1st Edition
Gendered and Sexual Norms in Global South Early Childhood Education Understanding Normative Discourses in Post-Colonial Contexts
This volume examines gendered and heteronormative norms embedded within early childhood education (ECE) in the Global South, including Brazil, China, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam.
In this book, the contributors explore how gender, culture, religion, masculinity, sport, and conservative politics intersect to perpetuate and resist gendered and sexual norms. The book presents a range of possibilities for disrupting and challenging these norms within early childhood educational contexts. Grounded in colonial and postcolonial discourses, the book emphasises the entanglement of gender and sexuality in ECE with legacies of colonisation and surrounding social and cultural dynamics, highlighting our responsibility to address gender inequalities and injustices.
The book will appeal to researchers, faculty, and teacher educators with interests in gender and sexuality in education, international and comparative education, and early childhood education.
Gender and sexuality in Global South early childhood education
Deevia Bhana, Yuwei Xu, and Vina Adriany
1. “He calls me babe, he says I’m sexy”: Girls, boys, and sexualities in the early years
Emmanuel Mayeza
2. “No! We definitely don’t teach that sort of thing”: Teachers and the childhood-sexuality assemblage in South Africa
Raksha Janak
3. Beauty in Kainat (the universe): Discourses of heterosexuality in Pakistan’s early childhood classrooms
Audrey D’Souza Juma
4. Gender and sexuality in Brazilian early childhood education
Ricardo Gonçalves de Sousa and Natania Aparecida da Silva Nogueira
5. “The pole is sacred”: Disciplining sexuality in teaching pole dance to Brazilian children
Mariana Ghignatti Fagundes, Ariane Corrêa Pacheco, and André Luiz dos Santos Silva
6. “Macho males and puppy crushes”: Teachers and the interplay of masculinity in the early years of primary schooling
Diloshini Govender
7. When nature calls: How male teachers negotiate gender and care work in early childhood education
Vusi Msiza
8. “Females are still the king”: Men can’t handle teaching young children
Shaaista Moosa
9. Autoethnographic explorations of the impacts of cultural and gender conventions that frame childhood
Giang Nguyen Hoang Le, Fiona Blaikie, and Long Hoang Vu
10. Heteronormativity in a Chinese sexuality education textbook series: The case of Cherish Lives
Wenjia Zhou and Chong Liu
Biography
Deevia Bhana is DSI/NRF South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) in Gender and Childhood Sexuality at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research examines gender and sexuality across the young life course focusing on femininities, masculinities, inequalities, reproduction, health, violence, and education.
Yuwei Xu is Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education at the University of Nottingham, UK. With a PhD in gender and early childhood studies gained from the University of Glasgow, Yuwei’s research interests include gender and men’s participation in early childhood education, child agency, 0–3 curriculum, child-centred pedagogy, parenting, and family relationships, play-based pedagogy, and teacher professional development.
Vina Adriany is Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education and Gender at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia. Her research interests are gender and social justice in the early years, childhood in marginalised communities, and the impact of neo-liberalism in education.
