Abstract

The study describes the development and testing of a tool intended to increase parental awareness about gender-neutral play and equal opportunity throughout the formative years of children. The tool is a crucial element of the action plan to investigate how several gendered trends related to objects of play, such as toys, potentially limit children’s early play experiences, resulting in gender differences in skill and abilities. To implement gender-neutral play, the tool aims to shift perspectives and encourage behavioral improvements in parents, who are the primary socializing agents for children. Along with the outcome of the doctorate in design, Inclusive Play Framework, the study focuses on socio-cultural variables in Portugal involving families with children aged 4 to 7 years. Being the application of the framework, the tool concentrates on design for behavior change and inclusive design through constructive design research, co-creating and iterating within workshop scenarios with semi-structured card games and a board game. It emphasizes parent–child interactions with multi-layered affordances behind objects of play in shaping knowledge about gender-neutral play for parents and promoting inclusive expressions for children. With three levels (Identify, Diversify, and Inclusify), it attempts to define the “state” of gender-neutral awareness for parents in the form of open discussion, provocation, and strategically proposes a gender awareness scale to synthesize the possible change in awareness.