Abstract
The general objectives of this article were to investigate what are the perceptions of Brazilian children enrolled in primary education over gender-assigned roles and the place of women in society and to analyze what could be the impacts of their answers on the foreseeable future of women’s rights and equality in contemporary Brazil. This research was drawn from a qualitative approach and our research method was composed of data collection and data analysis through the use of surveys. Our main conclusions were that gender dynamics within the family core influences a lot the perception of children over gender hierarchies, which can result in repeating patterns of gender inequality and in reinforcing pre-assigned roles for women in society. Thus, the role of gender education is paramount in the task of helping these children challenge and question this unequal and often unjust power balance that takes place in their households. When asked about what they considered to be the role of women in society, the majority of the children surveyed answered that women should work and be responsible for activities such as taking care of the family or doing housework. This vision imposes a burden upon women to follow certain social roles as well as limits the future visions they have for themselves.
Highlights
The general objectives of this article were, one the one hand, to investigate what are the perceptions of Brazilian children enrolled in primary education over gender-assigned roles and the place of women in society
Our main conclusions were that: a) gender dynamics within the family core influences a lot the perception of children over gender-assigned roles, which can result in repeating patterns of gender inequality and in reinforcing preassigned roles for women in society; b) the results have shown that most of the children surveyed believe men and women have the same rights, but on the other hand, when asked about what they considered to be the role of women in society, the majority answered that women should, besides having a job, be responsible for activities such as taking care of the house, of the children, doing housework and so forth
The role of gender education appears as paramount in the task of helping these children challenge and question the unjust and unequal gender dynamics they witness at home
Summary
The general objectives of this article were, one the one hand, to investigate what are the perceptions of Brazilian children enrolled in primary education over gender-assigned roles and the place of women in society. When asked about what they considered to be the role of women in society, the majority of the children surveyed answered that women should work and be responsible for activities such as taking care of the family or doing housework. This vision imposes a burden upon women to follow certain social roles as well as limits the future visions they have for themselves. Los objetivos generales de este artículo fueron, por un lado, investigar cuáles son las percepciones de los niños y niñas brasileños estudiantes de Educación Primaria sobre los roles asignados por género y el lugar de la mujer en la sociedad. Even though critical pedagogy is a large and diverse field of inquiry, “the major aims of these critical approaches to education, diverse though they are, is to develop critical consciousness among the students/learners and to empower them” (Ng, 1995, p. 131, our italics)
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