A major gap

We’ve highlighted a few key issues impacting the early years. Our research was limited by the fact that, despite a large and growing body of literature on the first years of life, very little data is broken down by gender. This is not necessarily the case for some health indicators where, as noted earlier, girls tend to do better generally than boys. But information on this age period, in general, does not provide a holistic overview of the determinants of healthy girl-child development nor does it paint a portrait of what life is like for girls. Tipper (1997) suggests that more research is needed on the influence of peers on sex-stereotyped behavior, the impact of ethnicity and cultural diversity on healthy girl-child development in this age group, and the early signs of depression in girls. A major gap exists in our knowledge about gender socialization in the year 2005, that is, whether and to what extent parents, families and teachers continue to inculcate children with the same historical stereotypes. We have
included a short section on poverty here, recognizing that living in low income has a major impact on the development of young children, although the impact of both poverty and gender socialization obviously continues beyond age five.