A Swedish preschool has banned the use of the words “him” and “her” and is instead using an invented “gender- neutral” word to describe children.

Teachers at the Egalia school in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm try to shed masculine and feminine references from their speech, including the pronouns ‘him’ or ‘her’ -“han” or “hon” in Swedish.

Instead, they use the genderless “hen,” a word that doesn’t exist in Swedish but is used by some feminists.

Breaking down “gender roles” is a key part of the national curriculum for preschools in Sweden.

To even things out, many preschools have hired “gender pedagogues” to help staff identify language and behaviour that risk reinforcing stereotypes.

From the colour and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.

At Egalia, a teacher said: “We use the word “Hen” for example when a doctor, police, electrician or plumber or such is coming to the kindergarten,” the school’s director Lotta Rajalin says. “We don’t know if it’s a he or a she so we just say ‘Hen is coming around 2 p.m.’ Then the children can imagine both a man or a woman. This widens their view.”
 
The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward.

Some parents worry things have gone too far. An obsession with obliterating gender roles, they say, could make the children confused and ill-prepared to face the world outside kindergarten.

“Different gender roles aren’t problematic as long as they are equally valued,” says Tanja Bergkvist, a 37-year-old blogger and a leading voice against what she calls “gender madness” in Sweden.

Those bent on shattering gender roles “say there’s a hierarchy where everything that boys do is given higher value, but I wonder who decides that it has higher value,” she says. “Why is there higher value in playing with cars?”

At Egalia,- the title connotes “equality”, boys and girls play together with a toy kitchen, waving plastic utensils and pretending to cook. One boy hides inside the toy stove, his head popping out through a hole.

Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction.

Egalia’s methods are controversial; some say they amount to mind control. But the preschool says that there’s a long waiting list for admission to Egalia, and that only one couple has pulled a child out of the school.

Jukka Korpi, 44, says he and his wife chose Egalia “to give our children all the possibilities based on who they are and not on their gender.”

Gender studies permeate academic life in Sweden. Bergkvist noted on her blog that the state-funded Swedish Science Council had granted $80,000 for a postdoctoral fellowship aimed at analysing “the trumpet as a symbol of gender.”

Jay Belsky, a child psychologist at theUniversity of California, Davis, said he’s not aware of any other school like Egalia, and he questioned whether it was the right way to go.

“The kind of things that boys like to do, run around and turn sticks into swords, will soon be disapproved of,” he said. “So gender neutrality at its worst is emasculating maleness.”

Rajalin also points out that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. From a bookcase, she pulls out a story about two male giraffes who are sad to be childless until they come across an abandoned crocodile egg.

Nearly all the children’s books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no “Snow White,” ”Cinderella” or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes.