Gender Segregation in Early-Childhoo Social Play among the Bifi Foragers and Bofi Farmers in Central Africa

Gender segregation in early-childhood social play is a pervasive pattern in North America, and child-development scholars have suggested it is a human universal. But very few researchers have looked at gender segregation in small-scale societies, particularly those of hunter-gatherers, whom the authors here call foragers. The authors present their observations of fifty-six, oneto four-year-old children living in two small-scale cultures—Bofi farmers and Bofi foragers—in Central Africa. They examined gender and age variation in the social play of these two groups and found that threeto four-year-olds became more segregated by gender than oneto two-year-olds and that boys in particular showed a tendency to play with other boys. The authors also found that cultural differences became more manifest as gender segregation grew more prominent among the children of Bofi farmers than Bofi foragers.