Learning Gender in Malay Muslim Society in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

This chapter explores how Malay primary schoolchildren in Brunei Darussalam understand gender and become gendered. Through ethnographic accounts and data collected from pupils aged from five to 12 years old in a suburban state school, the study demonstrates that children have strict ideas and expectations of what it means to be masculine and feminine, which they inadvertently reinforce and are regulated in their interactions with others. The discussion also deals with children’s associations and dissociations with certain objects in order to understand how they navigate the social world. Besides children, interviews with adults reveal the extent to which masculine and feminine traits are reinforced according to religious and social expectations. The analysis provides insights into children’s understanding of gender, highlights their ideas of what a Brunei Malay person should be, and offers a glimpse of the importance of children as valid informants for anthropological research.