Early preschool environments and gender: Effects of gender pedagogy in Sweden

•We compared children in a gender-neutral preschool to those attending other preschools in Sweden.•Children at the gender-neutral school scored lower on a gender stereotyping measure.•Children at the gender-neutral school were more willing to play with unfamiliar other-gender children.•Children at the gender-neutral school were not less likely to notice another person's gender.•Differences in pedagogy are associated with how children think and feel about people based on their gender.

To test how early social environments affect children's consideration of gender, 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 80) enrolled in gender-neutral or typical preschool programs in the central district of a large Swedish city completed measures designed to assess their gender-based social preferences, stereotypes, and automatic encoding. Compared with children in typical preschools, a greater proportion of children in the gender-neutral school were interested in playing with unfamiliar other-gender children. In addition, children attending the gender-neutral preschool scored lower on a gender stereotyping measure than children attending typical preschools. Children at the gender-neutral school, however, were not less likely to automatically encode others' gender. The findings suggest that gender-neutral pedagogy has moderate effects on how children think and feel about people of different genders but might not affect children's tendency to spontaneously notice gender.