Poster #185 - “You’re a girl, you can’t play with us”: Gender enforcers in preschool

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Sex, Gender

Integrative Statement

In preschool, many children become more attentive to gender norms. There is ample evidence that children provide negative feedback to peers who violate gender norms (e.g., engage in cross-gender activities; Martin et al., 1999); however, little is known about the characteristics of children who enforce gender norms. Children who exclude others from activities due to their gender can be labeled as “gender enforcers.” Here we investigated two questions: 1) What are the characteristics of gender enforcers? 2) What are the consequences of exposure to gender enforcers for preschoolers? We hypothesized that gender enforcers, and children who are exposed to them, are likely to exhibit certain social-emotional and gender-related behaviors such as hyperactivity and aggression, to conform to gender norms such as endorsing gender-typed stereotypes, and to engage in mostly same-gender peer play.
Participants were 98 (Mage = 49.47 months, SD = 11.40, 52% boys) preschoolers from a southwestern U.S. city. Gender enforcement was assessed using peer nomination by asking children “Who in your classroom says you shouldn’t play because you are a (boy/girl)?” Although one study assessed gender enforcers (McGuire, Martin, Fabes, & Hanish, 2006), we expanded upon this study by including a more extensive range of characteristics (including social-emotional behaviors, gender-related behaviors and cognitions), using multi-informant (teachers, peer nomination), and multi-method (observation, interview, questionnaires) data to obtain a broader description of gender enforcers.
Interestingly, the majority of boys (72 %) and girls (57 %) exhibited gender enforcing behavior, suggesting the possibility that enforcing gender norms during peer interactions might be developmentally normative for preschoolers. Results of ANOVAs showed that gender enforcers are higher in aggression, hyperactivity, and in-group-biased beliefs compared to non-enforcers (see Table 1). Therefore, although many children may conform to gender norms (Martin et al., 2016), a subset of children may exert pressures on others and be influential because they use aggression and exclusion in actions toward peers. However, gender enforcers did not differ from non-enforcers in their gender-typed behaviors, perhaps due to relatively high levels of these behaviors in preschool children.
Important consequences of spending time with gender enforcers were identified in regression analyses: children who spent more time with gender enforcers were observed (over months) to play more with same-gender peers and less with other-gender peers, and to show more biased gender cognitions than were children who spent less time with enforcers (see Table 2), even when children’s own gender enforcing scores were controlled. It is possible that children who experience high exposure to enforcers are admonished and thus pressured to conform to gender norms. Another possibility is that exposure to enforcers provided information about consequences of gender norm violation, thus deterring these children from crossing gender boundaries.
Together, these findings contribute to the literature regarding the maintenance of gender norms, and children’s gendered peer socialization experiences in early childhood. Further, by identifying gender enforcers in classes, teachers may be able to minimize the consequence of exposure to gender enforcers for other children.

Authors

• Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Rachel E Cook, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carol Lynn Martin, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Matthew G Nielson, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author