Systematic review on gender socialisation in pre-school education

Abstract

Throughout the early childhood education stage, gender identity is established through the process of socialisation through which boys and girls acquire and construct stereotypes and stereotyped gender roles, in many cases dichotomised and sexist. The general objective guiding this study is to find out about gender socialisation and the acquisition and construction of stereotyped roles and gender stereotypes in boys and girls at the Early Childhood Education stage based on systematic review in the Web of Science, Scopus and Dialnet databases. After a systematic search, 124 documents from all databases made up the final sample. To begin with, a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the selected publications in each of the databases was carried out, followed by a content analysis of the presence of gender roles and/or stereotypes of boys and girls in these studies. We conclude with the identification of a greater number of publications in the Web of Science database on this subject; the existence of a greater number of publications that focus their studies on boys and girls in the second cycle of Early Childhood Education; and the presence of stereotyped roles and gender stereotypes concerning play and toys.