GENDER AND CHILDREN: FROM IDENTITY CONSTRUCTIONS TO SOCIAL TAXES

Abstract

The term gender has been included in religious discourses as “gender ideology”, a misguided perspective, because it is not an ideology but a category that differentiates men's and women's ways of being. Thus, the present work aims at a discussion about the meaning of the term gender as a sociocultural construction, created to characterize the differences between men and women. Therefore, by understanding the stage of childhood as propitious to child development, we also seek to discuss how the adults’ world fits into the play, toys, clothes and roles that children play early, as a premise for later they follow social standards. Even before birth, we are oriented to construct gender identities that have been historically and culturally attributed and related to biological sex, which often result naturalizing roles, segregating desires and promoting prejudice and discrimination, especially when it breaks with practices and models imposed by society - male and man, female and woman.