Families participate by defining the different roles that boys and girls should play. And by age 4-5, children want to show mastery of their gender roles, which are more rigid and stereotyped than they will be later. Families, work, and gender One of the chief ways that families influence the development of learning and thinking in boys and girls is in their attitudes toward work. The work that children perform affects the amount of free time that they have, the behavioural characteristics they learn, and the energy that they have in school. But it's not just that girls do different work than boys.
Girls do more work.
You'll observe that the girl in school performs more work outside of school than the boy does. Note the kinds of work that she does. An ethnographic study of factors affecting the education of girls in southern Malawi. Many teachers and schools reinforce gender stereotypes, often without being aware of it. In some cultures, education is not even considered appropriate for girls at all.