“Girly” and “boyish” – On How Gender is Performed and Understood by Young Children

How is gender performed and understood by young children? And how does gender intersect with class and age? This article is based on interviews with over a hundred children, drawings and a collection of toys. The fieldwork was performed in five different places in the greater Stockholm during 2007 and 2008 (two million homes program areas, two villa suburbs and an industrial town). The study was a follow up by a study carried out by Eva Lis Bjurman in the 1970s that studied the effects of segregation on children’s leisure activities in different parts of Stockholm. The 1970s perspective viewed the children as passive receivers of messages and interpreted the working class children as victims of mass culture. A perspective on how gender, class and age are made in performances, narratives, clothes, materiality and other activities has guided the analysis. The study draws on childhood research which views the child as “being” in the world and not as “becoming” something. But viewing children as capable of interpreting culture has to be combined with an interpretation of the children’s narratives and performances in a societal and historical context. It is significant that the middle class children are more interested in and skilled in discussing gender in terms of difference and the children living in the million program areas are keener on stressing similarity among each other. The study shows that the toys, the colors and the games described as “girly” are constantly undervaluated by both boys and girls in the gender mixed interviews. The girly expressions, the girls games focused on care, dolls and a performed “hyperfemininity” are defined as childish and silly and are valued as “low”. This illustrates an asymmetrical logic where the male is defined as norm and the female is defined as deviator, subordinated or in more general terms – low.