Research Question:
According to the Danish Ministry of Equality, 7% of all educated pedagogues employed in communal Danish day-care institutions are men. (Børnehaver mangler mandlige pædagoger 2013) The contemporary awareness in society and even governmental activism to increase employment of male child-care workers made them an interesting target of research. With every third student at the Pedagogue-seminars being male, but so few choosing the field of child-care (Stobbe 2013), we wanted to research in which way this influences masculinity and gender-roles in institutions. Why didn't more educated male pedagogues want to pursue a career within the field of child care/education? ”In the institution where I was formerly
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85 %, our presence would cause confusion and instability. The challenges related to multi-ethnicity, language - and culture barriers, were almost always acknowledged and told by our informants as part of the everyday-pedagogical framework. Most of our informants had chosen this particular institution because of the scene and the location and represented a crucial way of identifying themselves through their political ideology (Interview with Dean and Ryan). All in all everyone's professionalism was reflected through this particular setting of multi-ethnicity.
On the very first day we were allowed to observe inside, and were only denied access to one of the four rooms. We tried negotiating this with one of the attached child-care workers, so that we'd only visit when fewer children were present, but time flew and we ended up spending little time there. During our research we usually arrived at 10 am, spent an hour in one of the rooms, and then went to the staff-room to jot field-notes or to engage in informal conversations with the staff on break. We then joined the staff and children on the playground to observe and speak to available personnel. Even though they at times were extremely busy, we managed to gain good ethnographic material. A couple of weeks into fieldwork we started reflecting upon what we saw every day in the institution. There were certain situations where we repeatedly discovered general patterns and wanted to hear our informants
Women are generally responsible for caregiving (children and elders), volunteer activities, domestic duties, and social reproduction at an average rate of 2:1 (50 hours per week) compared with men (25 hours per week), regardless of how much paid work they are committed to (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2015). Men are freer to pursue paid opportunities (and investments in human capital) and women are restricted by unpaid obligations, which perpetuates inequity. Some solutions to gain equity include social welfare reform programs, universal/affordable dependents’ care programs, and the shift of unpaid duties to men, as sociologist Nancy Fraser (1997) theorizes in After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought
Chapter two deals with distinct policies and strategies put in place since the 1970s in order to identify common trends to tackle gender inequalities. Most of the policies mentioned in the text explain that “’gender’ was a part of a more general inclusion policy and not dealt with explicitly” (Forde, p.15) but all do nevertheless try to create a ‘positive ethos’. In this chapter, it is shown that although policies did not have a focus on gender, when children participated in gender “played role” (Forde, p.17) stereotypical views would arise. “Girls thought that boys got more attention and both boys and girls agreed that girls were better learners” (Forde, p.17) this emphasizes and
Men in the early years has been an issue which has been growing over many years for various reasons. For example some men are dissuaded from the career choice, and as it is a predominantly female occupation, some men feel they do not wish to work in that environment. As much as we have attempted to overcome this issue, the percentage of men working in childcare decreased rapidly over the years. Also, the cost of childcare for parents has increased over the years, with the average parent now paying £115.45 in Britain for their child to attend a nursery part-time. If the adult is 25 or over, working 40 hours per week at a rate of £7.20 an hour, this would be just under half their weekly earnings.
Within my dissertation, I plot to not only research why there are very few male primary teachers within the UK, but try to dissect the question even more. By
There are a number of professions that traditionally have been oriented towards women: teaching, especially younger children; certain carative professions; and, of course, nursing. Of the 2.1 million Registered Nurses in the United States, for instance, less than six per cent are male, and men make up only 13 percent of the new crop of nursing students (Chung, 2001).This trend is not just centered in the United States. In much of the developed world, males account for only 1% or less of teachers of early childhood grade levels, down from about 4% in the 1980s. At least one educator noted that this is a clear tragedy for millions of children who can benefit from simply having a male perspective in the classroom. "As a result many children who have no man at home, find no man at preschool and no man at primary school, and never meet a stable, reliable male figure in all their preteen years. Girls never experience nurturing from a trusted older male. Boys, cared for only by women, learn that nurturing is no part of the male job description. And in the absence of reliable men, too many of these boys learn their male role from violent television and music videos, and on the street" (Ballantyne, 2008).
My study looks at how all my texts are connected by portrayals of masculinity and conformity. All of these texts have main characters who struggle with the demands of masculinity and the pressures to conform to society’s view of masculinity. The texts that I am using are Foreskins Lament by Greg McGee, The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola, Kite Runner by and The Tomcat by James K Baxter. This interests me because I am a young man beginning my adult life and I feel a lot of pressure to conform to what society thinks is a good man.
The Worthy Work Still Unlivable Wages Report (2014) revealed that the important predictors of the quality of care children received, among the adult work environment variables, were staff higher wages, better adult work environments, lower teaching staff turnover, better educated and trained staff, and teacher-child ratio. Despite having higher levels of formal education than the average American worker, childcare staff earned extremely low wages in 1989. Between 1977-1988, childcare staff wages had decreased more than 20%. Childcare staff earned less than half compared to an educated woman and less than one-half of an educated man in the civilian labor force (Whitebook, Philips, &Howes, 2014).
The statistics for males in elementary education has not changed much in the last 20 years (Malaby, M., Ramsey, S. (2011)). Most of the cons about males in elementary education just come from stereotypes and society norms. Gender roles play a big part in male’s decisions to become a teacher because of their image of being less masculine than others. There are plenty of reasons why males should consider elementary education such as benefits to the work place and children’s growth as being a role model. Although it is not the norm for males to teach
It can be argued that it is the students and academic teaching staff themselves who are forcing females into ‘female type jobs’ and males into ‘male type jobs’. Connell et al. (2013) discuss gender cannot be argued against as being irrelevant to educational outcomes and student performance. A significant factor in Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the expansion of education on a massive scale, with the result being a ‘school conceiving social class’ (Connell et al. 2013, p.106).
We know how critical it is that institutions traditionally controlled by men reshape their policies and priorities to support gender equality and the well-being of women, children, and men. And we know that a critical part of that is to reshape the world of men and boys, the beliefs of men and boys, and the lives of men and boys.
Unlike the other observational periods, the first fifteen minutes started immediately with watching someone in the age group needed. I came into the UCF Creative School for Children at 7:25, signed in and spoke with the receptionist about the age group I needed to observer. Very rarely do any children around the age of twelve or older come into the daycare, but the volunteers that normally help in the center are high school and college aged. Luckily for me, today there were two nineteen year old and three eighteen year old coming today to help out. As it were, there was a nineteen year old volunteer setting up the toddler room before I got into the daycare, so I was asked to wait until some kids arrived before I was brought back into the room.
In Saul Kaplan’s The Plight of Young Males, he brings to light the fact that as women have progressively become more equal in the eyes of society, men have begun to dwindle. Kaplan offers a range of statistics proving how men are now in turn sliding down the equality scale. He first says that even though males comprise 51% of 18-24 year olds, only about 40% of today’s college students are male. He also says that women are achieving higher academic honors than men than ever before by dominating high school honor rolls and nearly ¾ of the time being class valedictorian (Kaplan 733). These statistics further prove that genders are unbalanced, only this time offering evidence that it’s unbalanced in favor of women.
The center in which I am conducting observations at is the Metro Gateway Child Development Center. The director of the center is Kelly Magallanes and the assistant director is Kristen Krauss. The child development center serves about seventy students; public center. I will be assessing the toddler room for the ITERS observation; the lead teacher of the classroom is Ms. Rose and the assistant teacher is Ms. Sonia. There are eight toddlers in total.
How is gender and gender roles socially constructed? Soulliere states that gender is a cultural creation that is frequently developed by and represented through popular cultural media such as advertisements, music, sports, and entertainment television (Soulliere 2006). The article “Wrestling with Masculinity: Messages about Manhood in the WWE” by Danielle M. Soulliere (2006), examines messages about manhood revealed by televised professional wrestling (Soulliere 1). Messages concerning masculinity and manhood were investigated and compared to the cultural version of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). Soulliere’s research proves that the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) depicts messages, which supports the dominant hegemonic form of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). To further grasp and understand Soulliere’s hypothesis, we must first examine her research methods and outcomes.
As previously discussed the media and government have many issues that need to be resolved in order to convince male and female practitioners to reflect further on the stereotypical views and judgements, however such media influences impact on opinions and views of not only male and female practitioners but the community as a whole and especially the way males view job prospects and feelings towards the profession. As far back as the 1900’s views of childcare/education for both males and females was viewed as a very negative job due to the lack of professional progression and status given to it (Skeleton, 2012), as discussed previously. However within today’s society the view into childcare by some men is still perceived as having a lack of