The spatial dimension of children´s sociabilities: analysis of the interactions between girls and boys in the bathrooms of child educations

• Main Authors: Tássio José da Silva, Wellington Teixeira Lisboa
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2018-05-01
• Series: Zero-a-seis
• Subjects: Espaço; Relações de gênero; Banheiros; Educação infantil
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/zeroseis/article/view/55487

In this work, we will discuss the gender relations that permeate the organization and use of the bathrooms of an institution of Early Childhood Education, through the different uses and appropriations that girls and boys daily make of these spaces. Considering that bathrooms are spaces of symbolic high density for the investigation of gender relations and sexuality, we will question the power relations present in these manifestations. The empirical scope that integrates this reflection is based on an ethnography carried out in an institution located in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The results indicate a spatialization process from a gender perspective, showing how space is an important element of children's control, based on adult logic and based on power structures. We identify a profitable interaction of children with the spaces of the bathrooms, in an intense movement of collective construction of strategies to circumvent and subvert the binary and dichotomous logic according to which these spaces are structured.