The representation of male and female gender role development in children’s drawings: an examination of 20 years of changes in italian culture and society

Drawings of male and female human figures are useful indicators of how children perceive gender as a cultural construct. From pre-school age, children use anatomical and stylistic elements (e.g., haircuts and clothing) to characterize the gender of their characters. Using the Classroom Drawing Test (Quaglia & Saglione, 1990), the present study investigated how Italian primary schoolchildren characterized the gender of their drawn figures. The data were compared to a similar study carried out by Quaglia et al. (2001) to verify how these graphic representations have changed over time. Thus, the same coding schema that was employed in the prior study was used to code the drawings of 711 children (328 boys and 383 girls) aged 7–11 years. The comparison between the two studies, carried out using descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses, highlighted a general decrease in the usage of details to characterize the gender of the characters (especially for male figures) and a smaller differentiation of the two genders. However, female figures tended to preserve a greater characterization related to gender. The results are discussed in the context of cultural changes in Italian society.