Gender bias in education is a commonly noted characteristic in developing countries. Most of the research work focuses on primary, secondary and tertiary education. The focus of this paper is on whether or not such gender bias also appears in early childhood education programs. This paper uses household survey data from two northern states in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, for the period 1997–1998. The results show no evidence of gender bias in the overall sample. However, there is evidence of consistent gender bias among poor households in the sample. The results also indicate that mother's education has a consistently important positive influence on children's attendance in early childhood programs. However, further analysis reveals that mother's education increases male participation in pre‐school, but not female participation. These results remain robust to different model specifications. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.