Sims, Riley N.From an early age, children prefer fair and just treatment of others. Young children often reason about the importance of establishing equality between individuals and groups, with concerns for equity emerging by middle childhood. At the same time, children expect that individuals who counter gender stereotypic norms will face exclusion from the peer group, and give preferential treatment towards gender ingroup members over gender outgroup members in resource allocation tasks. Denying individuals from friendships, resources, or opportunities based on gender stereotypic expectations constitutes unfair treatment. Intergroup contact has been shown to reduce children’s prejudicial attitudes, but less research has investigated how intergroup contact with counter-stereotypic peers shapes children’s friendship preferences. Furthermore, research indicates that children rectify inequalities for historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups. Women have historically been marginalized and excluded within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though some research has investigated the extent to which children rectify inequalities between racial groups, less research has focused on how children rectify inequalities between gender groups in stereotypic contexts, such as those involving science inequalities. The present dissertation contains three empirical papers that explore how gender stereotypic expectations shape children’s friendship preferences and distributive justice beliefs. Empirical Paper 1 explored how children’s own reported gender stereotypes and playmate experiences relate to their desires to play with peers who hold counter-stereotypic toy preferences. Empirical Paper 2 assessed children’s evaluations, resource allocation decisions, and reasoning in contexts involving inequalities of science supplies between groups of boys and girls. Empirical Paper 3 extended work from Empirical Paper 2 to investigate how children and young adults consider merit and gender group membership in science inequality contexts. Together, this body of work suggests that intergroup contact with counter-stereotypic peers can dampen the influence of gender stereotypes in shaping children’s friendship preferences, and that children and young adults maintain subtle pro-boy biases in their evaluations and decision-making regarding access to science resources between gender groups. Documenting the contextual factors that encourage children to resist gender stereotypic expectations and promote more equitable attitudes as it relates to rights to resources and opportunities can inform future research aimed at promoting inclusive orientations in childhood.enDissertationDevelopmental psychologyFairnessGender StereotypesInequalityMoral development