Gender Practices in Early Childhood Education

Introduction

The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector has been identified as being fraught with misinformation and conflicts around issues relating to gender (McNaughton 2000). While there are multiple often complex and conflicting beliefs about gender within the ECEC sector, three main views have been identified as most influential. Such influential ideas shape both how gender is understood and therefore enacted by those involved in the ECEC sector and how gender policies develop at center, local, and national levels. Firstly the essentialist view of gender, prevalent in lay society, is keenly felt in the sector although not as prevalent in academic current literature. Secondly, more common in the current profusion of literature is the perception of gender as developed through gender-role socialization. Finally, over the past two decades, a post-structural perspective has risen in popularity in order to support identification and analyzes the complex power relationships...