sensitive, and considerate are seen as stereotypically feminine (Ibid.). These stereotypes seem outdated, but research shows that these stereotypes remain largely unchanged (Ibid.). Traditional gender roles emphasize the capacity of women to nurture and the capabilities of men to lead. This results in an image in which women are seen as best suited for tasks in the domestic context, such as housework and childcare, while men are thought to be the breadwinners (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016, p.529).
These gender stereotypes and roles become strengthened during early childhood to such an extend that many children use them as rules rather than guidelines (Berk, 2013, p.531). This may result into children preferring to play with children of their own gender (Thorne, 1993). Same-gender playgroups develop their own culture, making it increasingly difficult to play with the other sex (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1310). When cross-gender interactions do happen, it is often marked by behavior that is semi-ritualized and delineates the boundaries of gender (p.1311). This behavior emphasizes the differences between gender while promoting solidarity within a gender category, and is often referred to as ‘borderwork’ (Thorne, 1993, p.64). One known form of borderwork is ‘the ritual pollution through “cooties”’ (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1311). Cooties can be seen as some sort of disease, something you don’t want to get. According to Thorne, children have rituals for transferring
2 Recently, scholars have acknowledged that girls can also show anger and aggression
(Underwood, 2003, p.5). They can fight physically, but more often they express anger in more subtle ways called ‘social aggression,’ which is ‘behavior directed toward harming another’s friendships, social status, or self-esteem, and may take direct forms such as social rejection and negative facial expressions or body movements, or indirect forms such as slanderous rumors, friendship manipulation, or social exclusion (Ibid.). Already at age 2-3 years, girls can show reduced levels of fighting physically when they learn the label gender, almost as if they understand that fighting physically violates the rules of ‘being a girl’ (p.8/9).
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cooties to somebody else by touching (p.73), and girls are more likely to give boys cooties than vice versa. This leads to boys labelling girls as polluting, and those who come in contact with pollution are likely to be teased, which tends to discourage any cross-gender contact (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1311).
Some scholars argue that they found gender segregation already in children with the age of 3, but most research argues that gender segregation peaked in early elementary school
(Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1306; Egan & Perry, 2001, p.451). Some studies even suggest that the reason why gender segregation occurs between children derives from the compatibility of interest among the members of the same sex (Ibid.). Note that most preschoolers do not realize that characteristics that are associated with gender – toys, hairstyle, activities, occupations, and clothing – do not determine one’s sex (Berk, 2013, p.532).
The fact that certain attributes are consistently identified as feminine or masculine, the fact that they are so broadly accepted and that they are stable over time suggests that gender stereotypes are deeply fixed in our way of thinking.
2.1 Self-perceived gender typicality, hidden school curriculums and peer culture
Within this thesis, I am curious how individuals (read: children) create and incorporate ideas regarding gender. In the following sections, I will review prior research regarding children and the mechanisms of how gender is constructed with children. However, this research has focused only on a part of gender. For instance, in her research, Patterson (2012) looks at self-perceived gender typicality of elementary school children and if there is a relation between self-perceived gender typicality, gender-typed attributes, and gender stereotype endorsement. She has found that children who saw themselves as more gender-typical were more interested in same-gender-typed activities and less interested in other-gender-typed activities than children who saw themselves as less gender-typical (p.422). However, there is some critique on the practice of assessing self-perceived gender typicality. Egan and Perry (2001) state that it is clear that gender typing is multidimensional, meaning that many people are only moderately consistent in the degree to which they show gender-typical (male or female) behavior across different dimensions, such as personality traits, preferences for activities, preferences for relationships, occupational preferences, and academic pursuits (p.452). It would therefore be risky to infer one’s overall gender identity based on self-perceived gender typicality in one single dimension. Also, Egan and Perry state that when individuals rate themselves regarding specific gender-based attributes, they may be doing so without knowing that those attributes are relevant to gender.
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Another researcher who tried to answer the question of how gender is constructed within individuals is Karin Martin (1998). She focuses on a certain dimension of gender, namely the body. Martin suggests that the hidden school curriculum at schools - covert lessons that are used as a means of social control - discipline the body of children into gendered bodies (p.495). Martin builds on the theories of Connell (1995) and Young (1980) who state that gender not only rests on the surface of the body, through doing and performing, but also becomes embodied - becoming part of whom we are not only psychologically, but also physically. Dominant conceptions of gender thus can become embodied through particular social practices (Shilling, 2012, p.113). However, these theories focus only on adult bodies, and in doing so, they run the risk of ignoring the processes that produce gendered bodies and therefore continue to see gendered bodies as natural (Martin, 1998, p.495). Martin argues that hidden school curriculum’s practices, such as bodily instructions, controlling voices and the physical interaction between teachers and children, regulate children’s bodies and form them into gendered beings (p.497). This hidden school curriculum controls the bodily practices of children and turns children who are similar in their bodily movement, comportment and practice into boys and girls, children whose bodily movements and practices are different (p.496). These differences augment the ‘seeming naturalness of sexual and reproductive differences’ (p.510) that eventually construct inequality between women and men.
That Martin includes the body as a site for gender is appreciated, however, her focus on the hidden curriculum of schools regarding children’s gender identity is too narrow. The idea of socialization - the ‘life-long process of learning the culture of any society’ (Browne, 2011, p.6) - is seen as one directional, ignoring the agency of children. Adults socialize children, teachers socialize pupils, the powerful socialize the less powerful (Thorne, 1995, p.3). Power is central to these socialization relations, and in most cases children are seen as the less powerful, but this does not mean that children are passive or without any agency. It is the work of Aydt and Corsaro (2003) that takes the agency of children into account and states that it is through peer culture that children construct gender. Peer culture is a ‘stable set of activities or routines, artifacts, values, and concerns that children produce and share in interaction with peers’ (Corsaro & Eder, 1990, p.197). The interpretive approach use by these theorists maintain that socialization in childhood is a collective process that occurs in the public realm (p.199). In other words, ‘children create and participate in their own unique peer cultures by creatively taking or appropriating information from the adult world to address their own concerns’ (Corsaro, 1997, p.18). In their research, Aydt and Corsaro look at peer
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culture and gender segregation, and concluded that the intensity of segregation among the children can vary across cultures, according to the degree how one’s culture looks at men and women (Aydt & Corsaro, 1997, p.1309). This shows that the normative notion of gender in one’s culture can be taken over by children. The findings of Aydt and Corsaro suggest that the segregation of gender is something that is negotiated in children’s peer culture. By focusing on peer culture, it gives children the agency that in most research is taken away from them. But this does not mean that gender does not exist outside the children as well.
2.2 Gender as a social structure
Someone who does look at gender existing outside of the individual is Risman (2004), who looks at gender as a social structure that interacts at different levels. Her notion that gender is a social structure is posed as a conceptual framework, something ‘to organize the confusing, almost limitless, ways in which gender has come to be defined in contemporary social sciences’ (p.430).
Coming from a structuralist background, Risman sees a social structure as something that exists outside individuals, but is also partially explained by human action (p.431). She defines gender as a social structure because it levels gender on the same analytical level as the economy and politics and therefore rejects any perspectives that see gender as something innate, biological and DNA based. Although Risman is a structuralist, she acknowledges that some structural perspectives to gender in the past have some fundamental flaws to their application. She states that previous structuralist research ignore gender that is internalized at the individual level, and also ignores the cultural interactional expectations that individuals have because of their gender category (p.432). These flaws lead to the conceptualization of her theory of gender as a social structure, which operates at three dimensions: (1) at the individual level (through social processes of internalization, identity work and construction of selves); (2) at the interactional cultural level (through expectations and biases); and (3) in the institutional domain (through organizational practices and ideology) (p.437). Within these three dimensions, gender is defined as follows: in the institutional domain, gender can be defined as an ideology, as a belief regarding appropriate roles, responsibilities and rights that men and women have in a certain society. For instance, from a more traditional gender ideology, women are seen as expressive, while men are seen as more instrumental (Erickson, 2005, p.343). Gender ideology can thus act as a lens through which individuals view and act upon their social world (Davis & Greenstein, 2009, p.100). At the interactional and cultural level, gender can be defined as the normative ideas and expectations people have regarding
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men and women. The gender attribution process posed by Kessler and McKenna (1987) shows for instance how people become gendered through meanings people attach to them, and how these meanings are reproduced within one’s culture. The gender ideology at the institutional domain can influence how people interact with each other at the cultural level. At last, gender at the individual level can be defined as how individuals see themselves as a man or a woman, as masculine or feminine, how they identify with it and how they do it. The first is based on the idea of the construction of (gendered) selves. Social constructionists argue that the self is constructed through and in language (Hart, 1996, p.44). Knowledge of the self is formed by a majority of meanings which is created through experiences in relation to other individuals and through social contexts (Ibid.). It is through this self-knowledge we construct our view of ourselves. The idea of how individuals do gender is based on the idea of West and Zimmerman (1987) ‘doing gender’, which is defined as ‘managing situated conduct within normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category’ (p.127). At the individual level, individuals are likely to internalize the gender ideology at the institutional level by becoming socialized at the interactional level. Note here that certain processes occur at different levels, confirming that the different levels are not ideal types in the Weberian sense of the word. Although Risman, like Weber, uses the levels of het conceptual framework to understand (a specific aspect of) the social world (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014, p.119), in practice it often interacts with each other.
Based on Giddens’ structuration theory who combines structural and voluntaristic perspectives, Risman states that gender as a social structure needs to integrate the recursive relationship between the structure itself and the individuals. In other words, the theory needs to take into account that the social structure shapes individuals, but at the same time, that individuals shape the social structure as well. This part of the theory allows for a form of agency of the individuals, but, while ‘action may turn against structure… [it] can never escape it’ (Risman, 2004, p.433).
As a social structure, gender is thus embedded in social life, as a basis for stratification that not only happens in our personalities, our cultural rules, or in our institutions, but in all of these, and in complex ways (Risman & Davis, 2012, p.9). Risman’s focus is mainly on social change regarding gender as a social structure, and while this focus is important and necessary, it is not central to my research interest in the first place. In this thesis, I use Risman’s conceptual framework of gender as a social structure to research how gender is constructed by and within children. In this conceptual framework, I would like to combine the approaches of Martin (1994) focusing on the hidden curriculums of schools and Aydt and Corsaro (2003)
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focusing on peer culture because I believe these inquiries form an important contribution to Risman’s framework, researching how children construct gender. Where socialization and the creation of a gendered identity occurs at the individual level, children’s peer culture and socialization work on the interactional/cultural level, and the practices of schools and their policies operate in the institutional domain.
I find it necessary to research how gender is constructed in children; not only to show the mechanisms of constructing gender, but also to show that gender construction can already happen at a young age, influencing individuals into gendered beings. Although the dichotomy of gender became contested over the years, and stereotypical gendered behavior is noted and being held accountable for its restrictive characteristic, gender is still a site of inequality in Western culture, within which I focus on Dutch society in particular. This leads to the following research question: How do children, within Risman’s conceptual framework of
gender as a social structure, construct gender in Dutch elementary schools? To answer this
question, I will divide Risman’s conceptual framework into three separate questions, which will bring structure to this thesis. The sub questions are the following: (1) How is gender constructed in the institutional domain?; (2) how is gender constructed at the interactional cultural level?; and (3) how is gender constructed at the individual level?
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Chapter 3 Who, where, when, how?
As part of my research, I observed children between 4 and 6 years old. I’ve chosen this age because most of the research outlined before was based on older children (Patterson, 2012; Aydt & Corsaro, 2003). Research that does focus on young children, such as Thorne (1993) and Martin (1998), only focuses on a certain aspect of gender, while I am trying to research gender at multiple levels. Because I am researching gender as a structure, and children only operate on the individual and interactional level, I am also looking at school teachers who operate more at the interactional level and institutional domain, and school directors, who are, like the teachers, an embodiment of the educational institution because they both represent their school, its practices and its philosophy in their teachings and their interactions with children, their caretakers and their colleagues. In this way they embody the school’s policies and ideas.
An elementary school suits such an inquiry as the multiple levels described by Risman are present, as I will illustrate shortly. Between the ages of 4 and 12, children spend a significant amount of time at school. It is in this educational context, beside their home environment, that children become socialized; they learn what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as well as the values and norms of the society they live in (Browne, 2011, p.14). I have found two classes at which I was welcome to observe, namely, a kindergarten class of 23 children at the ‘vrijeschool’, or Waldorf school, and a kindergarten class of 30 children at an inter-confessional elementary school. Both are located in the same small town in the Netherlands. I had a meeting with both class teachers before I came to observe in their classes, where I explained the goal of my presence and, among other things as well, my wish not to take up an authority role. My goal was to observe each class for two weeks, but due to Easter, Kingsday, a first aid course I needed to attend to for work and two Mondays the teacher at the inter-confessional school was free, I was only able to observe 8 days at the vrijeschool and 6 days at the inter-confessional school, making up for 72 hours of observations. Besides these hours of observations, I attended the morning ritual at the vrijeschool and stayed in both classes after the children were gone to help the teacher clean up the classroom.
In this qualitative research, I used a ’new sociology’/ethnographic perspective. This new perspective acknowledges children’s conceptual autonomy, focusing on them as social actors and explores the ways in which children influence their social environment (Christensen & Prout, 2005, p.42). This perspective sees children as ‘making meaning in social life through their interactions with other children as well as with adults’ (Ibid.). I feel comfortable positioning myself within this perspective, because it acknowledges and
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cherishes the agency and autonomy of children. The ethnographic perspective becomes clear when I look at children ‘as actively participating in the interpretation and reproduction of cultural knowledge’ (Christensen & Prout, 2005, p.48). This means that within this perspective, I believe that children are active in creating and constructing a notion of gender; of what boys and girls are or need to be.
Ethnographic methods have been regarded as one of the key methods in researching and exploring children’s social worlds (Emond, 2005, p.124). It involves for instance spending a lot of time with children in their daily environments, and is often combined with interviews, group discussions and creative exercises (Green & Hill, 2005, p.15). Based on Green and Hill’s recommendations about ethnographic methods, I will make use of observations, the creative method of drawing and key informant interviews in this research.
I observed Dutch elementary school children because I believe observing them at school is the best way to understand their social worlds. While observing, I can see how children construct meaning within their peer culture through negotiating and inventing. During these observations, I took on the role as a partially participating observer (Bryman, 2012, p.443). Besides participating in the group’s core activities, I tried not to take part in other, smaller activities. On the one side, I find it important to level myself with the children, taking part in the group’s core activities so that the children can get used to me, and feel comfortable around me. On the other side, I am there as a researcher, and not as a teacher in training. My initial idea was that partially participating in class would allow me to observe children more closely, watching how they interact with each other as well as with their teacher. However, this approach proved more complicated in practice. At the vrijeschool, I was given all the space to do my research, but at the inter-confessional school, the teacher asked my help at several occasions due to organizational problems. Though she insisted I was free in choosing whether to become more practically involved, I felt obliged to help out on several occasions because she came across me as stressed, managing multiple projects at once.
I differentiated my observation techniques between structured techniques, in which I observed a particular child, a part of the classroom or a group of children, and more unstructured field observations in which I observed the class as a whole and recorded everyday behavior. During my observations, I wrote down field notes; detailed summaries of experiences and observations (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995, p.5). Some children were curious as to what I was writing down. In response, I told them I was also still in school and that I wrote down things in order to be able to remember everything I had learned. This
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explanation made sense to the children and they accepted it. There was even one child who came to get me so I could write everything down he was doing.
During the observations3, I made use of an unobtrusive method of observing, letting children approach me if they wanted to, instead of me approaching them. I found this important, because I wanted to make up for the power hierarchy between the researcher and the child, allowing children to get used to the researcher, being less inclined to see the researcher as an authority figure (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003, p.1312). Additionally, I made use of several other methods based on Thorne’s book Gender play (1995), such as keeping my language simple with the children, and distancing myself from formal authority - the teacher. As Thorne notes, associating myself with adult authority would make it more difficult to gain access to children’s more private worlds (Thorne, 1995, p.16). However, at both schools I was introduced as ‘juffie Merel’ or ‘juf Merel’4. Both teachers introduced me to the children, without giving me the opportunity to introduce myself. This led to children approaching me as ‘juf(fie) Merel’, putting me in the same category, and therefore maybe authority, level as the teacher. Accordingly, I was consciously distancing myself from the role of teacher, referring children to their teacher when they needed or wanted something. I only acted or interfered as a ‘teacher’ when children were physically fighting or hurting each other., which happened occasionally.
During these observations, I did not only observe the children individually and amongst themselves, but I also observed the interactions between the children and their teacher, especially the conduct of the teacher towards the children. In doing so, I followed Martin’s (1998) focus points on researching hidden school curriculums, such as controlling voices, bodily instruction, and the physical interaction between teachers and children. Also, I looked at how the teacher talked to girls and boys and whether there was a difference.
I studied children’s drawings as well. The process of drawing can serve as a tool for children to show their imagination, to describe their experiences and their meaning to these (Veale, 2005, p.254). In this research, it is used as a way of describing how children on an individual level think about boys and girls. To avoid letting the children already think in gendered ways by asking them to draw a boy or a girl, I asked the children to draw themselves. At the vrijeschool, the teacher provided the instructions for the drawing for me, which exempted me from the authority role, but simultaneously prevented me from creating
3 The whole observation guide can be found in the appendix.
4 In Dutch, a female teacher is called juf, while a male teacher is called meester. Juffie is
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my own instructions. However, her instructions were very specific (‘when you draw your face, you have eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears’) and I agreed with everything she said. To make sure the drawing exercise would be the same at both schools, I used the explanation given at the vrijeschool at the inter-confessional school as well. Besides drawing themselves, the children were free to draw whatever they wanted on their piece of paper. Due to some children being ill and a shortage of time at the inter-confessional school, I have collected 19 drawings from the children at the vrijeschool and 21 drawings from the children at the inter-confessional school, totaling 40 drawings.
At last, I did four semi-structured interviews with the two class teachers and the directors of the schools to show the school’s ideas of socialization of the children and their policies regarding the development of children, hereby focusing on on gender. Semi-structured interviews allow you to ask questions, but also leaves also room for flexibility and changeability if needed (Bryman, 2012, p.471). The questions were outlined in an interview guide5, but the researcher is not obligated to follow this outline; this depends on the interview and the respondent. During these interviews, I wanted to make sure that I elicited rich, in-depth information as possible. I did this through multiple strategies. For instance, I probed during the interview. (Hermanowicz, 2002, p.485). Probing means asking further to discover more details to the interviewee’s answer. For instance, asking ‘oh really?’ helped multiple times to let the interviewees explain their answer further, giving me more details. It is only through this, I believe, I uncover meaning from of the answers. Another strategy I used is to play the ignorant sometimes (p.486), which I have done with the director of the vrijeschool regarding anthroposophy, the philosophy that is the foundation for the vrijeschool. This, according to Hermanowicz, stirs to the interviewee’s altruistic tendencies, making them feel they are doing a service by opening up and sharing their experiences.
3.1 The analysis process
Building on the conceptual framework of gender as a social structure, children’s construction of gender in this research is analyzed on three different levels: the individual level, the interactional cultural level, and at the institutional level. This framework is multidimensional and therefore highly complex. Although Risman identifies three separate levels, in practice these levels are often tangled together. It is therefore almost impossible to analyze the three levels separately, but, in my attempt to bring some structure to this research, I will discuss
5 Which can be found in the appendix. One guide for the interviews with the teachers, one
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each level separately. Additionally, in doing so, I will also be linking them to the other levels of analysis as well.
In this thesis, data is analyzed using a critical discourse analysis approach (CDA). This approach is based on the insights of the work of Michel Foucault, for whom discourse ‘was a term that denoted the way in which a particular set of linguistic categories relating to an object and the ways of depicting it frame the way we comprehend that object’ (Bryman, 2012, p.528). This form of CDA can be seen as epistemological anti-realist, denying that there is an external, ontologically constructed, universal reality out there, where the emphasis is placed on a discourse as a particular depiction of reality. While doing CDA, I will be using Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (1992; in Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.68) as an analytical framework for analyzing the interviews and observations. This model consists of the following: (1) the text (speech, writing, visual or a combination); (2) the discursive practice which involves the production and consumption of the text; and (3) it is a social practice (Ibid.). At the level of text, I will use the following tools for analysis: interactional control (the relationship between speakers), ethos (how identities are constructed through language and aspects of the body) and wording (p.83). Also, an important grammatical element is modality. While analyzing modality, you focus on the speaker’s degree of affiliation to or affinity with his or her statement (Ibid.). Forms of modality are truth (how the speaker commits to the statement), permission (constructing social relations), intonation and hedges (moderating, and therefore expression lower affinity) (p.84). At the level of discursive practice, it is necessary to focus on how ‘texts’ in the broad sense are produced and how they are consumed (p.81). On the level of social practice, the relationship between the discursive practice and the discourse needs to be explored (p.86). Also, the aim is to discover the non-discursive, cultural and social links and structures that make up for the wider context of the discursive practice (Ibid.). This model of Fairclough is based on the idea that texts in the broad sense can never be understood in isolation; it is only possible to understand the text in relation to other texts and the social context (p.67).
Although CDA is usually not used to analyze interactions in naturally occurring situations, I will use it to analyze how children at the interactional and cultural level construct gender in their peer culture, as well as in interaction with the teacher. This usage of CDA fits well with Risman’s theoretical framework because it is based on the idea that gender difference is the primary means to justify sexual stratification (Risman, 2004, p.433). CDA helps to discover and unfold the discourses that contribute to the construction of social gendered identities, gendered social relations and systems of knowledge and meaning regarding gender (by
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creating ideological effects) (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.67). Uncovering these discourses and practices will, according to Risman, lead to understand and eventually change the practices that produce gender differences (Risman, 2004, p.434).
After each observational period I worked out all the field notes I made. In these field notes, I wrote down information about events, individuals, interactions, and initial ideas about interpretations. Additionally, I made transcriptions of the interviews that I conducted. The idea with CDA thus is to discover linguistic choices of individuals, analyzing gendered rules, norms and expectations that dictate behavior that is socially accepted and influence how individuals act, speak and think (McDowell & Schaffner, 2011, p.551). I coded both the field notes and interviews using ATLAS.ti. These codes were made to make the data clearer and easier to access. While identifying topics and the effects of the discourse of gender, I wrote initial memos of any ideas and insights I had analyzing the data, exploring its theoretical implications (Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995, p.155). After evaluating these initial memo’s and codes, and recognizing certain themes, I analyzed the data for a second time and wrote more integrating memos which elaborated ideas and started to link codes, data and theory together (p.162). It is also at this stage that I began writing for the final thesis.
Regarding the children’s drawings, I did a type of situational analysis by using situational mapping. The aim of situational mapping is to lay out all human (individual and collective) and nonhuman (objects and discourses) elements in the situations of the research (Clarke, 2005, p.127). With every drawing, I made an initial situational map, based on Clarke’s abstract version6, writing down all the elements. After making the initial situational map, I structured the elements in a table and linked them with the gender discourse gained from previous analyses to see how children, at the individual level, construct gender. I also used a book named Kinderen geven tekens by Foks-Appelman (2018), who provides meanings of children’s drawings from an analytical psychology. This perspective focuses, among other things, on individuation, a process in which the individual forms and differentiates the self from others (p.22). This concept is important for understanding how children see themselves and others, to understand how the individual (gendered) self is constructed.
3.2 Role of the researcher
I believe that the research and its process cannot be seen separately from the researcher, or as Stanley and Wise (1983) note,
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whether we like it or not, researchers remain human beings complete with the usual assembly of feelings, failings and moods. All of these things influence how we feel and understand what is going on. Our consciousness is always the medium through which research occurs; there is no method or technique of doing research other than through the medium of the researcher (Stanley & Wise, 1983, p.157).
Especially in ethnographic research with children, there is a need to use a reflexive approach, providing a detailed description of the research process, the data collection and the analysis of the data (Emond, 2005, p.126).
In addition to being reflexive during the research process, the researcher is obligated to uphold ethical guidelines, especially when working with children. Because children are generally seen as incompetent and weak, they are vulnerable to persuasion, influence and even harm (Hill, 2005, p.63). By taking on an interpersonal style, the researcher aims to ‘reduce and not reinforce children’s inhibitions and desire to please, which will otherwise limit the amount, value, and validity of what they say’ (Ibid.).
A small number of important principles are the foundation for an ethical approach to research. Because I am doing observations with children, there is the question of consent (ASA, 1999). Notwithstanding the fact that the ASA does not provide the age of what defines an individual as a child and when not, I will view everyone under the age of 18 as a child, therewith putting the right of consent with one’s parents/legal guardians. Although I have permission from the school directors and teachers, and there is less than minimal risk for the children in this research, I have sent an email to the parents and/or legally authorized guardians for the possibility to decline their consent. In this email, I introduced myself and the purpose of my presence in the class. I also gave my contact details in case the parents/legal guardians had questions or problems. In response to my email, only one parent/legal guardian (out of 53 children) emailed me with the question whether I was also going to conduct individual conversations with the children. To which I replied that I was not, and that I only talked with the children about topics they wanted to talk about.
Because I’m focusing on children in my research – but also regarding research in general – I find it important to hold up ethical guidelines during the research. I based these guidelines on a framework devised by Alderson (1995; in Hill, 2005, p.65), one that incorporates and respects autonomy, privacy and anonymity, confidentiality, dignity, fair
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treatment and protection from harm. Firstly, and foremost, I want to preserve the agency and autonomy of children. In no way will I force a child to do something or undermine their opinion. This is vital, as the agency of the child is central to my ethnographic approach. Secondly, the privacy of all my respondents is respected and anonymity is guaranteed. If children or teachers don’t want to answer a question or of children don’t want me around them, I will step back and respect their choice. The names of the children, teachers and directors have been changed for clarifying purposes. Thirdly, and based on the previous guideline, confidentiality is assured as I, the researcher, am the only one working on this inquiry and promise not to share any private data with the public in the form of reports, presentations and so forth. I will also not share anything within my social network (only within the context of my thesis group for feedback purposes). Fourthly, the dignity and pride of the respondents will be valued and respected. I believe that each individual is unique and should be treated as so. Fifthly, I believe that people should be treated fairly, and I shall do this during my research as well. No child or adult shall be treated differently. Lastly, I promise to do no harm. My interference within the class lessons at school is minimal, and I will only participate in core group activities.
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Chapter 4 The institutional dimension
As presented in the introduction, the Dutch population has shown to have a generally positive attitude towards gender diversity (Kuyper, 2018). However, gender stereotypes and traditional gender roles are still apparent in society. In this chapter, I will focus on the construction of gender within the institutional domain of the elementary schools I visited. But first, I will shortly introduce both schools to provide a context for the rest of the research.
The vrijeschool is an elementary school in a small town in the Netherlands. Its education is based on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, also known as anthroposophy. The director of the vrijeschool described anthroposophy as a spiritual science founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) and centers itself around humans (‘antro’ meaning human). Within anthroposophy, humans are seen as half-physical (as in the evolutionary way that Darwin saw it) and half-spiritual. It is through inner development that humans come in contact with the spiritual world. This inner development occurs through mastering one’s senses of which humans have 12 (according to Martha, the teacher). Steiner identifies three groups of four senses that consecutively can develop in three periods of seven years (0-7 years, 7-14 years and 14-21 years) (Beemster, 2016). The first four senses, that are central to the children that I observed, are aimed at their own physicality. These senses are the touch sense, the life sense, the movement sense and the balance sense. In the second group between 7 and 14 years, the senses are called ‘soul senses’; they are aimed in creating a relation with the outside world. The last group of senses, that develop between 14 and 21 years, are called the inner spiritual or social senses and are used to in relation to other people (Ibid.).
The difference between the vrijeschool education and others is that the religious-spiritual focus is not an addition to the curriculum, but the foundation. This can be found in the school’s idea of individualization: not becoming who you want to be, but becoming who you already are. This is also central to the kindergarten class I observed. Their days are structurally filled with circle time (class opening, songs, games), free play, (outdoor) recess, artistic work (drawing, creative exercises), music and dance. In a playful manner, they learn language and other skills. The classroom is circular-shaped, open and is supposed to resemble a home, with a small kitchen and toys that are made from natural materials, which encourages children to identify and connect with nature and is used to advance imaginative play. Martha, the kindergarten teacher, is a 60-year-old, white woman who has been working as a teacher her whole life. She comes across as a woman who has developed her own way of teaching, and dares to stand up for her principles. She is, for instance, outspoken against the way in which the government has systemized and standardized education, hereby testing children at
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an age at which they, according to Martha, are not always ready to be tested. She describes the atmosphere of the school as one that
is warm and enveloping. There is a strong team that’s well consulted, which results in house rules that are clear for all children. Teachers and children interact with each other on the basis of equality. It is an atmosphere with “no I without us” and “I can also be myself.”
Not far from the vrijeschool is the inter-confessional school where I observed as well. It is inter-confessional because they reason from both the Roman-Catholic tradition and the Protestants-Christian tradition in their education. According to the directress of the school, the combination of both approaches ‘becomes clear in our daily actions. It lives on in who we are and how we interact with each other. We, as teachers, exemplify this, but we also pay attention to this in our lessons.’ The latter is done through ‘Trefwoord’, a method for religious philosophy of life which links daily experiences and questions to biblical stories. An example of a theme in ‘Trefwoord’ is one regarding equal and unequal treatment, reward and punishment, and is linked to the biblical verses of Matthew:18; 20; 25 and Luke:13.
The directress describes the school as transparent and open. The school is quite new (two schools merged in 2015) and the population of the school has changed over the years, due to the change of population in the neighborhood. When I asked Aafke, the kindergarten teacher, how she would describe the atmosphere of the school, she said
I find that a difficult question. I worked at the Protestants-Christian school before, but after the merge and with the continuous grid… I still have the feeling I am on “the other side.” Of course it takes some time to make a merger… your own, so to say. But I still notice that there are two schools. I am the only one who prays in the morning. They don’t do that in the other kindergarten class. I was actually so ridiculed for that, that I even quit for some time. I found that very upsetting. […] I also miss the coziness of the Protestants-Christian school. This is so gigantic […] I have the feeling we have become a bit of a factory.
Aafke is a white woman in her 50s who started her education when she was 40. Before that, she was a stay-at-home-mother who used to help out at the school of her children, but who at
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one point thought: ‘I want that too. I don’t want to be the help anymore, I want to stand in front of the class!’ Her classroom is divided into six sections, each with its own purpose: play corner, house corner, indoor water- or sandbox and three sections with tables and chairs where children can work on different assignments.
4.1 Teachers’ opinions regarding boys and girls
When asked if they see differences between boys and girls in their class, Martha answered the following: ‘I think the differences are not that big. They all do their stitching assignments. Boys are somewhat more physical, that is often the case.’ Stating that the differences are ‘not that big’ shows that Martha moderates her answer, a form of modality that is an important grammatical element of Fairclough’s CDA (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.84). She bases her answer on the assignments the children need to do; something that is not really voluntary, but has more to do with the school’s vision on assignments for the children. Martha moderates her answer, she does give a characteristic wherein boys and girls differ according to her: boys are more physical. This can be seen in line with the gender stereotypes described by Berk (2013), that sees boys as aggressive and assertive. Martha moderates and differentiates her answer further by stating: ‘but you see girls doing the same. I think boys a bit more often, though. They still need more that going outside than girls do.’ Her answer can thus be divided into 4 segmented answers: (1) ‘differences are not that big. They all do their stitching assignments’; (2) ‘boys are somewhat more physical’; (3) ‘but you see girls doing the same’; (4) ‘I think boys a bit more often, though.’ Answers one and three state that boys and girls do not differ that much, while answers two and four state that boys and girls do differ in the fact that boys are more physical than girls. What interests me is that with her second answer she confirms the stereotype that boys are physical, but she counters that stereotype with her third answer by stating that girls are physical too. And eventually, with her fourth answer, by ending with the words ‘though’, Martha concludes that boys are eventually more physical than girls. The question is if her conclusion was added because it confirms and therefore strengthen the stereotype or because it is actually so.
Aafke answers immediately with a firm ‘yes’ when asked if she sees differences between girls and boys in her class. The fact that she answers so quickly and firmly shows another type of modality, namely truth, because she completely commits herself to the statement (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.84). She follows with ‘but not completely. I have also girls who can be incredibly unpleasant, I often find girls really mean. Boys are more open. I mean, you can already see that slap coming, but with girls it’s more “blah blah blah”
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[imitates a talking mouth with her hand].’ Although she tries to moderate her quick answer from seeing differences between boys and girls to not seeing many differences between boys and girls, she provides a different answer. By stating ‘I have also girls who can be incredible unpleasant’, she argues that girls can be just as negative as boys can be, instead of girls and boys being the same. In doing so, she gives different ways in how girls and boys can be unpleasant. For instance, ‘mean’ is used as a way to describe girls who are unpleasant, confirming the idea of the ‘mean girl’, one that shows social aggression (Underwood, 2003, p.5). Instead of becoming physical, girls can be negative through talk; this idea is strengthened by the gesture Aafke makes with her hand. She gives an example of Vera, a girl in her class:
just like a Vera, that one is also pretty stubborn. Like, still trying every time, and and, really a voice like that, annoyed voice, like “I’m doing everything right and you are doing everything wrong.” While she can really play a trick. She can pinch someone really mean. I even caught her a few times.
By saying ‘like a’, Aafke argues that it is not only Vera who shows such behavior, but other girls too. ‘Playing a trick’ and ‘pinching’ can be seen as forms of social aggression described by Underwood. On the other hand, boys can be unpleasant as well. However, they are ‘often more open,’ making it less negative. Why? Because ‘you can already see that slap coming’, meaning that you know what you’re going to get with boys, while girls have less overt ways of hurting others. This statement also shows that boys are believed to be more physical, while girls use, as is expected from them, more proper ways of communicating - even though it’s negative.
Another way in which boys differ from girls, according to Aafke, is that boys are more ‘present’ (her word choice): ‘you have to give boys a little more space, because they need to be able to lose a bit of their energy. So I’m not going to forbid every wild game.’ This suggests boys need more space because they need to lose energy, more so than girls do. This statement suggests that boys have some sort of inner, naturally energy source that is higher than girls, which can decrease by taking up more space. This ‘taking up more space’ refers to boy’s bodily movements and their wild movements in play, which are allowed in the name of losing their high inner energy levels. Here Aafke and Martha have the same argument: that boys need more space, need more ways of losing their energy, such as going outside or playing wild games. But where Martha includes girls to a certain extent by stating that boys
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‘need more’ going outside than girls do, Aafke does not include girls in her statement at all, not acknowledging their energy level or the fact that they are also allowed to play wild games, using wild bodily movements. Here you can see how what she says results into a discursive practice: allowing boys to play some wild games while girls are not (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.81).
Aafke states that boys and girls in her classroom also differ in the usage of their voices. She claims that ‘they are screaming against each other while they play, boys. But, uh, yes, girls, they are somewhat quieter.’ Here, the voice volume can be seen as representing the inner energy levels of boys and girls, with boys having supposedly more energy and therefore louder voices while girls have supposedly less energy and are therefore are more quiet.
Both teachers state that they see differences between boys and girls on the basis of their bodies, and to be more specific, on the basis of their physicality and energy levels. To both, it seems as if they believe that boys and girls are biologically different. This idea is strengthened by the following conversation I had with Aafke:
R: …and look, boys need a little more time. For example, their brains already need 10 seconds before they can answer a question.
I: you told me that, yeah.
R: It’s so funny when you know that. Like: alright, I need to give you some more time. I: you had heard that during a lecture, right?
R: yes, yes.
She told me this ‘fact’ three times during my observations in her class, showing how much she believed this was true. However, as already stated in chapter two, there are no specific male or female brains (Joel et al., 2015). Also, the idea of boys needing more space or being more physical is incorrect as well. There is no innate need in boys for needing more space and being physical, making it a generalized and even essentialist idea. This shows how important the biological explanation for differences in gender, and even the justification for them, still is. Not only for Marta and Aafke, but also in Dutch society. It is through this biological dichotomy of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ that gender stereotypes are still intact, linking those stereotypes to sex and making that link static.
4.2 The policies of the school
When I asked the directress of the inter-confessional school about the school’s vision regarding the development of children, she said the following: ‘We do not look so much at the
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differences in development of boys and girls, we look more at the development of every child. Every child develops differently. There are differences in preferences, pace, potential, talents, etc.’ By using the word ‘we’, the directress represents the voice of the whole school. She hedges while using the words ‘not so much’, using a modality that moderates her response, and therefore expresses low affiliation with her answer (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p.84). She states that every child and his or her development is unique, based on different qualities. According to the directress, the school is trying to create groups within different developmental phases, and ‘sometimes you see similarities between boys, and sometimes in girls. For example, boys generally have more trouble learning to write […] than girls.’ It is interesting to see that the directress, when she refers to gender, refers to similarities within a gender category, and not between both genders. However, in her example, she states that boys and girls are generally different regarding learning how to write, focusing more on differences between the genders than on similarities within a gender category. Although she moderates her answer by using the word ‘general’, making sure she’s not generalizing.
When I asked her if she believed that there is a difference between the development of boys and the development of girls, she stated the following: ‘we are beautifully different.’ Even when I stayed silent to see if she was going to elaborate and eventually played the ignorant researcher and asked her what she meant with that, she did not explain it further than: ‘we each have different characteristics that can be appreciated.’ I wondered why she answered me so shortly. Was it because no explanation was needed regarding the differences between boys and girls – because it is obvious for some reason – or because she did not want to go deeper into the question? With her answer, she states that the differences between boys/men and girls/women are beautiful. By saying ‘we’, she places herself as the subject of the question, namely, boys and girls, women and men. Interesting is her use of the word ‘beautiful.’ When used properly, this word can be used to prevent change. For example, the statement ‘you are beautiful, just the way you are’ suggests that one is beautiful, and that nothing should be changed. The directress’ statement evokes a similar understanding; we are beautifully different, and nothing should be changed about that. The question remains whether her answer refers to gender or biology.
When I asked the director of the vrijeschool whether the anthroposophy looked differently towards boys and girls, he answered: ‘a child is seen as a child, but we dare to look at things that can be seen as typically boys or typically girls.’ Like the inter-confessional school, the vrijeschool states in the first part of their statement that they look at children as a person, and not necessarily as a gendered being. However, with the second part of the
