Abstract
This article aims to describe and find ways to understand the practical gender equality work that is going on to promote gender equality in preschools in the Nordic countries. Gender equality in this article is broadly understood as a process of developing higher “gender awareness” (Lahelma, 2014 Educ Res 56(2): 171–183; Subrahmanian, 2005 Int J Educ Dev 25(4): 395–407) in a preschool organization and the analysis is performed through a poststructuralist understanding of gender. The material consists of 59 interviews, policy document analyses and preschool visits in the Nordic countries and autonomous territories. In order to address the work concerning gender equality in preschools, practices and processes have been analysed in order to achieve deeper understanding of what is done practically. The results are presented as an illustration of how to understand the work done and using this illustration further as a tool for reviewing existing work could be one way of developing gender equality.
Highlights
The Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland—are commonly, and by international ratings (World Economic Forum, 2013; UNDP, 2014), viewed as being some of the areas in the world where gender equality has been ‘achieved’ in some respects
This article presents as its result an empirically based analysis of gender equality work in the form of an illustration
It is not possible to find one universal method for gender equality work and that the illustration includes a number of different approaches with common characteristics
Summary
The Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland (as well as the autonomous territories Åland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland)—are commonly, and by international ratings (World Economic Forum, 2013; UNDP, 2014), viewed as being some of the areas in the world where gender equality has been ‘achieved’ in some respects. The Nordic countries are doing well concerning gender equality, but what does it look like in terms of the everyday practices of preschools and early childhood education settings? This article poses the question of whether preschools in the Nordic countries can be seen as having processed gender equality in practice.. The mission that Nordic preschools have through national policy is to give all children a gender equal education. Gender equality as an educational base means that girls and boys are considered equal intellectually and emotionally, and co-education is a well-established principle. A large body of research has in different ways highlighted (the lack of) gender equality in practice in the school system in the Nordic countries (cf Nordic Council of Ministers, 2005; Wernersson, 2009; Brunila and Edström, 2013; Bjerrum Nielsen, 2014; Öhrn and Holm, 2014; Arnesen et al, 2014)
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