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Elisabeth Braw

Newsweek

We haven’t started using it at home yet, but it’s just a matter of habit,” says Sofia Bergman, a Swedish mother of two. “But it’s a good thing if nurseries and schools use it.”

She’s referring to hen, the new Swedish gender-neutral pronoun introduced at two Stockholm nurseries in 2012. Today hen is frequently used by Swedish children and adults alike. Now other European countries are joining the gender-­neutrality trend.

“Fourteen major retailers have made changes since we started our campaign almost two years ago,” reports Tricia Lowther, a mother-of-one in northern England and a member of the Let Toys Be Toys initiative, which lobbies for gender-neutral toy aisles. “They’ve taken down boys’ and girls’ signs. The blue and pink aisles remain, but things are happening.”

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Yet in the quest for gender equality in the toddler world, no country has gone as far as Sweden. The nurseries that first introduced hen still use it, and others have joined them. Several new children’s books feature a gender-neutral protagonist.