Gender Segregation in Early-Childhood Social Play among the Bofi Foragers and Bofi Farmers in Central Africa.

Gender segregation in early-childhood social play is a pervasive pattern in North America, and child-development scholars have suggested it is a human universal. But very few researchers have looked at gender segregation in small-scale societies, particularly those of hunter-gatherers, whom the authors here call foragers. The authors present their observations of fifty-six, one- to four-year-old children living in two small-scale cultures-Bofi farmers and Bofi foragers-in Central Africa. They examined gender and age variation in the social play of these two groups and found that three- to four-year-olds became more segregated by gender than one- to two-year-olds and that boys in particular showed a tendency to play with other boys. The authors also found that cultural differences became more manifest as gender segregation grew more prominent among the children of Bofi farmers than Bofi foragers. Key words: Central Africa, early childhood, gender, gender segregation, sex segregation, social playIn early childhood, children tend to play with others of their gender, strikingly so. In classrooms, boys commonly congregate in particular areas (i.e., the block area), and girls prefer to play together in distinct activity centers (i.e., dramatic play) (Martin 1998; La Freniere, Strayer, and Gauthier 1984; Pellegrini and Perlmuter 1989). Many studies in North America illustrate that, after infancy, children show preferences toward same-gender social and play partners (Fabes 1994; Fabes, Martin, and Hanish 2003; Hoffman and Powlishta 2001; La Freniere, Strayer, and Gautheir 1984; Maccoby and Jacklin 1987; Martin and Fabes 2001; Pellegrini 2004; Serbin et al. 1994). Such studies indicate that by three years of age, children generally play with children of the same gender, a phenomenon often described as the emergence of gender or sex segregation. In studies of nonhuman animals, researchers refer to gender or sex segregation as social segregation (e.g., Conradt 1998), which seems fitting because as children congregate with play partners of the same gender and, consequently, form same-gender play groups, the social experiences of girls and boys grow increasingly distinct. In this study, we will call the phenomenon gender segregation, and we more often use the term gender than the term sex, to emphasize its biocultural nature.Few researchers have conducted studies of gender segregation in small-scale societies, and these few show the same pattern of gender segregation emerging in early childhood and becoming most prominent by adolescence (Whiting and Edwards 1988; Munroe and Romney 2006). Maccoby (1998) and Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) proposed that gender segregation occurs universally, explaining it as a product of early socialization through play that leads to a gender-segregated social landscape. Maccoby (1998) also posits that gender segregation seems driven by the preferences of children rather than adults and that it more often appears in settings where children are free to make their own choices about who they play with (e.g., free-play times, school playgrounds). According to Pellegrini (2009), gender segregation and the formation of same-gender relationships in childhood affect social status and the ability to compete for mates in adulthood. He describes how, in gender-segregated play, boys and girls learn and practice the accepted social roles of men and women in their societies. Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, he considers the emergence of gender segregation a human universal representing an adapted propensity that leads males and females to form relationships with members of their own gender.The gender-segregation studies in small-scale societies that support these universal hypotheses have been of small-scale horticultural and pastoral populations with distinct gender hierarchies (e.g., Whiting and Edwards 1988; Munroe and Romney 2006). We know little about the emergence of gender segregation in relatively egalitarian societies, such as Central African hunter-gatherers (we call them here, foragers). …