In primary school, gender affected me mostly in the playground due to the divide between boys and girls when playing games. There were football pitches painted onto the concrete, which were to be used by the boys who wanted to play football. For the girls, there was a dance zone and skipping ropes for girls. These zones weren’t specifically for boys or girls, but all the boys played football, which meant girls, felt isolated if they wanted to use the football pitches because boys dominated the area.

At sports events, teams were separated into boys and girls to make it ‘fairer’ even though some girls may have been more athletic than the boys in the opposing team.

Other than sports/games, gender didn’t really affect me much in terms of academic ability as everyone was treated relatively fairly in the classroom and by school staff.