Gender representations and reading plan in Chile: literary corpus study for early childhood

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the gender representations contained in six literary texts suggested by the Chilean Ministry of Education for transition levels I and II of Preschool Education and the first year of Primary Education, and their possible implications in the construction of children's identities. The research design is framed within the qualitative approach and proposes an interdisciplinary analysis to identify the semiotic resources that could shape a discourse that maintains and promotes gender stereotypes. This analysis integrates conceptual frameworks that look at literature as a means of transmitting and creating identities; studies of gender representations in symbolic, visual and discursive works that shape the social position of men and women; and developmental approaches that study subjectivities in childhood. The results show that some of the literary texts studied contain recurrent signs and differentiated identification codes for girls and boys, which are constructed from a traditional, antagonistic and binary gender perspective, and some others tend to subvert this conventional order. In conclusion, some texts propose reading options that tend to sustain conventional gender roles and other texts open up new forms of representation. © 2023 Centro de Estudios de Promoción de la Lectura y Literatura Infantil, Universidad de Castilla-La Manc. All rights reserved.