Femmephobia in kindergarten education: Play environments as key sites for the early devaluation of femininity and care

Abstract

In this article, the authors argue for a rethinking of kindergarten education from a critical feminist perspective. They illustrate how the devaluation and denigration of femininity and care – otherwise known as femmephobia – that permeates patriarchal societies is present in the seemingly innocent spaces of play in kindergarten. Tracing femmephobia in the spatial-material arrangements of play, teacher–student interactions during play, and children's play practices in two Canadian classrooms, the authors show how care-related activities and learning are deeply marginalized in kindergarten education. Given these findings, the authors propose a femininity-affirmative pedagogy in early learning. Specifically, they discuss the importance of intentional practice around an ethics of care. The authors argue that a refocus on an ethics of care in early childhood education is urgently needed in collective work towards social change.

Keywords

early childhood education ethics of care femmephobia play-based learning

Introduction

The systemic denigration of femininity, otherwise known as femmephobia (Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin, 2019, 2020), permeates many facets of patriarchal societies. Femmephobia functions to allocate femininity, and all that is associated with it, a subordinate status (Hoskin, 2019, 2020). This article shows how such devaluation of femininity, and specifically of care-related activities, is present in kindergarten education. Analysis of data collected in two kindergarten classrooms in Ontario, Canada, illuminates how femmephobia permeates play environments. Specifically, we demonstrate how the devaluation of care in kindergarten education manifested itself through the unequal allocation of space and materials, and of class time, to care-related activities in children's play. Femmephobia was also present in student–teacher interactions and students’ practices in play. Given these findings, we conclude with a discussion on the possibilities of a femininity-affirmative pedagogy (Davies and Hoskin, 2021) for redressing the devaluation of femininity, and specifically of care activities, in early learning.

Literature review

In western heteropatriarchal societies, femininity and masculinity are constructed as naturally distinct and oppositional, and in hierarchal terms. Connell (1995) shows how, within such dualistic heteronormative understandings of gender, femininity is positioned as passive and weak, and thus inferior to hegemonic masculinity (see also Barton and Huebner, 2022; Davies, 2021a; Hoskin, 2020). Connell (1995) refers to this form of femininity as ‘emphasized femininity’ – a way of being that involves supporting and serving the needs of men. As care is considered a natural trait of femininity within such dualistic constructs (Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Noddings, 1984; Ruchti, 2012), care-related activities such as caregiving, education, domestic tasks and other reproductive responsibilities are also trivialized and undervalued (Davies, 2021; Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Whiley et al., 2021, 2022). This devaluation of femininity and care occurs in a variety of ways. Below, we outline how femmephobia pervades the cultural, social, economic and spatial fabric of patriarchal societies, and how it is present in kindergarten contexts.

The devaluation of care

Relational characteristics and skills such as care, nurturance, empathy and compassion have long been attributed to and understood as natural traits of femininity (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984; Osgood, 2010). These ‘feminine’ attributes are often perceived as inherent to cisgender women and female bodies (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Davies and Neustifter, 2022). Whiley et al. (2022) show that activities and labour that depend on such relational characteristics and skills are still highly stigmatized and devalued in patriarchal societies. Not coincidentally, the authors note that this work continues to be largely undertaken by women, in both the private and public spheres. Importantly, Dwyer (2013) shows that cultural beliefs about who is expected to carry out certain activities affect the perceived value of the skills required to do this work. Activities and labour predominantly undertaken by women are devalued because of the lower status attributed to women and femininity.

Gutiérrez-Rodríguez (2010, 2014) argues that the cultural and social devaluation of care maintains perceptions of care work as unproductive and as unskilled labour. Importantly, the cultural belief that caregiving is a ‘natural’ part of being a woman, and thus not a skill that one must develop and acquire, also reinforces its economic devaluation (Duffy, 2005; England et al., 2002; Ruchti, 2012). In the paid labour force, care work is disproportionally allocated lower wages. Dill et al. (2016) note that those employed in care-related occupations earn less than workers of similar skill and education who are employed in non-care-related occupations. The authors also highlight that care occupations pay less than other feminized work that does not involve care. Importantly, women of colour are dually exploited as they are stereotyped as naturally better caregivers than white women, but less professional (Branch, 2011; Ruchti, 2012), resulting in women of colour facing greater pay inequities than white women (Powell et al., 2021). In the private sphere, care activities, along with other reproductive work, are disregarded altogether in economics (Whiley et al., 2021, 2022). Ackerman (2006) reminds us that economics does not attribute any monetary value to feminized reproductive labour in the private sphere, which continues to be disproportionally undertaken by women (see also Longino, 1993).

The devaluation of care activities is also evident in their invisibility within, and separations from, public landscapes such as cities. Kern (2020: 40) explains that ‘[c]are work is still very much an afterthought in cities’. She shows how urban architecture does not effectively support reproductive responsibilities like childcare and health care. For instance, mobility barriers such as limited stroller access and inaccessible public transportation continue to plague cities. Kern (2020) argues that the architectural design of spaces may thus function to relegate care work and, in turn, women to the private sphere, where unacknowledged and unpaid care activities and labour are to be carried out. Middleton (2019) also contends that the physical layouts of environments function to regulate and surveil femininity. In her work on museum exhibition designs, she shows how feminized histories and traits such as comfort, approachability, cuteness and beauty, as well as items such as Barbies, are devalued. Middleton (2019) explains that masculinized architectural design is seen as more professional and underscores how androcentrism infiltrates designs that strive to be gender-neutral.

Kindergarten education and gender hierarchies

Kindergarten environments are not separate from the society and culture of which they are a part, but are important sites of normalization, where binary constructs of gender and the devaluation of femininity are often legitimized and reproduced (Davies, 2021; Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022). The field of early childhood education itself, for instance, continues predominantly to comprise women educators (McGrath and Van Bergen, 2017; Puhani, 2017). Men are more likely to be found in a powerful leadership position, such as that of school principal (Robinson et al., 2017). Educators of early childhood – where care duties are particularly intensified – however, are grossly undercompensated, a reality that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 global health pandemic (Richardson et al., 2021). Moreover, as the under-representation of men in early education has been argued to contribute to boys’ underachievement and feminization (Burman, 2005; Carrington and McPhee, 2008), when men do enter the field, they are expected to model and enact forms of hegemonic heteromasculinity for young boys (Brownhill, 2014; Davies, 2021; Davies and Hoskin, 2021). Thus, femmephobia is enacted through the undercompensation of early childhood educators, as well as through the regulation of masculine subjectivities, where queer men or men whose gendered subjectivities subvert heteronormative expectations are considered a threat to young boys (Davies, 2021; Davies and Hoskin, 2021).

Feminist researchers have also illuminated how the physical spaces of kindergartens, such as classroom play environments, are rife with problematic gendered messages and expectations that maintain the gendered social order (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989; Mac Naughton, 2000; Martin, 2011). Play environments tend to reflect heteropatriarchal values that legitimize gender as binary and facilitate gender hierarchies in children's play (Børve and Børve, 2017; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019; Prioletta, 2022). Prioletta (2018) shows, for instance, that play around care themes, such as family-related play and doll play, was made to be contained within specific areas of the classroom – namely, in the dramatic play centre where girls tended to play. Similarly, Lyttleton-Smith (2019) illustrates how the play environment in her study reflected western society's public–private divide. She shows that the ‘small world’ play area, where blocks, vehicles and mathematics materials were made available, was an expansive and visible space dominated by boys. The ‘home corner’ play area, where kitchen sets, dolls and dress-up outfits were made available, was dominated by girls, and less visible and accessible within the learning environment.

Such architectural design of classrooms functions to regulate gender to specific spatialities that reinforce its dualistic conceptualization and the marginalization of care activities. Børve and Børve (2017) argue that play environments heavily influence what types of activities should take place in which spaces, how the materials should be used, and who can occupy these spaces based on gender. As Osgood and Robinson (2019) explain, the material environment of early learning settings is also important in regulating children's gendered subjectivities. Gender ‘happens’ and materializes in early learning settings through the material-discursive interactions of children with their learning environments and the items in such environments, which can create opportunities for both the reification and subversion of gendered norms (Black Delfin, 2021).

Through their encounters with kindergarten spaces, children also play an active role in maintaining, or not maintaining, hierarchal gender binaries. Osgood and Robinson (2017: 40–41) remind us that ‘[c]hildren actively negotiate, resist, constitute, and perpetuate the cultural narratives of what is considered “appropriate” and “correct” gender performances of being male or female’. Play tends to be an important site in which children reproduce normative gendered constructs (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989; Martin, 2011; Mayeza, 2018; Thorne, 1993). Boys, for instance, typically dominate blocks centres, which are often set up to reflect the public sphere, while girls tend to dominate socio-dramatic play centres, which are often set up as kitchen or home corners, writing centres or art centres (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989; Prioletta, 2018; Thorne, 1993). While some children may attempt to cross and subvert gender boundaries within these spaces, Mayeza (2018) shows how gender-policing permeates children's play cultures, specifically underscoring how young boys are often heavily sanctioned for their interest in ‘feminine’ activities, such as doll play.

Adults also play a role in reinforcing, or not reinforcing, hierarchal gendered binaries in children's play. Parents and educators, for instance, tend to encourage gender-stereotypical toy selection and are more likely to promote activities that revolve around care and other reproductive skills among girls (Lindsey and Mize, 2001; Mweru, 2012; Thorne, 1993). Prioletta (2018) shows how when playing in a kitchen centre, girls were more likely to be encouraged by their educators to carry out caregiving roles, such as preparing meals in the kitchen area for family members. When boys occupied this centre, the space was transformed to reflect settings in the public sphere, such as a restaurant, and the boys were encouraged to become chefs – a prestigious and paid occupation. While such gendered interactions are prevalent, adults are increasingly encouraging gender-bending with children in their care. However, adults are more likely to encourage girls to engage in activities typically perceived as for boys than the other way around (Kane, 2006; Kollmayer et al., 2018; Wood et al., 2002). Femmephobia is thus deeply present in early childhood.

Theoretical framework

Following Davies and Hoskin (2021, 2022) and Davies and Neustifter (2022), this article employs both feminist care ethics (Langford et al., 2017; Noddings, 1984) and femme theory (Hoskin, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021) as theoretical frameworks. Care ethics and femme theory share a focus on relationality, vulnerability, interdependency and caring dynamics (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Davies and Neustifter, 2022; Hoskin, 2021; Langford et al., 2017). Care ethics has historically been associated with femininity and feminine feelings and emotions (e.g. Noddings, 1984). Care ethics emerged from a specifically feminine relational ethics that theorized caring as an explicitly feminine way of relating, in opposition to masculinist notions of autonomy commonly associated with men's psychosocial development (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Norlock (2019) notes, however, feminist criticisms of care ethics that challenge the gendering of care ethics through associations between care and femininity. Other feminists, such as Bartky (1990), argue that there are ethical questions in inherently connecting women to care duties, and that the duties associated with care and caring require a large amount of emotional labour that can harm women's ability to remain in touch with their authentic feelings (MacKay, 2019).

These debates speak to the larger devaluation of feminine care duties and the question of whether it should be a reconsideration and revaluation of these duties that is important, or the distinct separation of women from care duties and caring altogether (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Davies and Neustifter, 2022; MacKay, 2019; Norlock, 2019). Care ethics thus analyses how care is associated with specific bodies (i.e. cisgender women) through gender-essentialist discourses (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Davies and Neustifter, 2022), and how analyses of care can centralize caring relations amongst all social actors in society (Langford et al., 2017). Importantly, feminist care ethics revalues and prioritizes caring relations that are often unacknowledged in society – such as maternal care – as well as the voices of those who perform care duties, whether occupationally or within familial dynamics (Richardson et al., 2021).

This article also employs femme theory – a line of thinking emerging from critical femininities scholarship – to prioritize the revaluation and centralization of femininity (Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin, 2021; Hoskin and Blair, 2022). Femme theory emerged from lesbian femme communities in the 1940–1950s and focuses on femme as an identity marker representing queer femininities, as well as the political recuperation and signification of queer femininities (Brightwell and Taylor, 2021; Hoskin, 2021). Femme theory considers how devalued feminized affective states, such as vulnerability, can provide a lens for analysing how feminized bodies move through the world and the societal regulation of femininity (Dahl, 2017). Femmephobia impacts individuals by surveilling and moderating femininity into one dominant ideology – white patriarchal femininity – and by denigrating individuals who perform femininity outside of white, cisgender, heterosexual womanhood (Hoskin, 2017). Therefore, to be ‘feminized’ is societally considered negatively, and feminine subjectivities are also subsequently devalued (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022; Hoskin, 2020). Femme theory intervenes to focus on femininity as an area of strength and empowerment, and to challenge notions that feminization denotes pathology or devaluation.

Davies (2021) and Davies and Hoskin (2021, 2022) have placed feminist care ethics and femme theory in conversation in the context of early childhood education, specifically in relation to discourses of professionalization. As also discussed by Manning-Morton (2006), professionalization might entail the adaptation of ‘rational’ and educative processes which devalue caring relations that are deemed non-educative. Particularly, women educators’ labour is often disregarded because it is considered as for the ‘love’ of children, and their physical and emotional labour is invisibilized and devalued as a feminine private sphere and ‘natural’ care labour (Manning-Morton, 2006). Davies and Hoskin (2021: 108) thus call for ‘revisioning a feminine-positive space as a means of dislodging the naturalized femmephobia (i.e., the societal devaluation and regulation of femininity) embedded within current ECEC [early childhood education and care] efforts to “masculinize” or otherwise offset “feminization”’. As noted by Davies and Hoskin (2022) and Middleton (2019), femme theory does not seek to completely erase femininity through notions of neutrality, thereby recentralizing a flat ontologization of gender. Although care ethics has been critiqued for reinforcing ideas of female self-sacrifice and selflessness, and for essentializing femininity with women and denoting care as within the private realm (Powell et al., 2021), we refrain from distancing care from femininity and ask instead: How can femininity be considered as wavering between the realms of the private and the public, as crucial to caring and interdependence, without necessarily being only for cisgender heterosexual women? How might both femininity and care be considered desirable for all people, instead of subjugated ways of being that are only tied to specific bodies? We conceptualize the revaluation of femininity and care as a central issue for understanding the regulation of children's play and gendered regulation amongst children widely.

The study

Methodology and methods

This article draws on Prioletta's (2020) doctoral study. She applied the work of Smith (1987) and implemented a year-long institutional ethnography in two kindergarten classrooms in Ontario to examine the hidden gendered effects of a provincially mandated full-day play-based learning program for kindergarten. Both classrooms were located in the same city but belonged to different schools and districts. The first school was in a predominantly white upper-class area of the city. The classroom consisted of 22 students, where 11 students identified as girls and 11 as boys. During her fieldwork, most of the students were five years old, although the students’ ages ranged from four to six. The second school was located in a more diverse area of the city in terms of culture, race, language and socio-economic status. The classroom had 29 students. Girls outnumbered boys in this classroom, with 15 students identifying as girls and 14 as boys. Most of the students in this classroom were four and five years old during her fieldwork, although the students’ ages ranged from three to six. Most of the educators and pre-service educators identified as women, with one pre-service educator identifying as a man.

As part of an ethnographic study, Prioletta (2020) implemented several qualitative methods to collect data. These included participant observation, interviews and examining education documents. This article focuses on the data collected through participant observation. Prioletta (2020) visited the classrooms for a total of 85 days and recorded her observations through thick verbatim description in field notes and through video and audio recordings. Her field notes included drawings of the classroom layouts and of the spatial-material arrangements of the play environments. Prior to data collection, she obtained ethics approval from her university and from both schools. Informed consent was also obtained from the educators and the students’ parents, and assent was obtained from the students prior to data recording.

Positionality

Our positionalities profoundly influence our research work. Prioletta is a first-generation, white, heterosexual ciswoman who was born into an Italian immigrant family in Montreal, Canada. She grew up in an Italian Canadian community that was deeply shaped by patriarchal ideologies. She adopts a critical feminist lens in her research to make visible the ways in which patriarchal values permeate every facet of our social-material lives, including the seemingly innocent spaces of kindergarten education – a context in which she and her girl peers faced ongoing inequalities and violence. Davies is a third-generation, white, queer, nonbinary (they/them), femme, neurodiverse individual from a British and Scandinavian background, who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada. They use queer, post-structural, femme and critical disability studies frameworks to analyse systems of inclusion and exclusion, particularly within early childhood and kindergarten to Grade 12 schooling settings, and are tacitly interested in addressing how sociocultural and discursive norms shape the lives of children, young people and educators. As someone who experienced intense gender-policing as a young boy towards their male femininity, femme theory and critical femininities theories have provided an avenue to understand and analyse their experiences of immense bullying as a child.

Data analysis

The data analysis involved explicating how the participants’ daily experiences were coordinated by institutional forces informed by unequal gendered power relations (Deveau, 2009; Smith, 1987). This process entailed tracing the daily social and material organization, the practices and the interactions in both kindergartens. Through this analysis, Prioletta (2020) found that play was a key site for the production of gendered hierarchies that disproportionally benefited hypermasculine boys. Specifically, her analysis shows how traditionally feminine activities, such as care activities, were largely marginalized in kindergarten education. Prioletta's (2020) analysis was informed by her positionality and her feminist standpoint. England (1994) notes that the researcher cannot wholly represent the experiences of participants. The hierarchal relationship between researcher and participant influences the fieldwork experience and how it is represented. The aim, then, according to England (1994: 87), is to illuminate ‘the “betweenness” of their world and mine’. In the next section, we outline how femmephobia was enacted through the spatial-material arrangements of the play environments, the teachers’ play expectations and the students’ play interactions.

Results

The marginalization of care-related play activities in kindergarten education

Privileging block and building activities in play

The findings from this study show that the children's development of a care ethics was largely peripheralized in kindergarten education. This was made evident in the physical layout of the play environments, where less space and fewer materials were allocated to care activities. Less time was also allocated to care activities. Prioletta's (2020) analysis reveals that block and building activities – typically highly masculinized spaces – were prioritized during play.

Spatial-material distributions

In both classrooms, several activity centres were made available for play. These included centres dedicated to blocks and building play, socio-dramatic play, arts and crafts, writing and reading. Importantly, however, many centres were often dedicated to block and building activities, while only one centre was dedicated to any of the other activities. Block and building centres were also allocated much of the space at the centre of the play environments. On a typical day, a wide variety of materials were made available for block and building activities, including a centre for the small blocks, the large blocks, K’nex sets, the plastic blocks, the rainbow blocks, the Lego, geometric sets and more. These centres promoted children's engagement in activities related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The activity centres that promoted care-related activities, such as doll play, kitchen play and other ‘feminine’ activities, such as arts and crafts, reading and writing, were allocated less space within the play environment and dispersed along its edges. These centres were also not as well equipped. The socio-dramatic play centre, for instance, was often equipped with few dolls, if any; in one classroom, dolls were not always available. The limited space and materials available for the children to engage in care-related activities suggests that, unlike skills and knowledge related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, care-related skills and knowledge were not considered important enough to meaningfully address in kindergarten education.

Time allocations

In addition to more space and materials, block and building activities were allocated more time in the daily schedule. In one classroom, for instance, several mornings a week were dedicated to block and building play only. During these periods, the children could only use blocks in their play. In both classrooms, the kitchen centre, as well as the art, writing and reading centres, were not always open for play on a given day. The socio-dramatic play centre was at times unavailable for play because it was being used as a space to which children were sent for a time out. It was also at times used as a space for children to complete unfinished work. Similarly, the writing and reading centres were used as spaces to which children were sent to reflect on and write about their misbehaviour or to calm down. When the play periods were short, both the socio-dramatic play centre and the art centre remained unavailable as they were spaces that required more time to clean up. Thus, on many days, children did not spend time engaged in care-centred activities.

The limited amount of space, materials and time allocated to care activities implicitly communicated to students that activities historically associated with femininity and women's work were not a valuable component of kindergarten education, thus implicitly maintaining hierarchal gender binaries. Moreover, such spatial, material and temporal allocations did little to encourage all children to engage in care activities, thus suggesting that not everyone was expected to learn about and carry out reproductive responsibilities. Yet students of all genders were encouraged to engage in block and building activities and to develop ‘masculine’ skills and knowledges. This suggests that femininity and women's work continue to be seen as less valuable and exclusively associated with women and female bodies, while masculinity and men's work are highly valued and expected to be taken up by all.

Privileging phallocentric design in children's building work

Block and building play does not preclude students from engaging in care-centred activities. For instance, many children in these classrooms – namely girls – dealt with the lack of resources for care-related play by using the blocks and building materials to build care settings, such as houses, hospitals and schools, for their care-related play themes. However, the analysis of the student–teacher interactions during such play revealed that not any form of block play was considered acceptable in the kindergartens. Instead, the building of tall, phallocentric towers was highly valued and rewarded in these classrooms.

The block and building play around care themes often required flatter structures, with open tops to facilitate easy access to the different rooms within the structure. These rooms, and access to them, were important in care-themed storylines. However, as Prioletta (2020) demonstrates in the account below, when attempting to build flatter structures, the children were often redirected by the educators towards building tall towers:

The teacher approaches the table where Veronica, Amy, Asha and Zoe are building. The table is covered in flat structures [houses] that the girls built around their storyline related to being neighbours and sharing resources. The teacher says, ‘There's very little on this table that's interesting’. She tells the girls to look around the floor [where the boys are building tall towers] to see how well others are building. The teacher asks Veronica to work somewhere else. Veronica goes to the floor area to where Jack has been building a tall tower. The teacher leaves the table. Amy and Zoe remain at the table and rebuild their structures. Amy says to Zoe, ‘It has to be big so the teacher will like it’.

The children's ability to build tall towers was considered an important skill because it reassured the educators that the children were mastering the developmental milestones and mathematical and scientific knowledge deemed important in kindergarten education. As one educator explained, the children's ability to build tall towers showed her that her students were mastering body awareness, self-regulation, negotiating with peers, and concepts such as balance and stability – all important components of the kindergarten program.

The building of tall towers, however, tended to encourage play themes set in the public sphere and play that revolved around ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’, which was common among the boys. Such building expectations thus functioned to masculinize the kindergarten learning environment and further marginalize traditionally feminine-centred activities. While the building of tall towers can be beneficial for many aspects of children's learning and development, the privileging of such activities at the exclusion of others grossly limits children's learning experiences. Moreover, it reinforces the expectation that care-related activities remain a private concern and thus exclusively the responsibility of women, rather than a responsibility for which all members of society must be held accountable, and thus a vital component of education.

Girls rejecting care-related play themes

In this section, we outline the effects that such masculine-centred play expectations had on the children's play practices. In her fieldwork, Prioletta (2020) found that boys rarely attempted to engage in care-related activities, while girls engaged in care-related activities and in non-care-related activities. However, when engaging in non-care-related activities with boys, girls were required to navigate the duality of following the cultural scripts of normative femininity while also disavowing them to access powerful spaces and roles with boys.

Girls at times accessed play with boys by volunteering to undertake a subordinate role in the boys’ play. This involved girls taking on caregiving roles, such as the role of a mother or older sister, or roles that required being cared for, such as a baby or pet, typically if other girls were also involved in the play. Taking on these roles sometimes functioned to secure girls a place in play with boys in blocks spaces. However, these roles maintained girls in subordinate positions with little decision-making power. Thus, girls sometimes attempted to also gain access to the powerful roles in their play with boys. However, this required that girls rejected caregiving or care-receiving roles. In the account below, Prioletta (2020) illustrates how Priya attempted to equally access the big blocks centre, including the powerful role of a pilot, by rejecting her role as a mother:

A group of boys are in the big blocks centre building an aircraft. A group of girls are in the kitchen centre beside the big blocks centre. The girls have built beds using chairs. … Melanie says to Asha, ‘The moms look after the babies’. Asha gives her doll to Priya. Priya and Melanie are the mothers. John asks the girls if they want to get on their airplane. … The girls line up to check in and ask John if there are beds on the plane. John says that there are beds. Anthony is the pilot. … Priya asks Anthony if she can sit beside him in the cockpit. Anthony says that she can move the beds closer instead. Priya rejects his suggestion and says that she wants to sit beside him in the cockpit. They repeat this interaction three more times until Anthony lets Priya sit up front with him. … Melanie brings a chair for Priya to sit on up front. Priya sits on the chair beside Anthony, but Anthony doesn’t let her steer when she asks him if she can use the stick shift. Melanie attempts to return the baby to Priya. Priya tells Melanie that she doesn’t want it, but Melanie throws the doll to Priya and says, ‘Take it!’ Priya catches it. She looks at the doll and says, ‘I don’t need a baby!’ and throws the doll on the floor.

Although the mother role was a powerful role among the girls, and the girls regularly argued over who would be the mother when playing together, they were aware that such caregiving roles were not recognized as important when playing with boys. While powerful among the girls, the mother role was not equal in status to the roles that the boys undertook in their play, such as the role of a pilot. Therefore, in their attempts to gain equal access to the valuable blocks spaces, the girls at times avoided the mother role when working with boys. In the account above, Priya had finally gained access to the cockpit after much effort and negotiation, although she did not have equal access to the space, as Anthony prevented her from steering the plane. Priya's rejection of the doll, and thus of the mother role, suggests that she was aware of the inferior status attributed to such a role and its limiting effects on her (already rejected) attempts at being a co-pilot. As Davies (1989) notes, while the mother role is one of the few powerful positions available to women, motherhood can also be used against women in their attempts at gaining access to the highly valued male world. Priya was thus navigating this duality of desiring motherhood while also being pressured to disavow it.

Rethinking kindergarten education through femininity-affirmative pedagogy

Given the findings outlined above, in this section we reflect on how a femininity-affirmative pedagogy can help cultivate kindergarten spaces that value femininity and care. Care ethics positions relationality and caring relations at the centre of education, challenging the current neo-liberal logics of standardization and quantification that are increasingly informing early childhood education (Moloney et al., 2019). As argued by Langford et al. (2017), care is fundamental to all human life. The dominant rhetoric – both at the policy level and within teacher education – is that we need to prepare children for the ‘real world’. As the ‘real world’ is a masculine-centred and competitive one, such neo-liberal views are well intended; however, this rhetoric functions to devalue care and relationality (Davies and Hoskin, 2021, 2022). We wonder: What if the field strove towards changing the ‘real world’ instead of preparing our youngest learners for it? What are the implications of promoting social-change-oriented teacher practices for gender equality and inclusion?

Analysis of Ontario's early learning curricular documents shows that early learning is largely a context that provides care rather than a context that emphasizes children's development of an ethics of care. Care is imagined as something to be provided by educators and received by children, rather than the focus of children's education. For instance, only one of the 31 ‘Overall Expectations’ in ‘The Kindergarten Program’ (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016) centres around care, where children are expected to learn to care for the natural world. The other few explicit references to care revolve around supporting the individual child's ability to care for themselves – namely, in terms of their physical self. Complementing ‘The Kindergarten Program’, the ‘Early Learning for Every Child Today’ document (Best Start Expert Panel, 2007) only has one reference along the continuum of children's development to learning caregiving skills. In the ‘Social’ domain, school-age children (five to eight years old) are expected to develop the initiative to care for others. Finally, in How Does Learning Happen? (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014), a provincial pedagogical guide for early childhood educators, care for others is explicitly mentioned in only one of the four ‘Foundations for Learning’. As part of the ‘Belonging’ foundation, children are expected to learn to care for others and for the natural world. Importantly, these documents are centred around child development theories that emphasize liberal humanist values and expectations, and, as in ‘The Kindergarten Program’, the learning of academic skills.

The little emphasis on developing an ethics of care among young learners also comes with little guidance for educators on how to translate these care-related learning expectations, albeit few, into their daily work with children. The limited attention and guidance given to developing an ethics of care among students in kindergarten functions to position care as a backdrop in the early years classroom. Instead, educators must focus on ensuring that students meet curriculum expectations, which, as noted above, revolve around individualist and humanist traditions of developmental psychology and have become increasingly focused on academics and school readiness under the schoolification of the early years (Davies and Hoskin, 2021; Van Laere et al., 2012). We wonder: How can we move from care as simply a backdrop in early learning towards intentional practice around an ethics of care?

A femininity-affirmative pedagogy promotes intentional practice around an ethics of care by urging educators to engage in explicit conversations and actions around gender and care with all children (Davies and Hoskin, 2021). As Davies and Hoskin (2021: 117) note, it aims to create change through ‘practices of care and relationality, with a specific space made for the valuation of femininity’. Importantly, such practices must account for human, nonhuman and more-than-human relationalities. As Berman and Abawi (2019) note, the concept of ‘common worlds’ reminds us that the world is one that is shared by humans, nonhumans and more-than-humans, and thus care practices must account for relationalities beyond human-centred ones.

In the context of classroom play, a femininity-affirmative pedagogy (Davies and Hoskin, 2021) must be considered in the everyday play interactions of children, where normative gender constructions are often reproduced and solidified in material-discursive ways (Blaise, 2005; Davies, 1989; Lyttleton-Smith, 2019). For instance, a femininity-affirmative approach implicates educators in typically feminized play centres – such as the kitchen centre – to scaffold all students, regardless of gender, into practices of care and relationality. Given recent research illustrating that it is girls who continue to predominantly occupy these spaces (e.g. Prioletta, 2018; Prioletta and Pyle, 2017), it is important to encourage all students to engage with these centres and take up caring and nurturing practices in these spaces. Importantly, however, caring practices should not be confined to these ‘femininized’ play centres. Promoting conceptualizations of gender beyond the binary requires that educators also implement a femininity-affirmative approach in traditionally non-femininized spaces. The presence of femininity-affirmative educators in non-femininized play spaces can positively support children's ability to break gender norms, expectations and stereotypes. For instance, in blocks centres, educators may encourage, rather than discourage, the building of structures that promote caregiving activities, such as homes and hospitals, and care-related play themes as well as caring, rather than competitive interactions between students as they build and play. Intentionally and meaningfully promoting caring and responsive relationships in play across all activity centres cultivates a context in which all gender identities come to value femininity and caring practices as a necessary human capacity. Implementing a femininity-affirmative approach in early learning is thus an important step in encouraging healthier gender expressions for all students and redressing current gendered hierarchies that devalue femininity and care.

Conclusion

The subordination and denigration of femininity (Hoskin, 2020), and specifically of care activities, continues to permeate patriarchal societies, even though care is fundamental for all. This article outlines how kindergarten environments are among those sites in which femmephobia is normalized and legitimized. Through the masculinization of play environments, care-related activities and the learning of care-related skills and knowledges were relegated to the margins of kindergarten education. The analysis outlined in this article shows a pressing need for the (re)centring of care ethics in early childhood education. In accordance with scholars like Noddings (1984) and Langford et al. (2017), who have argued for the centring of care ethics in education, we argue that care ethics is a vital component of kindergarten education. A femininity-affirmative pedagogy (Davies and Hoskin, 2021), as outlined above, offers valuable possibilities that can begin early on in acting against the devaluation of femininity and the denigration of care activities. Specifically, an important part in redressing the current devaluation of care requires intentional practices in the classroom that promote an ethics of care in all spaces, across all facets of kindergarten education and for all children. A femininity-affirmative pedagogy allows for the much-needed feminist reimagining of kindergarten education towards a more equitable and healthier world.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program.

ORCID iDs

Jessica Prioletta

Adam W Davies

Author biographies

Jessica Prioletta (she/her) is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Bishop's University, Sherbrooke, Québec. Her research interests centre around the social construction of childhood, gender inequalities, and sexuality education in early childhood education. Jessica engages with critical feminist theory to examine and redress how violence against girls and women is normalized and perpetuated in kindergarten education.

Adam Davies (they/them) is an assistant professor in Family Relations and Human Development at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Canada. Adam's research interests are queer theory in education, critical disability studies, mad studies, and cultivating transformative educational spaces in early childhood education, K-12 schooling, and higher education. Adam conducts research on gender and sexual regulation, queer, mad, and disability pedagogies, and re-imagining pre-service early childhood education and teacher education.

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