Gender Differentiation and Young Children's Drawings.

Abstract

Sex desegregation programs in public schools have been promoted for years and children's drawings could be used to evaluate the effec tiveness of sex equity in education. This study investigated kindergarten and third grade chil dren's drawings to see whether gender dif ferentiation was shown in their drawings by carefully examining in detail the variables of subject matters (domestic vs. outdoor activi ties, more people vs. more objects, real vs. unreal experiences, active vs. quiet subjects, and aggressive vs. nonaggressive expres sion), the gender selection, form used in shapes, the color selection, and artistic skills. The results revealed that gender differentiation in children's drawings was only shown in two dimensions among the nine dimensions: draw ing skills and preference for selecting sex to draw. However, gender differentiation was not shown for the variables of subject matters, in the use of form in shapes, and in color selec tion. Moreover, in comparing gender differ entiation, the third graders had more similar distributions in most of the variables than the kindergartners had. Therefore, sex equity in education is a reasonable explanation for the changed proportion of boys' and girls' draw ings in these variables between kindergarten and third grade in this study.

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