Sweden has a longstanding tradition of working towards gender equality. Since 1994, the Swedish government's primary strategy for achieving gender equality policy goals has been gender mainstreaming. In practice, this means that a gender perspective should be considered in all policy areas affecting people's living conditions. A policy area that should be permeated by a gender perspective is pre-school education, which is one of the forms of education within the Swedish school system. The gender equality mission of pre-schools is established in policy documents, such as the curriculum for pre-schools - Lpfö 18. Despite the well-established gender equality mission in the governing documents for Swedish pre-schools, significant deficiencies have been identified in the implementation of the gender equality mission.

The purpose of this thesis is to, through a qualitative interview method, examine pre-school educators' prerequisites for implementing a gender perspective in pre-school activities based on the curriculum for Swedish pre-schools - Lpfö 18. The study is based on the political scientist Lennart Lundquist's theory of understanding, ability and will. The study therefore aims to consider preschool educators as street-level bureaucrats and examine whether they have the understanding, ability, and will to implement the preschool's gender equality mission. To achieve this purpose, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted at a preschool unit in Halmstad municipality. Based on the interview material, it can be concluded that the prerequisite understanding, and willingness constitute favorable conditions for a successful implementation. Among the three prerequisites, knowledge is identified as the most significant obstacle to the successful implementation of the gender equality mission at the preschool that was investigated.