5.2 CHILDREN’S CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER
5.3.2 Intensive gendered zones
5.3.2.3 Playground
176 enhance inequality if girls had to abandon their studies because of non-acceptance of who they were. This was further clearly exposed during document analysis, in the class register, which revealed a persistent absence of the same girls during the same dates in each month. That would entail at least six days a month away because of menstruation. The official culture of school as mentioned earlier pretended to be unbiased, yet was in reality portrayed by the omnipresence of gender. These set schoolgirls in another opposing position whereby they were contradictory position whereby they were expected to conceal who they are at the same time.
177 Owami (girl, 13 years, uZalo Primary): Mina mam, I like physical education period, Mrs Shezi always gives us the netball to play and the boys play soccer, it‟s a rule. If a boy is seen playing netball, other boys tease him and call him isitabane (gay), sissie or cheese boy and a girl who play soccer we call him “uyihluzi” (calves). You know our teachers always tell us to play netball and stay away from boys because they are rough and aggressive. They like to fight and teachers are afraid they might hurt us. We are fine with playing netball because it is gentle and you know safe for us since we are not so strong like boys. Boys always chase us as you can see in this picture, it‟s only girls.
Gugu (girl, 13 years old, uZalo Primary): You see madam, in this we are looking at the opposite direction while the goal is being scored because there were boys who came into our ground and try to take away the other netball pole. You know it was annoying because if they disturb us on netball we do not have any other sport for girls. We do not go anywhere around them because our teacher told us to stay away from them because they are rough.
178 Picture 7
The above excerpt indicated that girls were comfortable to play with each other only because of their gentle and polite nature. They did not hurt or compete with each other, which is a feminine behaviour as stated in the literature review (Chapter 2). They revealed that boys were very rough, aggressive and they always wanted to have the ball for themselves. Qualities of femininities were shown by girls in their association with boys. The discoveries of the study by Martin and Muthukrishna (2011) in which they watched that girls are afraid to be seen with young men in view of the way teachers treat them when they are spotted. It was also surprising to find out that disrespect and playing rough was purposefully displayed to show power amongst boys. Morojele (2011) stress, that boy uses the attributes of hegemonic masculinity to overpower their subordinates.
179 The power relations amongst gender were more complex than any other discourses that influence both girls and boys. Nkanyiso is a boy at uZalo Primary, who expressed the belief that girls are weaker than him as he was in the grounds playing soccer, and this meant proving who he was as a boy. He shared what was happening in picture 8 below.
Picture 8
Nkanyiso: Like this space initially it was for girls, we chased them away because it is the bigger space here at school now we play on it. Girls cannot protect themselves we are abusing them as they are weak. We colonise them, they cry easy and shy to hit us back instead they run to teachers. We are very strong and rough and you see when we play soccer we do not want any girl around because girls are “antekenteke” meaning weak.
We are very rude and when we are selecting team members we exclude boys who are not
180 so strong because they make us lose the game. We do not like „cheese‟ boys who are like girls.
Mthoko: Eyi, mam boys are very rude, we treat girls like nothing. We are not afraid to do anything or speak any how to them because they cannot defend themselves
Mcedisi: In this picture I see unfairness, if we as boys chase away girls it means we are taking away their rights. We are oppressing them; it is unfair boys have to be stopped from this bad behaviour.
This data showed that the boys excluded girls in this space which they used as the playground.
The boys in the picture are looking young however they insisted that they are strong. This therefore meant that they strictly hold the rules of masculinity that portrays them as strong (Morojele, 2009, 2011a; Morojele & Muthukrishna, 2012) in order to gain status at school. The discussion further indicated how dominant discourses of masculinity determine the manner in which the boys treated girls at school. The relationship between girls and boys in the playgrounds was in such a way that boy‟s shows power on girls as they even chase them away in the space that was previously known as occupied by them. The rules that govern masculinity, as previously mentioned in Chapter 2, pressured boys to act hegemonic forms of masculinity in a harsh way. This finding also confirmed that girls‟ and boys‟ experiences differ at school even when they attend the same school. Failure to perform any kind of act associated with masculinities negatively affected boys; as Hamlall and Morrell (2009) contend; prevailing talks of masculinities do exist in different genders but also exist in the same gender relations.
181 Mcedisi was not in agreement with the characteristics of masculinity discourses of undermining girls. He noticed that girl‟s absence in the photo 8 meant they are being oppressed as they were chased away from the playgrounds. Nkanyiso believed that girls were weak as he kept on referring to them as “antekenteke” meaning weak. As mentioned earlier I am an insider in this study; as he articulated this word I got irritated. I had to keep on reminding myself of my PhD ambitions and my responsibility as a researcher.
Mcedisi, a boy who was treated as not fitting in the masculinity group as he most of the times had a soft spot for girls, felt girls should be allowed in the playgrounds as they were human beings with their own rights. However, Nkanyiso strictly followed the rules of hegemonic masculinities and did not want to view any other alternatives. He was always harsh when dealing with girls because to him that meant he was a real boy. Morojele (2011) reports‟ interacting pleasantly with girls is not upheld in the hegemonic masculinities. This demonstrates that girls and boys consider their gender identities connections in an unexpected way (Rose, 2007), and that has a heading on how their gender identities, are socialised (Harro, 2000). Additionally, the data indicated that most of the space in the primary schools I visited was being occupied by boys.
As Thorne (1993, p. 21) notes, “school sports grounds are also structured in a manner that favours boys more than girls as boys‟ soccer fields are bigger as compared to netball fields”.
This positioned the girls in an unfairly divided space which they had to adapt themselves to, and which further perpetuated the gender inequalities within the school context.
Space is unevenly distributed between girls and boys in schools if boys have more space to occupy. This meant that the school structure favoured boys more than girls and the issue of