"En kille ska vara tuff, det har man ju hört flera gånger" : En studie om hur fritidshemspersonal upplever könsnormer bland pojkar på fritidshemmet

Sammanfattning

In society, there are gender norms that say men should be strong and independent. Thesenorms can be seen as the root cause of men's vulnerability in society. Compared to women,men are worse at seeking care for mental illness and younger men are overrepresented when itcomes to violence in society. Boys' identity is formed at an early age and is influenced by thesocial environment, with schools bearing a significant responsibility to work toward equality. Our study investigates how the after-school care staff experiences gender norms among boysat the after-school center, by focusing on the behavior of the individual and how boys behavein groups. We have conducted qualitative interviews with after-school care staff to gather ourdata. Both the design of the interview questions and the analysis of the results rest on previousresearch and scientific theories. Former research examines boys' social relations and negativeconsequences of masculinity. The theories that we have chosen to start from are Hirdman'sgender theory, Connell's theory of masculinity and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. The results of our study show that the majority of boys at the after-school center have a needto assert themselves and, compared to girls, they are worse at asking for help and more ofteninvolved in situations of physical violence. Among boys there are hierarchies where someboys have more power than others and that there is an aspiration to get higher up in thehierarchy. We find similarities between the results of our study with previous research that,among other things, shows boys' need to rise. Our hope is that our study can contribute withknowledge about the influence of gender norms and highlight the importance of working with equality at after-school care.