Gender homophily from spatial behavior in a primary school: a sociometric study

TL;DR

This study examines gender-based clustering in children's spatial interactions within a primary school, revealing that strong and weak social ties exhibit contrasting gender homophily patterns that evolve with age.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into how gender homophily varies with tie strength and age in a school setting using detailed proximity data.

Findings

Strong ties show increased gender homophily with grade.

Weak ties exhibit decreasing homophily for girls and increasing for boys with grade.

Gender homophily patterns differ significantly between strong and weak social ties.

Abstract

We investigate gender homophily in the spatial proximity of children (6 to 12 years old) in a French primary school, using time-resolved data on face-to-face proximity recorded by means of wearable sensors. For strong ties, i.e., for pairs of children who interact more than a defined threshold, we find statistical evidence of gender preference that increases with grade. For weak ties, conversely, gender homophily is negatively correlated with grade for girls, and positively correlated with grade for boys. This different evolution with grade of weak and strong ties exposes a contrasted picture of gender homophily.