Gendering and slow violence as mundane political practice in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

For many years, researchers have attended to gender in early childhood education (ECE) from an equity perspective, framed initially by feminist and feminist poststructuralist theories. More recently, researchers have adopted feminist new materialism and feminist posthumanist perspectives to consider gender in ECE. Here we think with the concept of slow violence to contemplate how, in combination with extra-sectionality, gendering is a cumulative and an integral part of the mundane political practices occurring in ECE contexts, lurking in the everydayness of busy settings and ‘hidden in plain sight’. We show how the talk of educators forms an integral part of the practices occurring daily in ECE settings, and how the ways gender is discussed becomes one of the mundane political practices that are cumulative and part of slow violence. This article was prompted by nuances that emerged when probing data from interviews with Australian early childhood educators and by noticing differently, how gender can be constructed in the everyday talk and actions of educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• early childhood education
• slow violence
• mundane political practices
• extra-sectionality

Introduction

There is now widespread recognition that the trajectory of educational success begins in the early years, and that this success contributes to both individual and collective economic and social benefit (OECD, 2018). However, the direction of the trajectory is dependent on the patterns of inclusion and equal participation established early in the educational process (Souto-Manning et al., 2019). For decades, early childhood (EC) researchers and practitioners have provided evidence that there are many children whose social circumstances lead to marginalisation and exclusion from the learning on offer in ECE settings (Grieshaber & McArdle, 2010; MacNaughton, 2000; Walkerdine, 1981). Children’s social circumstances relate to economic and geographic realities (Horton & Kraftl, 2018) and intersect with their membership of social groups as they relate to race, gender, ethnicity, ability, proficiency with the dominant language, religion, and more. Despite this evidence, in a field dominated by commitment to the idea of the autonomous individual child developing along universal, normalised pathways, researchers have struggled to shift attention to children as members of social groups and what that membership might mean for their equal participation in ECE.

Our attention to gender issues in ECE is related to ongoing gender inequality and injustice globally and in Australia. Gendering is a constant process of enculturation into dominant gender norms, which is framed by power relationships (Bacchi, 2010). Gender equality indexes globally show continued disparities across many facets of life that include economic, employment, educational attainment, distribution of unpaid labour, and social and political power (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2021; World Economic Forum, 2022). The Global Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2022) indicated how the pandemic and resultant economic downturn disproportionately affected women, most notably concerning gender parity in the workforce and the unequal distribution of caring responsibilities. Beliefs held about gender remain problematic in Australian society and continue to provoke ongoing concern. Between 2006 and 2022, Australia fell from a ranking of 15 to 43 on the Global Gender Gap Index, which benchmarks gender parity across four major dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment (World Economic Forum, 2022). Despite this fall, the full-time gender pay gap has improved in the past six years by about two per cent and is just over fourteen per cent in favour of men, which means that for every dollar men earn, women earn about 86 cents (Workplace Gender Equality Agency, 2022).

An international study of 30 countries with over 20,000 adults aged 18–74 years found that thirty per cent of Australian male respondents agreed that gender inequality does not really exist (Ipsos The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, 2022). Approximately 1000 online interviews were undertaken with the Australian sample, which is representative of the general adult population under the age of 75. Of further concern is that the gender attitudes of younger Australian males (Gen Z, born 1996–2012) are as conservative as the Baby Boomer generation (born 1946–1964); that 75% of clerical and support workers are women; 1 in 6 women experience intimate partner violence, and women do 1.8 hours more unpaid domestic work each day than men (Deloitte Access Economics DAE, 2022). The DAE report indicates that ‘gender norms underpin all persisting gender gaps in Australia’ (p. ix), and actions for change include the known targets of addressing structural issues, changing gender norms, and tackling bias. Based on modelling that accounts for labour force participation and productivity, abandoning prescriptive gender norms would produce a significant economic benefit of $158 billion each year (Deloitte Access Economics DAE, 2022). But change needs to occur at all levels of society and changing societal gender norms takes a lot more than time.

It has long been established that educator attitudes to, and understandings of gender influence young children’s participation and equitable learning in ECE (Davies, 1989; Danby & Baker, 1998; MacNaughton, 2000; Walkerdine, 1981). Early childhood education settings are microcosms of the societies in which they are situated (a concept elaborated by Dewey, 2018) and issues of gender inequality remain in many countries even though attempts have been made for some time to disrupt ‘practices, languages and behaviours which support a reinforcing of stereotypes and essentialist approaches to gender’ (Josephidou & Bolshaw, 2020, p. 11). Furthermore, researchers such as Skattebol (2005) have pointed out that ‘ … local, national and global politics were not “left at the gate” but rather had significant (pedagogical) influence on the children and adults in the childcare space’ (p. 191). However, gender is rarely considered part of the ECE curriculum (Adriany, 2019a). When interview data (discussed later) were generated, educators used the Australian 0–5 years learning framework (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009), which mentions gender three times, twice in the context of inclusion and once regarding children developing an awareness of gender; making this policy complicit as a gendering process and practice (Bacchi, 2010). The DAE report (2022) makes a strong economic argument for change, and this can be a powerful motivator for action by government, business, and philanthropic organisations. Along with addressing structural issues, the report recommends resisting gender norms in the early years by ‘Shift[ing] how gender is communicated in early childhood through children’s toys and books’ (p. 30). While this is a laudable but superficial aim, limited progress has been made in the past 20 years although there is now a wider range of gendered representations available in young children’s books, and retailers have been encouraged to avoid segregating ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ toys into separate sections. As noted, ECE is situated in, and is part of broader societal gender politics. This paper draws attention to patterns of behaviour in ECE settings that contribute to this situation.

These patterns of behaviour are related to the ways local, national, and global politics are enacted in ECE contexts. Considering ECE settings as sites of mundane political practice and as always political means there are two political agendas operating. The first is the official policies and politics associated with the goals of ECE, and the second, which is ‘rarely identified in political terms’ in ECE, is the ‘everyday politics that … involve people as political subjects from birth until death’ (Millei & Kallio, 2018, p. 31). The lack of recognition of children as political subjects negates ‘important aspects of children’s agency’ (p. 31), particularly as politics are the basis of all pedagogical intention and enactment. It also suggests that young children are often seen as innocent (Garlen, 2019) and unknowing about issues related to race, gender, sexuality, and violence.

Change requires new and nuanced approaches to understanding gender practices that limit reform. We offer the concept of ‘slow violence’ to open new ways of thinking. Slow violence was used by Nixon (2011) to explain the enduring and detrimental effects of environmental injustice, which ‘occurs gradually and out of sight’ (p. 2); is ‘an attritional violence that is not usually viewed as violence at all’ and is ‘dispersed across time and space’ (p. 2). These characteristics make it difficult to conceptualise and recognise, and hard to respond to, including responses to the delayed effects that it can produce (Nixon, 2011). Drawing on Nixon’s ideas of slow violence, we aim to show that gendering for young children is a form of slow violence that is cumulative, pervasive, works in ways that are often hidden in plain sight and involves socio-material complexities and marginalisations (Horton & Kraftl, 2018) which are part of the everyday mundane political practices in ECE (Millei & Kallio, 2018). The analysis mobilises more-than-human accounts to move beyond existing discursively focused investigations of gendering in ECE to introduce the multi-layered dimensions of slow violence.

Violence and early childhood education

As young children (aged birth-5 years) are often portrayed as innocent, vulnerable, and needing protection (Garlen, 2019), violence is not a subject that sits easily when considering this age group. Nevertheless, mass shootings of children and staff at schools and childcare centres have meant that violence and schooling have been researched professionally. While traumatising, these acts align with conventional or ‘positivist’ understandings of violence because they are immediate, quickly become visible through media coverage, and involve actions that are associated with an individual (Winter, 2012). They reflect what Winter describes as a ‘positivist’ approach to violence, which is characterised by acts such as gun violence and mass shootings, school bullying, and harassment.

Here we attend to modes of violence outside positivist approaches that dominate research about violence (Winter, 2012) to include structural, systemic, symbolic, normative, emotional, and cultural harms that tend to be unseen (Higham, 2022); and that are likely to be part of slow violence (Nixon, 2011). Manifestations of slow violence may be apparent in explicit and hidden curriculum (the unstated norms, rules, values, routines, and social relationships of classroom and school life), and the imposition of identities such as the normally developing gendered child. The cumulative effects of everyday or slow violence can be harmful, especially if sustained throughout ECE and compulsory schooling. Data about gender in Australian society (Deloitte Access Economics DAE, 2022) and internationally (Ipsos The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, 2022) indicate pervasive effects over the life span. To illuminate the connections between slow violence and gendering, we begin by explaining how structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence can apply to ECE. We then briefly explain extra-sectionality; how we ‘noticed data differently’, and use the concepts of slow violence and gender to analyse excerpts from interviews with Australian EC educators.

Structural violence is a veiled and implicit but systematic form of violence in education that affects specific groups (Higham, 2022) because of how money is allocated, how power operates, and how access to education works. As an example, in low socio-economic areas in Australia, the availability of ECE services is less and the programs provided in these services are of a ‘lower average quality of care than in more advantaged neighbourhoods’ (Cloney et al., 2016, p. 384). This illustrates what Watkinson and Epp (1997) refer to as systemic violence because discriminatory effects are produced. Systemic violence also means that children and young people can experience mistreatment through schooling processes such as ‘educational organisation, leadership theories, and pedagogical practices’ (p. 191). They say that systemic violence through administrative and pedagogical practices is ‘endemic to schools’ (p. 198). We include ECE settings because administrative, organisational, and pedagogical decisions about space are gendered and govern what activities occur, when and where they occur, with what resources, and who can be involved (Børve & Børve, 2017; Lenz Taguchi, 2011; MacNaughton, 2000; Prioletta, 2022). In short, play environments in ECE have ‘structural power’ (Børve & Børve, 2017) that is gender prescriptive (structurally violent), but this prescriptivity is rendered invisible because of the ubiquitous nature of the normative child development paradigm.

Other forms of systemic violence can also appear neutral or natural because they operate in society generally and are perpetuated in educational settings through power relationships and institutional culture. One example is hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987), or forms of masculinity that are dominant and subjugate other forms of masculinity and femininity. Heterosexuality is a key ingredient of hegemonic masculinity (as is capitalism), and it frames how gender relations operate (Connell, 1987). Kindergarten and preschool cultures often endorse hegemonic versions of masculinity by sanctioning male entitlement, privileging the needs of males, and discouraging nurturant and compassionate behaviours (Blaise, 2005; MacNaughton, 2000). In ECE, hegemonic versions of masculinity are indicative of the ‘most desirable and powerful way to be a boy’ (Blaise, 2005, p. 21). An authoritative example of systemic violence is the aggressive male entitlement depicted in an English nursery school where children aged three and four years were playing with blocks (Walkerdine, 1981). A boy tried to take some blocks from a girl and when she resisted, he used expletives (including the ‘c’ word) toward the girl and then destroyed another child’s construction. When the female teacher told him to stop, he and another boy directed their expletive attention to a sexist degradation of the teacher. There are many examples of systemic violence in the ECE literature (e.g. Blaise, 2005; Danby & Baker, 1998; Davies, 1989; Grieshaber & McArdle, 2010; MacNaughton, 2000), which have generated a long-standing view that neglecting gender issues will ‘naturalise gendered violence and aggression between boys and girls and between boys and their teachers’ (MacNaughton, 2000, p. 2), who are mostly female. Yet both the hidden and not-so-hidden curricula provide examples that reflect gendered systemic violence and aggression (Prioletta, 2022), thereby naturalising it.

To Bourdieu, symbolic violence regarding gender, culture, and class relations occurs as almost imperceptible modes of social and cultural domination that are ingrained in everyday habits. These everyday habits are inscribed onto bodies as ‘dispositions’ (habitus) (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 33) and are inseparable from the relations of power that produce them. These power arrangements appear ‘natural’ (p. 35) or ‘invisible’ (p. 1) to the extent that individuals are complicit in accepting their own position in the social hierarchy as dominant or dominated. Complicity is the basis for perpetuating ‘hidden’ injustices on the dominated, who view their situation from the perspective of the dominant (Bourdieu, 2001). While symbolic violence does operate at individual levels, it is most potent in institutions such as education, where students form middle class backgrounds are more likely to succeed because of the cultural capital required for educational success (Jackson, 2021). Little research about gender in ECE draws on Bourdieu, although Aprilianti et al. (2021) maintain that ECE settings are cultural agents where class and social structure are interwoven with the construction of gender stereotypes as ‘natural, immutable’ truths (p. 332). And Martínez-Bello, García-Ochoa, Díaz- Barahona, and Bernabé-Villodre (2021) found that images of curricular materials in ECE classrooms represented socially constructed stereotypical roles and aligned with dominant constructions of femininity and masculinity, thus normalising some ways of being and marginalising others.

In ECE, normalisation refers to adopting specific truths about the ‘normal and desirable way to be a child’ (Mac Naughton, 2005, p. 30). This might occur through observing children and ‘comparing their behaviours with developmental norms’ (p. 31). Child-centred approaches and developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) characterise ECE, yet these are informed by liberal humanist child development theories (Berman & Abawi, 2019) that privilege masculine traits (Blaise, et al., 2019). Blaise et al. (2019) describe child centred approaches as privileging the image of an ‘autonomous white, able-bodied, middle-class, and developing boy child that discovers and explores the natural world as an external thing to “know” and control’ (p. 166). Developmental norms about gender are established early in life. The American Academy of Pediatrics, (2022) indicates that before the age of two, children are beginning to understand gendering, and associate specific behaviour patterns with girls and boys. Before their third birthday, most children identify as a girl or boy, and by the age of four, most have established a stable gender identity. Therefore, child centred learning and DAP in ECE sanction ways of knowing, being, and doing that perpetuate structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence, i.e. slow violence. Approaches such as child centred learning and DAP endorse systemic violence by validating dominant forms of masculinity (Blaise et al., 2019; MacNaughton, 2000) such as heteronormative gender stereotypes (Adriany, 2019b; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019); structural violence by supporting acts of gendered violence that are targeted at girls (i.e. who can play where, when, and how; Børve & Børve, 2017; MacNaughton, 2000; Prioletta, 2022); and symbolic acts of gendered violence that normalise socially constructed stereotypical roles associated with masculinity and femineity (Aprilianti et al., 2021; Martínez-Bello et al., 2021). Our argument is that sanctioned ways of knowing, being, and doing gender in ECE is a form of gendered slow violence that privileges boys to the detriment of girls.

Normative violence is about violence enacted through norms. Philosopher Judith Butler (1990) has focused on subjectivity/ies as complex, fluid, and unfinished processes rather than fixed products. Normative violence has also attended to how ‘violence [is] enacted within the formation of subjectivity’ (Higham, 2022, p. 16; emphasis in original) but little empirical work using this construct has focused on young children. One effect of normative violence is that it forces subjects ‘into constrained subjectivities and certain normative ways of living and being’ (Higham, 2022, p. 16). As normalising institutions, ECE settings can constitute ‘a form of violence that acts on our [children’s] subjectivity, our [children’s] relation to ourselves [themselves], and our [children’s] possibilities of self-recognition’ (Ball & Collet-Sabé, 2021, p. 4). Given the fluidity of subjectivity, gender ‘ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler, 1990, p. 179).

In conjunction with the ideas of slow violence (structural, systemic, symbolic, normative violence), mundane political practices (Millei & Kallio, 2018) and things that are hidden in plain sight, we were inspired by Horton and Kraftl’s, (2018) argument to move from an intersectional to an extra-sectional approach. Intersectionality is ‘ … the simultaneous and interacting effects of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and national origin (and others) as categories of difference’ (Bassel & Emejulu 2010, p. 518). It attends to ‘diverse childhood experiences and power differentials’; moves away from a tendency to ‘homogenise’ childhoods, and offers a better way to ‘understand and re/present everyday experiences’ (Konstantoni & Emejulu, 2017, p. 8). However, as Horton and Kraftl noted, many studies using intersectionality as a theoretical base presented ‘overly certain, clean, causal, linear, additive understandings of human life, shying away from the messy relationalities and intersubjectivities of lives themselves’ (p. 938). They argued for ‘ … a move from intersectional to extra-sectional analyses that might retain intersectionality’s critical and political purchase, whilst simultaneously folding social-material complexities and vitalities into its theorization’ (p. 926). Their approach informed our ongoing deliberations of the interview data and pointed to the importance of attending to ‘social-material complexities and marginalisations that percolated through the interview data’ (p. 939). At times, these complexities and marginalisations challenge seemingly fixed truths associated with gender and young children while at other times expose how some fixed truths remain hidden in plain sight.

Noticing differently

This article draws on selected interview data from Phase 2 of a larger mixed methods sociological research project that focused on how Australian EC educators responded to a compulsory national learning framework for children 0–5 years (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2009). The study investigated educator responses to the challenge of combining free play with the policy demand for maximising young children’s learning potential (La Trobe University Ethics Human Research Committee Approval EC00116). Interviews with 54 educators from 10 services in New South Wales and Queensland were undertaken. All interviews occurred at the services, were audio recorded, and varied in length from 15 minutes to over 90 minutes. Data are drawn from interview question 2a: What do you think was the most significant change in the way you cater for diversity in combining play with intentional teaching regarding: a) gender?

The interviews represent partial perspectives and while repeatedly revisiting the data, we were drawn to the idea of ‘noticing things that may be neglected in our rush to attend to what seems important’ (Rooney et al. 2021, p. 112). These noticings included reference by educators to more-than-human worlds; and probing seemingly mundane and routine practices that drew our attention and which may have otherwise been overlooked, avoided, or disregarded in pursuit of addressing the research questions in the original project. We investigate nuances that emerged from noticing differently to show how gender can be constructed not only in the everyday talk and actions of educators, but also in everyday intra-actions (Barad, 2007; Horton & Kraftl, 2018) and how these are part of the multi-dimensional concept of gendered slow violence that encompasses structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence.

Hidden in plain sight

To begin, we share several excerpts from the interviews that reflect the type of normalised fixed truths about gender that have been reported in ECE for many years. Re-examining the way that these and other educators talk gender into being as part of everyday mundane practices using the concept of slow violence draws attention to how daily gendering practices are part of structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative (slow) violence that remain taken for granted and hidden in plain sight. We then draw on data excerpts to show relationships between gender and place/materiality that reflect alternative possibilities. Unlike previous ECE research investigating gender and space where observations are made of children’s use of space and materiality in play contexts (Änggård, 2011; Chapman, 2016; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019), our research draws from educator comments. The data are one step removed from direct observation and we focus on a wider ecology than classrooms or outdoor play as part of an educational program.

Fixed truths

The interviews provided many examples of how gender is discursively constructed in the talk of educators as an integral part of hidden and mundane daily political practices. These include the idea related to structural power that ‘active and physical experiences using large spaces’ are stereotypical of boys’ play (Chapman, 2016, p. 1276). Comments from three educators reinforced the commonly held assumptions of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1987) (i.e. systemic and structural violence) that boys enjoy and need more space than girls, and are more physical:

I think boys are more hands-on, more outdoors than the girls. We have lots of boys. That’s why it’s good to plan ahead too, to keep them busy. (QLD, provincial city)

… sometimes the boys overrun the space. (NSW, provincial city)

…so we have a bit of a problem with the boys doing really physical stuff, like wanting to wrestle and tackle each other and things like that … (QLD very remote region)

Examples of normative gendering and systemic and symbolic violence include educators associating the colour pink with being a girl: ‘ … say we’re doing vehicles or construction … we might do car painting with pink … the girls like the pink so we can still do car painting but make it a girl version’ (QLD, provincial city). These comments reflect a normative and essentialist view of gender in that ‘girls like the pink’ refers to colour as a marker of gender identity. The educator assumes that the girls will be more interested if the cars can be painted pink. This statement of symbolic (Martínez-Bello et al., 2021) and systemic (Blaise, 2005; MacNaughton, 2000) violence reinforces a gender stereotype that cements certain ways of being and restricts possibilities for variation and fluidity. Further comments from this educator revealed how she attempts to have girls and boys play together and share interests:

… some Matchbox cars and so we’ve set up a little Matchbox track, so they play that … Then we’ve got the dress-ups, and even for the boys we’ve got capes and masks. The girls have their princess dresses, or there’s pink cars for the girls to play with … we’re exploring different ways to get them both involved in each other’s interest areas. (QLD, provincial city)

The connection made by the educator to have girls and boys involved in each other’s interests seems to be related to girls playing with pink cars on the matchbox track that the boys play with, and that girls and ‘even’ boys can dress up (perhaps while playing cars, or another game prompted by the ‘dress ups’). Like much research about gender and ECE, these comments endorse heteronormative performances of gender as sedimented social practices and part of everyday regulatory regimes (Butler, 1990) of structural violence: of who can play where, when, and with what resources; of systemic violence, where hopefully the girls will play on the track created for boys; and symbolic violence, where the endorsement of stereotypical gender roles (princess dresses, pink cars) is pervasive, limiting alternatives and restricting opportunities for experimentation with gender.

The following story about mud crabs is an example of the complexity involved when attempting to ‘open’ understandings of gender. The intersecting realities of place, culture, tradition, and community interact in ways that reinforce ideas about sex and reproduction that lead to normative gender stereotypes based on biological difference.

… we had a family … bring in the mud crabs… [Chelsea’s] dad said … one of the crabs he held up was a female crab, so it had to go back in the water. We’d already talked about how we can’t take female crabs or small fish because they need to be able to have babies … we then got out the fishing chart and we measured the crab that they’d brought in, to see that it was big enough for us to be able to keep … then on the chart we’d seen that it had a picture of a female crab and a male crab … getting them [the children] to read signs and symbols … one had a cross through the female, so I drew that on the board and asked them what did that mean? They said well you can’t take it. It’s a female … from that, we talked about the difference between a female and a male crab and why we can’t take the female crabs … We looked at the pictures and measuring the crab. One of the children was building their own crab pots out of blocks … proceeded to tell us that he caught two male crabs that he could eat, but he had to throw one of the girl crabs back. It wasn’t an intentional teaching moment that, [but] the family brought it in. (QLD provincial town)

Mud crabs are found in river estuaries and mangroves. Mangroves are more common in warmer parts of Australia and this example depicts children’s experiences related to ideas of sustainability and biological difference using local resources that would rarely be found in urban centres. In this situation, geographical location, with its unique ecosystem, is not a passive ‘backdrop’ but is playing a critical, active role in influencing pedagogy. The educator’s final comment indicates that the children’s learning was not due to her ‘intentional’ act but was activated by a family contribution.

The mud crab story presents a scenario where the discussion is about sustainability and reproductive difference. The concept of sustainability is directly related to the biological difference between male and female crabs in the context of the local ecology and geography. It is likely that children’s understanding of biological difference is embedded in the reproductive roles of crustaceans (rather than humans) and could result in dichotomous categorisation according to male and female physiology. The story appears to reinforce the heteronormative concept of a biological sexual binary. Traditionally, in relation to humans, such an unproblematic divide between female and male has led to understandings of gender that are based on ‘dichotomy and difference’ (Connell, 2002, p. 8). In humans, there is variation in the biological attributes that comprise sex, and how those attributes are expressed (e.g. intersex, gender non-binary). Gender is a social construct and distinct from sex; it exists on a continuum and can change over time (Australian Government Attorney’s General Department, 2013). As Connell (2002) argued ‘Our images of gender are often dichotomous, but the reality is not’ (p. 8).

The description of mud crab biological difference appears factual, unproblematic, and natural. It also moves between the crustacean reproductive arena and the human. The language used by the educator ‘humanises’ the reproductive experience of the crabs: her comment that females ‘need to be able to have babies’ and the ‘girl’ crab in the last comment blurs the boundaries between crabs and humans. Such language is known as anthropomorphism and refers to the attribution of human characteristics to animals or objects: it is also a common feature of ECE practice (Kallery & Psillos, 2004). Based on the educator’s comment and without further data from the children themselves, it is difficult to ascertain what children understand and how they might transfer information about mud crabs to understandings of gender in humans. However, it is reasonable to suggest that our reading of the educator comments provides evidence that the children can distinguish between male and female crabs and understand the reproductive roles associated with each category.

When referring to humans, such binary categorisation is highly problematic and many theorists have attempted to ‘undo’ the relationship between biological sexual characteristics as the basis for understanding gender (Butler, 1990). Understanding and expanding concepts related to gender fluidity requires letting go of a dichotomous male/female binary, but in the mud crab story this binary is reinforced structurally by the position of the teacher as arbiter of gendered knowledge; systemically through pedagogical practices that are gender prescriptive (Blaise, 2005; Watkinson & Epp, 1997); symbolically by reinforcing stereotypical constructions of gender as truths (Aprilianti et al., 2021), and normatively by acting on children’s subjectivities and limiting how they see themselves (Ball & Collet-Sabé, 2021). This example is evidence that learning is situated materially and stimulated in local settings and draws from the social and ecological systems of which the families, educators, and children are part. The story also raises an inherent tension of structural violence and the possibility that some ‘normalised’ experiences of ‘nature’ may limit opportunities for moving toward a more fluid, flexible, and diverse understanding of the relationship between human biological difference and gender. In presenting this story, we have noticed differently and identified practices that may have previously been ‘hidden in plain sight’ to complexify some of the ways children can learn about sexual difference and gender. Horton and Kraftl (2018) recognise this complexity and contended that much of the research relating to children’s interaction with natural environments ignores some troubling aspects of these encounters, arguing that there is room for researchers (and we add, practitioners) to

… acknowledge a wider range of social-materialities: … beyond the solely and normatively affirmative or redemptive encounters with nature anticipated by so many contemporary theorisations of nature and outdoor space … we thus recommend openness to the suggestion that experiences of natural spaces can, sometimes, be troubling … (p. 930)

This example highlights the complex pedagogical challenge for educators if they are to move children’s understanding of sexual diversity beyond ‘measuring’ crabs. Some learning opportunities within local ecological environments appear to ‘sediment’ social practice rather than challenge it, a feature reflected in other aspects of the interview data. Hence we emphasise not only the importance of place, but the pervasive, cumulative, and hidden nature of slow violence, itself constituted by a combination of structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence as part of everyday mundane political practice.

Drawing on these and other empirical data from many years of research about gender in ECE, we contend that young children are immersed not only in gendered violence in ECE settings (Danby & Baker, 1998; Davies, 2021; Prioletta, 2022), but because it works pervasively on many levels (families, schools, ECE settings, the state) over many years (Deloitte Access Economics DAE, 2022) and is influenced by circulating socio-political discourses (Warin & Adriany, 2017); is often hidden in plain sight; and perpetuates stereotypical understandings of gender and binary ways of being girls and boys (and women and men), what we are talking about can be called slow violence.

Possibilities

Previous studies have shown that particular spaces are associated with gendered violence, including learning centres such as block and home corners (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989; MacNaughton, 2000; Prioletta, 2022); and that play spaces dictate what can happen in those spaces (Børve & Børve, 2017). The interview data showed that ‘place’ influenced how gender was performed and that local, everyday experiences offered possibilities for critical dialogue and reflection that can contribute to enhanced understandings of gender fluidity. A combination of geography, family activities, and more than human materialities played an active role in providing opportunities for children to engage with objects and tools that opened different ways of being, and of doing gender. As Barad (2007) indicated, ‘bodies do not simply take their place in the world … rather “environments” and “bodies” are intra-actively constituted’ (p. 170). Two examples related to cars and hunting follow.

In two of the very remote locations, families engaged in very different activities from those in urban settings. The educators acknowledged this difference and articulated how, at times, the intersections between place, materiality, culture, and gender provided different ways of being (in this case) a girl: ‘So no. We’re not really gender specific. Because women drive haul trucks … We’re probably quite fortunate in our community … being a mining community, there are lots of women doing traditionally male-based roles’ (QLD, very remote mining town). The example presented earlier, where educators explained that painting cars pink might generate the girls’ interest in cars and vehicles, contrasts with girls’ experiences in this very remote centre situated far from urban life. Another educator from the same service described a situation in which girls’ interest in cars arises from their lived experience: ‘They do, they love it, and they go four-wheel driving. So we get the cars out and we make four-wheel drive tracks and stuff like that, and the girls love it’ (QLD, very remote mining town). At this centre, the girls’ experience of play and gender is ‘imbued with cultural ideas’ (Änggård, 2011) of what bodies can, and do, in a remote mining community. Thus, some gender boundaries are blurred by the economic and social realities of this mining town, destabilizing established norms and unsettling stereotypical ways of doing and being, and providing alternatives for girls.

Educators from two very remote services talked about how hunting was a feature of everyday life:

Yeah, and we have quite a hunting community here too, so because of that a lot of the girls go out hunting; and girls are into dogs and so it’s basically whatever they’re interested in. There’s no communication via the staff or parents [saying] you can’t do that because you’re a boy, or you can’t do that because little girls don’t do that. (QLD, very remote mining town)

The educator indicated that it is the girls’ interest in hunting that leads to their participation and involvement. At another centre, an educator explained what is involved in hunting:

Educator: A lot of our families are hunting families or that’s where their income comes from … kangaroos, pigs, camels, goats, that sort of thing. So there’s a lot of talk and interest on animals, on shooting, hunting, tying up, things like that … (QLD, very remote town)

This response creates a picture of hunting in the wide-open spaces that characterise much of remote western Queensland. Hunting is known to be fraught with risk and danger along with the need for much physical exertion. As the educator elaborates, hunting involves ‘shooting’ and ‘tying things up’. Coupled with the comment from another centre, the girls’ interest and experience with this type of activity subverts some established gender norms and disrupts the way things were or had been in relation to girls and physical activity; and in the process demonstrates everyday actions and further possibilities. While limited information was revealed in the interviews, these performative place-based acts contest established gendered and normative practices. The image of girls hunting also contrasts with much gender research in ECE related to boys’ physicality and use of space (Chapman, 2016; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019). Yet these hunting and driving activities are part of the children’s life experiences and are reflected in everyday play while attending ECE settings.

These examples show children ‘located in dynamic entanglement with a variety of human and non-human “others” with which they play and tussle in producing gendered early childhoods’ (Lyttleton-Smith, 2019, p. 668). At times this entanglement challenged rigid and heteronormative gender stereotypes where girls were keenly interested in hunting and four-wheel driving, reflecting expanded opportunities and possibilities; while at others, entanglement limited the possibilities for alternatives and change. This dynamic entanglement also engages with the cultural and geographical diversity that characterises Australian society. Conceptualising slow violence as a combination of structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence provides a unique insight into why gendering in ECE is so entrenched and resistant to change.

What’s next?

Studies of gendered violence in ECE have been published since the early 1980s (Walkerdine, 1981) yet the impact of gendered violence, heteronormativity, and gender norms in society remain ongoing issues (Deloitte Access Economics (DAE), 2022; European Institute for Gender Equality, 2021; World Economic Forum, 2022). The challenge is how to move beyond stereotypical and damaging renditions of masculinity and femininity to achieve more balance in everyday life, not just for young children, but for society. We limit the conversation to ECE and consider how we can live as well as possible with gendered slow violence; and how can we think, act, and do beyond gendered slow violence to create lasting alternatives. Objects and experiences that resonate with gendered slow violence exist at structural levels of society as well as in micro moments that are fleeting but often repeated perpetually; and everything in between. In attempting to think, do, and act further, we consider three possibilities: an epistemological shift; making justice and gender an integral part of ECE curriculum; and suggest modifications to the gender flexible pedagogy of Warin and Adriany (2017).

First, an epistemological shift would review what counts as gendered slow violence in ECE, including how it is ‘narrated and theorised’, who narrates, which accounts are silenced, who speaks on behalf of whom, and ‘where we see from’ (Pain & Cahill, 2022, p. 363, emphasis in original). Much of the empirical research about gender has adopted feminist, feminist poststructuralist, and more recently feminist new materialist, and feminist post human approaches, thereby committing to situated knowledges that recognise the complexities of mundane political practices and their inter-relationships with material structures in society. But much of this literature originates from Anglo, heterosexual, and more advantaged socio-economic status positions, revealing who is seeing and who is unseen; and is written about young children. Shifting where we see from needs not only to include racial and ethnic diversity, but as Garlen (2019) argues, the concept of childhood should be prefaced on justice, not on innocence. She shows how in the USA, the doctrine of innocence implies that protection for children is necessary due to ongoing threats to childhood innocence related to sex and gender, and is complicit in maintaining white supremacy through perpetuating a discourse of childhood innocence. This myth of innocence is socially constructed within historical, racial, and cultural discourses that embody specific social practices (Garlen, 2019).

An epistemology that shifts the gaze would challenge the invisibility of gendered slow violence, of who is seeing and who is unseen, and of the prevailing discourse of childhood innocence. It would start to remedy Nixon’s (2011) ‘neglect of Black, antiracist, decolonial and feminist theoretical work in his conceptualisation of slow violence’ (Pain & Cahill, 2022, p. 362) by drawing on critical feminist and anti-racist perspectives of slow violence that address gendered violence and ‘violent racializing processes’ (p. 363). Such an approach could ‘uplift and make visible forms of resistance as lived, contested and disruptive [and would] go beyond fetishising and objectifying victimisation’ (Pain & Cahill, 2022, p. 363). Yet such a shift is notoriously difficult because those impacted by gendered slow violence in ECE settings are young children in the years prior to formal schooling, years that are closely associated with the firmly entrenched discourse of innocence. Decentring whiteness (Pain & Cahill, 2022) and replacing innocence with justice (Garlen, 2019) are two places to start.

Second, given the data about gender in Australia and globally, and the pervasive effects over the life span (Deloitte Access Economics DAE, 2022), there is room for gender and the myth of innocence (Garlen, 2019) to be included and prioritised in ECE curricula. Recent revisions to curricula documents such as the (Canadian) British Columbia Early Learning Framework (ELF) (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2019) have moved toward decentring whiteness and invoking discourses of justice more strongly than previous versions of this document. The ELF states the intention explicitly:

Recognizing and acknowledging how Euro-western practices are embedded in mainstream educational pedagogy, this framework’s intention is to contribute to reconciliation through implicitly and explicitly honouring Indigenous authorities in education … (It) Resists language, concepts, and pedagogies that perpetuate legacies of colonization and marginalization of Indigenous people … Strives to contribute to lasting reconciliation with Indigenous people … (p. 4)

It includes First Peoples Principles of Learning and entails rethinking of learning and practice. Rethinking of learning and practice involves four Living Inquiries which are supported by Pathways (p. 5). For example, the Well-Being and Belonging Living Inquiry includes pathways of Indigenous voices and perspectives, and Family composition and gender orientation, where in the latter, ‘Educators resist perpetuating gender stereotypes; children can play with or transgress gender norms’ (p. 68). Critically reflective questions are provided for each of the Pathways. One question from the Indigenous voices and perspectives Pathway is: ‘How might my biases and perceptions impact my work?’ (p. 70); and examples from the Family composition and gender orientation Pathway are: ‘Do children have opportunities to experiment with transgressing gender stereotypes? What are my assumptions about transgender children? Transgender adults?’ (p. 72, emphasis in original). Through the Pathway of Social responsibility and justice, the Living Inquiry of Identities, Social responsibility, and Diversity addresses notions of childhood innocence by asking critically reflective questions such as: ‘In what ways do children have opportunities to discuss real-life issues such as segregation, diversity, poverty, race, war, gender, discrimination, and inequity? How can children begin to recognize and respond to discrimination and inequity?’ (p. 88). These examples reflect a strong direction toward justice and demonstrate how the ELF is addressing the constructs of childhood innocence and gendering. Collaborative ongoing professional development through communities of practice is an integral part of the ELF.

Third, a gender flexible pedagogy offers ways to address gendered slow violence in ECE but would need to replace the construct of innocence enveloped in the paradigm of child development with justice. Of the three components of a gender flexible pedagogy suggested by Warin and Adriany (2017), explicit teaching of gender within curricula is the most likely to facilitate change if the pedagogies are based on justice and not innocence; and are targeted and evidence based, and remain focused on justice. The second component, modelling alternative forms of femininities and masculinities by educators, would need to be accompanied by active teaching about what was being modelled and the reasons for it; again within a justice-oriented curriculum framework. The third component, the value of a mixed gender workforce is unknown empirically in ECE but there have been calls for more gender balance for many years. This motivation rests on the premise that children’s understandings of gender can be expanded to become more fluid. But the mere presence of men is not enough (Sumsion, 2005): what they do as educators and how they enact gender is critical if gender stereotypes and gendered slow violence are to be disrupted. We recommend that educators become open to noticing possibilities that exist in everyday practices. The examples about girls’ interests in dogs, four-wheel driving, and hunting indicate possibilities for explicit teaching. There are likely to be possibilities within urban and less remote settings to capitalise on children’s non-stereotypical interests and play, and urge educators to be aware and support these understandings with explicit teaching in the context of a gender flexible pedagogy that is situated in a construct of justice rather than innocence.

Far from a conclusion

We have attempted to think with the concept of slow violence and made a case that in ECE settings, slow violence is characterised by mundane but continual acts of structural, systemic, symbolic, and normative violence that are cumulative and hidden in plain sight; and produce lasting effects on children’s subjectivities. Objects and experiences that resonate with slow violence and gender are both large and small: they exist at structural levels of society and in micro moments that are fleeting but often repeated perpetually. Drawing on Garlen (2019), we have suggested that slow violence, gendering, and childhood innocence are entangled intergenerationally, and are racialised, classed, and reflect the marks of history and geographical differences. Attending to social-material complexities and marginalisations that announce themselves in interview data but remain hidden in plain sight when using more conventional analytical tools require ethically and politically informed responses (Horton & Kraftl, 2018). An epistemological shift from innocence to justice and decentring whiteness in ECE curricula and pedagogy can not only produce generative debates that can move the sector, but also offer positive actions for current and future entanglements of slow violence, innocence, and gendering. These alternatives facilitate seeing beyond the status quo and point to a better and more equitable world, one that should not be an ‘impossible fiction’ (Walkerdine, 1990).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Australian Research Council [Discovery Grant DP130103777].

Notes on contributors

Susan Grieshaber

Susan Grieshaber is Professor, Early Childhood Education in the School of Education at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests are informed by a range of critical, feminist, and feminist poststructural theories that address social justice and equity, and include early childhood curriculum, policy, pedagogies and families; women in higher education; and qualitative and post-qualitative research approaches.

Susan Krieg

Susan Krieg is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Flinders University. Prior to her Flinders appointment as Early Childhood Program Coordinator (2007–2017), Susan worked at Edith Cowan University (2000–2006) leading the development of a Bachelor of Education specifically designed to develop continuity between the early and primary years. Susan’s experience includes teaching and leadership at local, state and national levels in her work as a District Coordinator, School Principal, Curriculum Manager and President of the Junior Primary Principals’ Association of South Australia. Throughout a long career, her research, educational leadership and teaching in both local and university contexts has focused on social justice. Susan’s commitment to curriculum innovation involves repositioning learners in the educational process with the ultimate intent of achieving more equitable outcomes in early childhood education.