ABSTRACT
The idea of working for gender equality will not be new to many early years practitioners. No one would think it good practice to base our work with young children on ideas about ‘pretty little girls’ and ‘big strong boys’. While it is generally accepted that we should be giving boys and girls a range of opportunities to be kind, thoughtful, strong, adventurous, emotional, brave, gentle, resilient, assertive, active and nurturing, it is harder to think about how we might achieve this. What approach should we take to dealing with how children play and relate to each other and to practitioners? Should we operate a system where we provide a wide range of activities and allow children to choose freely or should we be more proactive in challenging the choices and behaviour that children express?
