Embracing Diversity: A Novel Approach to Deconstructing Gender Stereotyped Traits through Gender Atypical Kiswahili Children's Storybooks

This paper explores the potential of using gender atypical Kiswahili children's storybooks as a powerful tool to deconstruct traditional, ingrained gender stereotyped traits among children. In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the negative impact of gender stereotyped traits on children's development and self-perception. Traditional societal gender schemata often reinforce stereotypical traits for boys and girls from an early age, limiting their understanding of the diverse range of personalities, qualities, and characteristics that individuals can possess. Therefore, this paper adopts a novel approach that utilises gender atypical Kiswahili storybooks to challenge and reshape these preconceived notions about gender traits. The study explores how children construct gender traits when exposed to gender atypical Kiswahili children’s storybooks. Bandura’s social learning theory formed the theoretical framework on which the study was underpinned. Data was generated using drawings with grade three children from a purposively selected school in Trans-Nzoia County, Kenya. The findings of this study revealed that when children were exposed to gender-atypical Kiswahili children’s stories, more girls compared to boys changed from constructing gender stereotyped traits to gender-atypical traits. The findings also revealed that even though some participants conformed to gender stereotyped traits, there was a change in their perspectives to adopt gender-atypical traits. This paper, therefore, suggests that exposure of children to gender-atypical Kiswahili children’s stories could deconstruct gender stereotyped traits during their early stages of socialisation. The paper recommends that Ministries of Education, Curriculum Development, and book publishers should develop guidelines and a policy framework to promote the authorship and publication of gender atypical Kiswahili children’s storybooks to enable children to construct gender traits in a neutral and non-sexist manner. This will enable children to question and redefine their understanding of gender, thus fostering a more diverse, inclusive, and open-minded generation.