Abstract

This article presents an interactive publication in digital media to explore the use of intertextuality and performativity as tools to break gender stereotypes taught during early childhood. In this way, the construction of gender is assumed to be a gradual process that uses education and other cultural mechanisms and results in a social construction. This process is questioned through the work of post-structuralist philosophers and from examples taken from pre-Hispanic cultures, specifically Mesoamerican, that raised questions at the time as to the understanding of non-binary gender. This game is a starting point as an everyday activity that defines gender roles, and performativity and intertextuality are proposed as tools offered by critical theory designed to challenge the stereotypical construction of gender. This involves questioning the role of design as an agent of capitalism, and its effectiveness in silently but effectively prolonging stereotypical conceptions of gender through products for children. Intertextuality is proposed as a tool to break gender stereotypes and is exemplified through the publication “Primer día de clase,” which seeks to subvert the construction of gender in early childhood towards a more egalitarian and wider dimension.