European Gender Lessons

Abstract

The article investigates the tensions between and within models of gender equality and gender complementarity by studying children who are in the midst of learning to apply these gender models in practice. Children (aged 11–15 years) were observed and interviewed while they participated in scout camps in Denmark, Portugal, Slovakia and Russia. Through structural and symbolic gender splits in spaces, positions, activities and competences, children create, reproduce and sometimes challenge the specific gender hierarchies of their culture: they learn the gender lessons of ‘heroes and mothers’, ‘soldiers and waitresses’, ‘father and child’ and ‘adult and boy’. The article is based on the project ‘One of the Boys? Doing Gender in European Scouting’.

Keywords

boys cross-cultural studies Denmark equality gender girls Portugal Russia Scout Movement Slovakia

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