Representations of gender relations through children's drawings: a bibliographical research

Abstract

The objective was to map national academic productions that investigated the representations of gender relations in children's drawings. The mapping included both the process of searching, selecting, and organizing these productions and the analysis of their content, highlighting the main aspects focused on (from objectives, methodology, theoretical framework, and results), as well as aspects that were not sufficiently addressed to support future research. The bibliographic research procedure was used, selecting productions that reported research that intersects gender with children's drawings, with delimitation to two databases: the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD) and the Capes Periodical Portal. Only 05 works that met the defined criteria were found, being 02 Master’s dissertations and 03 scientific articles, dating from the period 1999 to 2020. Although this line of research began decades ago, it has not consolidated in terms of production volume. It was demonstrated that most of these studies, in addition to children’s drawings, also used the oral language of children and adults. Most also focused on children in early childhood education and were conducted in public schools. Their results were unanimous in indicating that the representations reproduce stereotypes and gender inequalities. In addition to recommending more studies on the subject in view of the reported shortage, we suggest that these new studies include children from other levels of education and ages, as well as pay attention to other social markers, such as social class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc., which influence children's representations of gender relations.