How Did Gender Affect You As A Child?

As the youngest daughter in my family I was always brought up with a love of the colour pink, Barbie dolls and Disney princesses. I was the typical girl with typical childhood fantasies of growing up living in fairytale castles are marrying a handsome prince. I would not say that I was affected by gender or that it played a huge part in my growing up, I guess my views were stereotypical in a sense, that I played with dolls and always seen myself as the mother role to them, but nothing in the way of my parents, or any other important role model for that matter, forcing these stereotypical views onto me.

However, at primary school it was different. We had assigned seats, boy girl boy girl formation, as well as a line up routine of girls before boys or again you had to find a partner of the opposite sex when either entering the building, an assembly or going on an excursion. Whereas at High school it was a lot less gender oriented. In high school, gender divisions were only noticeable in sports teams and Physical Education as the class would be split by gender from which the boys would play football and girls would do something more feminine like dance in the fear of them getting hurt. I find this wrong as I feel like girls should be able to decide this factor for themselves. Gender does not matter.

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