The purpose of this article is to illustrate how pre-school professionals understand the notion of gender-equity work in a Swedish context, in particular play and learning in the pre-school playground. The study draws on socio-cultural and gender theories. Of the four participating pre-schools, three of them have programs that focus especially on gender education. Video recording and focus group discussions are used as research methods. The findings show that outdoor play and learning are seldom problematised from a gender perspective. All pre-schools had a common rhetoric to counteract inequity in the pre-school program. The concepts of gender patterns and gender roles were very problematic, and the professionals had different understandings of the notions and how to put them into practice. Affordances and activities showed different types of gender constructions, in which both professionals and children were active.