We know today that girls and boys are ascribed different culturally grounded expectations regarding how they should behave towards others (Gilligan & Wiggins, 1988; Tallberg Broman, Rubinsten Reich & Hägerström, 2002; Öhrn, 2004). But research also shows that the relationship between gender and morality is complex rather than direct (Johnson, 2000). The aim of this paper is to discuss children’s experiences of rights in relation to cultural conceptions of gender. The discussion is based on a study of children’s morality (Johansson, 2007a,b). The daily interaction of twenty children, ten boys and ten girls, three to six years of age, was video recorded during a period of seven months. The children were part of a day-care group in a small Swedish town. The aim was to study young children’s experiences of values and norms concerning treatment of and behaviour towards each other in everyday life in the context of preschool. In this text, it is primarily the part of the study dealing with rights in relation to gender that is discussed. What moral agreements concerning rights do the children experience and create among themselves and how are issues of gender manifested in these agreements? A theoretical framework is the theory about the life-world (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). The life-world is related to a perceiving subject, a subject that experiences, lives in and acts upon the world. All human life is intersubjective, we live in a world together with others, says Merleau-Ponty. An important aspect of the life-world is the body as central to our being-in-the-world. However, the body is not an object – it is lived. The body forms a whole, a system where mind and body cannot be separated. The subject experiences meaning through bodily communication, interpretations and tacit understandings about what is meaningful in daily life. At the same time, the world conveys meaning to the child. The analysis is based on hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1988). The type of understanding investigated is insight into the children’s moral agreements around rights and if and how patterns for gender is manifested in these agreements. The relational character of morality, as in what takes place between children and others in their life-world, is here understood as an important basis of insights into the value of rights. The children’s experiences of rights in relation to gender are viewed as a totality, where tacit bodily experiences and expressions are of importance (Johansson, 2001). Gender cannot solely be attributed to structures and conceptions that children take over or are incorporated into (Davies, 2003). Gender is experienced, created and recreated by and between subjects in different concrete social and structural contexts. The results indicate that the children are concerned with rights, irrespective of gender. At the same time, we see that the children sometimes use gender and gender identities as a basis for acquiring or being excluded from rights. However, it is also found that the children sometimes refuse to conform to a divided gender order since other values are important to them. On the one hand, it is possible that expectations as regards being a boy or a girl, where girls have traditionally been assigned a subordinate position and often focus on the situation of others, is important for the children’s interaction and the rights the children assert (also Davies, 2003; Gannerud, 1999; Månsson, 2000). This could mean that girls refrain from asserting their rights. It should, however, be noted that the results of the investigation do not provide any simple explanations. On the contrary, there are many examples of girls asserting their rights and refusing to relinquish them.

The daily interaction of twenty children, ten boys and ten girls, three to six years of age, was video recorded during a period of seven months. The children were part of a day-care group in a small Swedish town. The aim was to study young children’s experiences of values and norms concerning treatment of and behaviour towards each other in everyday life in the context of preschool. The analysis is based on hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1988). The type of understanding investigated is insight into the children’s moral agreements around rights and if and how patterns for gender is manifested in these agreements. The relational character of morality, as in what takes place between children and others in their life-world, is here understood as an important basis of insights into the value of rights. The children’s experiences of rights in relation to gender are viewed as a totality, where tacit bodily experiences and expressions are of importance (Johansson, 2001). Gender cannot solely be attributed to structures and conceptions that children take over or are incorporated into (Davies, 2003). Gender is experienced, created and recreated by and between subjects in different concrete social and structural contexts.

The results indicate that the children are concerned with rights, irrespective of gender. At the same time, we see that the children sometimes use gender and gender identities as a basis for acquiring or being excluded from rights. However, it is also found that the children sometimes refuse to conform to a divided gender order since other values are important to them. On the one hand, it is possible that expectations as regards being a boy or a girl, where girls have traditionally been assigned a subordinate position and often focus on the situation of others, is important for the children’s interaction and the rights the children assert (also Davies, 2003; Gannerud, 1999; Månsson, 2000). This could mean that girls refrain from asserting their rights. It should, however, be noted that the results of the investigation do not provide any simple explanations. On the contrary, there are many examples of girls asserting their rights and refusing to relinquish them.