Oppositional positions: children's construction of gender in talk and role plays based on adult occupation

Abstract

Summary This paper examines primary school children's constructions of gender during talk about their own lives, and in role plays based on adult occupational scenarios. Examining children's interview talk, it is argued that gender category maintenance is evident in the children's constructions, and that because of this, many children presented gender as oppositional (in opposition and opposite) in their interviews. The role play interaction is then analysed, beginning with an examination of who gained first choice of the role play scenario and role, and whether children took up traditional gender‐stereotypical occupational roles. Children's interactive constructions of the various occupational roles, and the ways in which some of these appeared to be taken up according to gender, are then discussed. It is further argued that gender category maintenance leads to the construction of symbolic gender cultures in the plays, via the presentation of genders as oppositional. Having explored these different constructions, the children's resistance to the gender cultures is investigated, and it is observed that their constructions are fluid, and can be challenged and ignored.