Playgrounds and Gender Stereotyping

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Playgrounds and Gender Stereotyping

In this project, I am going to investigate the question; 'Do

playgroups encourage gender stereotypes?' This is quite a difficult

topic to be able to answer, as a playgroup isn't just going to say

that they encourage stereotypes. Therefore, I am going to have to be

careful in how I find out my information to make sure they are

reliable sources. To look into this and draw some sort of conclusion,

I will be asking both playgroup assistants and parents of children

attending playgroup (2 sets of parents with girls, 2 sets with boys, 2

sets with boys and girls) questions in interviews or questionnaires.

This will give me information from both points of view, and I can use

my findings to look for any trends or similarities. The reason I chose

this topic was that I feel very strongly against putting children into

stereotypical gender roles, as I think it denies them of making

independent choices away from their 'role'. I also believe that this

kind of socialisation is likely to lead to greater amounts of

prejudice and discrimination in society on grounds of gender. It is

because of these reasons that I would like to investigate whether

gender stereotyping happens from a sociological point of view. It is

proven that these gender roles are socially constructed, which means

they'd have to be learnt at some point in the life of a person, and I

am going to see whether any aspect of the roles are learnt in early

childhood.

My project relates to modern multicultural Britain very significantly.

The way it does is through various preconceptions different areas of

society have of people because of their gende...

... middle of paper ...

...to interview a larger number of people, and from

different areas as this can affect things sociologically. I could also

develop this further by specifically looking for different backgrounds

of children to see if this affects socialisation, e.g. Single parent

families, adopted children. This would take the topic of socialisation

and gender roles to a different route than playgroups, but this may

make an interesting comparative investigation.

Bibliography

· 'A Practical Guide To Child Development'

Volume 1~The Child

Valda Reynolds

1st Published 1987

· Sociology for GCSE

Pauline Wilson & Allan Kidd

1st Published 1998

· www.le.ac.uk/education/resources/socisci

· www.wiganmbc.gov.uk/pub/leis/earlyyears/childcare.htm

· Nork Community Centre Playgroup

· www.childcarelink.gov.uk

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