Objective: This article presents a documentary review of qualitative scientific research whose central focus was gender and its involvement in educational scenarios. Methodology: the documentation was systematized from a bibliographic matrix that allowed to classify the information according to predetermined analytical categories based on the proposed objectives. Finding: three sections are exposed that give account of the various looks on the notion of gender, the body as a representation of identity and the school as a breeding of discourses and practices on gender; leading to the question of limits and possibilities in building gender identity in school. Conclusion: gaps are found in relation to the national qualitative research production on gender identity building in the school, involving the narratives of this phenomenon by teachers and students, in addition, finds little academic information that addresses the school's possibilities for building gender identity.