Gender equality work in preschools and early childhood education settings in the Nordic countries—an empirically based illustration

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.