Être fille ou garçon
Abstract
Are we born a girl or boy, or do we become one? How do gender differences in childrearing and education, games, rights, and representations develop? How do children view the condition of being a girl or a boy, and how do they themselves participate in the dynamics operative at school, work and in the home? This book revisits childhood and adolescence, focusing on the implication of gender in social construction processes. On the basis of field studies conducted in Africa and Europe, the authors present distinct perspectives on how differences between girls and boys are constructed.
Questions of access to education, child labour, domestic chores assume their full significance when childhood is defined as a period of life that takes different forms depending on the culture and norms within which it is situated. The experiences discussed here show the degree to which these questions are fundamental to understanding the future of contemporary societies.
Contents
Introduction. Childhood and gender. The importance of taking into account differing South/North perspectives
Chapter 1. Age and gender in survey relations with children: African and European fieldwork sites
Part I. Child rights and protection: taking gender into account
Chapter 2. “Child labour”: the ILO and the gender issue
Chapter 3. Gender and the struggle against child labour in Burkina Faso
Chapter 4. Civil registries, child’s sex and family environment in Mali
Part II. The constructing of differences between girls and boys
Chapter 5. Children born outside marriage in North Africa: the impact of gender on trajectories
Chapter 6. Gender and school textbooks in Africa and France
Chapter 7. Enrolment rates and gender in Africa
Chapter 8. Gender and migration during childhood and adolescence in Mali
Chapter 9. Gender-specific roles at the centre of domestic family socialization
Chapter 10. Hairdos and makeup in preadolescence, a survey in Alsace-Lorraine
Afterword. Childhood and gender: renewing perspectives