Children's Gendered and Non-Gendered Play in Natural Spaces
By Eva Änggård. Children, Youth and Environments, 2023
87 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract:This paper concerns gender aspects of children's play in nature environments. In an ethnographic study, children between 1 and 6 years in a Swedish outdoor preschool were videotaped during time for free play. Four different play themes were particularly popular among the children: war and superhero play, family play, animal play and physical play. Each one of these themes has been analyzed from two perspectives: how nature resources are used and which gender positions they provide. Within the themes, nature's affordances are used in various ways. Similarly, a range of gender positions is evident across the themes. The superhero theme includes exclusively gender-stereotyped masculine play positions, while the family theme includes both traditional gender positions and possibilities for transgressions. Further, animal play as well as physical play provides non-gendered play positions. Natural environments are not gender-coded in themselves and they invite certain play activities where girls and boys play together. Thus, nature spaces seem to offer good opportunities to promote gender equity.
Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b829ae8cf8543af971b15e01bc91e8d420219b41
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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
In Social Psychology
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Children, Outdoor Play, and Loose Parts (2018, background): “Loose parts give children the freedom to develop their play experiences based on their ideas and goals, rather than the play being predetermined by the materials or surroundings (Änggård, 2011).”