Key findings

• Parents are the primary agents of gender socialisation. As young children are in the process of forming their own gender identity, their primary caregivers can reinforce their behaviours and act as role models on how to behave and interact with others.

• Pre-primary schools can be avenues for parenting education, with the potential to support gender transformative parenting and increasing fathers’ engagement in education. Teachers play a crucial role for promoting the equal and active participation of both fathers and mothers in their children’s learning and development processes.

• Gender-responsive parenting should be included in teachers’ pre-service and in-service training. Preprimary education teachers require specific competencies and knowledge of effective strategies to support parents and promote gender-transformative parenting practices.

• Pre-primary education systems have key implications for gender equality in employment and income. Access to a variety of early childhood education and care service modalities, and in different locations, can contribute to increasing caregivers’ take-up of employment opportunities, particularly for mothers.

What do we know?

• Parents play a key role in gender socialisation. This is particularly true in the early childhood period when gender identity is being formed. Gender socialisation, or the processes through which a person learns to behave according to gender norms, is not inherently negative but can perpetuate discriminatory stereotypes. A meta-analysis of over 170 studies revealed significant sex differences in the way parents encourage play activities and toy choices for their children following gender stereotypes for boys and girls.

• Fathers are often less likely to be engaged in family and community activities and early childhood education activities. Studies are increasingly finding that fathers’ involvement during early childhood contributes positively to children’s early learning outcomes.

However, compared to mothers, fathers are less likely to be involved in early learning activities, as caring for young children continues to be regarded primarily as a ‘woman’s role’.

• Early childhood education and care can have significant implications for mothers’ employment and income. Studies in Brazil, Ecuador, Kenya and Nicaragua found that access to early childhood education and care has a positive impact on maternal employment.

In a review of 22 studies, all but one found increases in mothers’ labour market outcomes from increasing access to childcare, care hours or reduced cost of care. This impact, however, varies depending on the design of the service options available. A recent review by the ILO found that full-time pre-primary provision is only available for a minority of children globally, mostly in high- or upper-middle income countries.

What should we do?

• Incorporate gender-transformative parenting in teachers’ pre-service and in-service training. Preprimary teachers should develop the necessary competencies to be able to support parents in their role and model positive gender norms with their children.

• Engage parents equally in pre-primary education programming and outreach. Pre-primary education can help create the conditions and environment for positive gender socialization of children through parents’ practices, beliefs and knowledge. Strategies to enable fathers’ and mothers’ equal involvement in preprimary education are crucial to build strong and gender-responsive family–preschool relationships. Some examples include the use of communication strategies to contact both parents for children’s preschool needs as well as implementing community–critical reflection activities to challenge inequitable gender norms and stereotypes.

• Design pre-primary education programmes that support gender equality. It is important to ensure that service provision hours suit labour-market needs in each specific context and allow primary caregivers to take up employment opportunities, particularly women. Service modalities should be adjusted to better fit the needs of working mothers by including the provision of full-time and extended care. Location of childcare centres and pre-primary programmes can also play a role in increasing mothers’ employment chances.