ABSTRACT
The patterns of practices within the school which construct femininity and masculinity in everyday school life is the backdrop to the hidden curriculum of gender. These patterns constitute a gender “code”. The gender code provides the cues for “gender-appropriate” behaviour for all social actors within a particular school setting. For the school child, “clueing in” to the gender code involves reading gender into the contexts of social interaction within the school. This chapter shows how, within the specific cultural context of the primary school, everyday practices and interactions define the contours of the child’s “gendering.” Through description of everyday contexts of school life and children’s responses to these contexts, it explores how the child accommodates to these contours in order to be perceived as a “normal” competent member of her/his gender category. Sex-segregated routines are encountered every day by children in coeducational schools.
