ABSTRACT
Rather than labeling certain researchers or certain pieces of scholarship as feminist, we looked to the literature and identified the topics that emerge as central to feminist thinking in early childhood education: gender; young children and their families; teachers, teaching, and teacher education; the influence of societal forces on young children’s lives; and research methodologies. We elected to label these topics feminist and we considered all early childhood education research focused on these topics to be part of the body of literature reviewed here. Although this decision creates a broader and more inclusive representation of the relationship between feminism and early childhood than might be expected, we feel it allows us to portray the contributions that feminist scholarship has made to our field as fully and richly as possible.
