性别初萌之时:幼儿园性别社会化中的性别认同

The Moment When the Gender Germinates:Fixing the Development of Gender Identity in Chinese Kindergartens

性别认同是指个体对性别身份的接纳与对性别群体的归属,具有重要的研究价值。但对其生成的社会机制,儿童发展心理学和性别社会化研究都缺乏深入的讨论。本文基于4个省市8所幼儿园收集的观察资料和社会实验资料,探讨了幼儿园性别社会化中性别认同制造的三种方式:第一,要求儿童正确的性别归属并对归属错误的情况施以情感惩罚;第二,为儿童设置识别与区分性别的身体标志,将其刻板化为一种性别知识并要求儿童掌握;第三,开展“性别竞赛”以促成儿童的性别内群体偏好。研究认为,幼儿园的教学、保育目标和日常生活逻辑以及幼儿园互动中的各种负面情感,对儿童性别认同的生成有重大作用。性别认同的制造并非一个单方向灌输的过程,儿童会对其做出特有的反应。

Gender identity,which is the personal sense of an individual's own gender,not based on their own sex,and their sense of belonging to a gender group,is worthy of significant value for research.However,both the Child Development Psychology and research on the socialization of gender have not been able to elucidate social mechanisms for the acquisition of gender identity.Based on the materials collected by observations and social experiments from 8 kindergartens in 4 provinces,this paper identifies three ways of fixing gender identity at the level of kindergarten.One way is that children's mistaken sense of belonging to a gender group is corrected often through emotional punishment.Another is the creation of stereotypes that embody different genders for children to identify and memorize as their daily learning.A further way is to stage competition between groups that hold different gender identities to encourage children to acquire the sense of gender-based preferences.The paper argues that kindergartens'education,daily care and routines,as well as the negative emotions imposed critically influence the formation of children's gender identity.The development of gender identity is,however,not a one-way process and children often respond in their own way.