Citation

Gelb SA. Early Child Res. Q. 1989; 4(2): 205-215.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1989, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0885-2006(89)80003-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The greater visibility and importance of males than females in society is reflected in early childhood settings in a number of ways, including the language that is used by adults and children. Two sets of data on teachers' and children's use of male and female pronouns in two early childhood programs are reported here.

Teachers regularly used male-generic pronouns during teaching sessions when lessons centered on animals. Teachers also spoke of gender-ambiguous entities as male. Transcriptions of teachers' speech in ten teaching and story-time sessions for each program indicated that, overall, teachers used three times as many male as female pronouns. Eighty 3- to 5-year-olds (44 girls, 36 boys) were asked to make up stories about three gender-indeterminate drawings. Both girls (81.1% of stories) and boys (97%) overwhelmingly attributed maleness to each of the three pictures. Boys were significantly more likely than girls to make all-male attributions.