The development course of implicit and explicit gender attitudes between the ages of 5 and adulthood is investigated. Findings demonstrate that implicit and explicit own‐gender preferences emerge early in both boys and girls, but implicit own‐gender preferences are stronger in young girls than boys. In addition, female participants' attitudes remain largely stable over development, whereas male participants' implicit and explicit attitudes show an age‐related shift towards increasing female positivity. Gender attitudes are an anomaly in that social evaluations dissociate from social status, with both male and female participants tending to evaluate female more positively than male. Children's preference for their own gender emerges early in childhood. Thereafter, boys and girls show strikingly different patterns of development. Girls' attitudes, measured at both the implicit and explicit level, remain stable. By contrast, boys' attitudes show a marked decline in strength, ending at pro‐female attitudes as measured explicitly and relative neutrality as measured implicitly.