‘She might not have the right tools… and he does’: children’s sense‐making of gender, work and abilities in early school readers

Abstract

Children’s cultural worlds provide them with many different sources of information about gender and work. Early school reader illustrations, for example, are a cultural resource that produces particular meanings about gender, however children may also draw on understandings from other contexts to make their own sense of these representations. The study described in this article interviewed young children about illustrations depicting women and men’s work in two early school readers. Feminist poststructuralist analyses were used to examine representations in illustrations and how children made sense of them. Findings revealed variability of meanings about gender and work in both illustrations and the children’s accounts, assigning women agency and equality on some occasions while locating them in a gender hierarchy below men at other times. Although findings illuminate children’s access to an egalitarian discourse, they also point to an ongoing need to support and encourage children’s critical reading of texts.