Être fille ou garçon

Introduction. Childhood and gender. The importance of taking into account differing South/North perspectives

Chapter 1. Age and gender in survey relations with children: African and European fieldwork sites

Part I. Child rights and protection: taking gender into account

Chapter 2. “Child labour”: the ILO and the gender issue

Chapter 3. Gender and the struggle against child labour in Burkina Faso

Chapter 4. Civil registries, child’s sex and family environment in Mali

Part II. The constructing of differences between girls and boys

Chapter 5. Children born outside marriage in North Africa: the impact of gender on trajectories

Chapter 6. Gender and school textbooks in Africa and France

Chapter 7. Enrolment rates and gender in Africa

Chapter 8. Gender and migration during childhood and adolescence in Mali

Chapter 9. Gender-specific roles at the centre of domestic family socialization

Chapter 10. Hairdos and makeup in preadolescence, a survey in Alsace-Lorraine

Afterword. Childhood and gender: renewing perspectives

Are we born a girl or boy, or do we become one? How do gender differences in childrearing and education, games, rights, and representations develop? How do children view the condition of being a girl or a boy, and how do they themselves participate in the dynamics operative at school, work and in the home? This book revisits childhood and adolescence, focusing on the implication of gender in social construction processes. On the basis of field studies conducted in Africa and Europe, the authors present distinct perspectives on how differences between girls and boys are constructed.

Questions of access to education, child labour, domestic chores assume their full significance when childhood is defined as a period of life that takes different forms depending on the culture and norms within which it is situated. The experiences discussed here show the degree to which these questions are fundamental to understanding the future of contemporary societies.

Mélanie Jacquemin, est sociologue, chargée de recherche à l’IRD. Ses recherches portent notamment sur les activités, l’éducation et les trajectoires des enfants migrants à Dakar.

Doris Bonnet est directrice de recherche émérite en anthropologie à l’IRD, membre du Ceped, (UMR 196). Elle a mené des recherches en Afrique subsaharienne, au Burkina Faso, et auprès des migrants d’Île-de-France originaires d’Afrique.

Christine Deprez, sociolinguiste, est professeure en sciences du langage de l’université Paris-Descartes et membre du Ceped (UMR 196). Ses recherches traitent des rapports entre « langue, langage et migration ».

Marc Pilon, démographe, est directeur de recherche à l’IRD, membre du Ceped. Ses recherches portent sur les processus de scolarisation en Afrique subsaharienne.

Gilles Pison, est professeur au Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, chercheur associé à l’Ined, rédacteur en chef de la revue Population et Sociétés et président du conseil scientifique de l’IRD.

Avec les contributions de

Elisa Abassi

Doris Bonnet

Carole Brugeilles

Marie-Christine Deleigne

Christine Deprez

Fabienne Hejoaka

Véronique Hertrich

Mélanie Jacquemin

Anne Le Bris

Marie Lesclingand

Thérèse Locoh

Marc Pilon

Gilles Pison

Catherine Rollet

Bernard Schlemmer

Christine Tichit

Virginie Vinel

Joséphine Wouango

Elsa Zotian

Focus on:The experience of migration is not the same for girls and boys

In our researcher’s words:Carole Brugeilles:explains why it is important to analyse gender representations in school textbooks