Gender-based violence (GBV) is a global health issue that affects significant proportions of women and girls. Despite research showing that children understand and perform stereotypical gender norms from as young as 3 years, addressing gender with young children is controversial. Programs that aim to teach gender fairness and respectful…

The purpose of this article is to examine how the discourse of childhood innocence masks the ways in which sexual violence by boys against girls is perpetrated in kindergarten. Findings from a year-long ethnographic study conducted in two Canadian kindergarten classrooms show that narrow understandings of gender and sexuality in childhood obscure…