The gender chasm in childcare – where just 2 per cent of early years practitioners are men – has long been talked about. Now there are plans to do something about it. In Scotland (which incidentally has no record of any male childminders), there are ambitious plans for improvements in gender imbalances in both directions at the country’s colleges and universities.
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC), which invests around £1.5 billion of public money each year, has embarked on a programme for colleges to address gender imbalance. The initiative, which will be mapped in SFC’s first Gender Action Plan, also includes university undergraduates where males, especially those from a deprived background, are currently under-represented.
Employers have told SFC that qualified male child-carers are in high demand, yet early learning and childcare is one of the most imbalanced subject areas in Scottish colleges: 95 per cent of students studying childcare-related courses in Scottish colleges between 2011 and 2015 were female.
In the Gender Action Plan, first issued this February, with a final version to be issued in May, a stated aim is to ‘increase the number of men entering childcare’. To do this, SFC will work in partnership with the Scottish Government and colleges to introduce workforce planning and positive action in recruitment for childcare courses in colleges. This will involve actively targeting men. Potential ways of doing this include access courses for men, Men in Childcare courses and special taster days. One of its aims for 2016 is to ‘work with colleges to tackle gender stereo­types through their training of early years care practitioners’.
The action plan, which follows a consultation across further and higher education sectors, will be used to add gender equality targets in the outcome agreements specific to each institution from 2017. Outcome agreements set out what colleges and universities plan to deliver in return for their funding from the SFC. This follows Scottish Government minister Michael Russell writing to the body in July 2014 complaining that ‘too many college and university courses are dominated by either men or women… I want the SFC to use the outcome agreements negotiations in both colleges and universities to contribute to improvement.’
The SFC has ambitious goals: by 2030 it wants to ensure that no subject has an extreme gender imbalance (defined as where less than a quarter of either sex is represented). It also wants to ensure that the gap between the number of male and female undergraduates is reduced to just 5 per cent. The programme also focuses on areas of caring, leisure and lifestyle, technology and engineering, with a 25:75 ratio of women to men currently working in construction, automotive trades and engineering. This is reversed for childcare, nursing, and hair and beauty.
There is work to be done, as across the UK, 2 per cent of all nursery nurses and assistants were men last year, while 5 per cent of childminders, and not a single full-time play-worker, were male (according to ONS figures from 2015).
Such imbalances continue to exist because of the gender stereotypes that all too often determine the subjects people choose at school. Courses such as childcare are often closely related to particular careers. The choices students make about their college and university courses affect career pathways and create ‘women’s jobs’ and ‘men’s jobs’. This, in turn, affects wages – childcare has traditionally been seen as ‘women’s work’ and women were traditionally paid less than men. This perpetuates a system where young people are not able to make genuinely free choices about their future.
SFC recognises that colleges and universities cannot change these deeply ingrained patterns by themselves. However, subject choices driven by perceptions of gender are such a big contributor to patterns in the workforce that they have to be an equally big part of the solution.
Because of their unique contribution and importance to the lives of young children, people working in early learning and childcare have the potential to change attitudes across much greater swathes of society. Children who see from an early age that childcare and teaching are neither male nor female jobs could start to fundamentally change future attitudes and thinking around what men and women are capable of.
When it was talking to people about developing its Gender Action Plan, SFC heard from many people in Scotland’s further and higher education sector who believe that, while they could do something about gender segregation at college and university, ultimately they were working with young people who already have ingrained beliefs about the instinctive abilities of girls and boys. The solution, then, has to start as early in life as possible.
A lot of people stressed the importance of a ‘whole system’ approach to tackling beliefs about the roles of women and men. SFC recognises the importance of this and is working with Education Scotland, the national body in Scotland for learning and teaching in schools, to tackle gender equality at all stages of a person’s journey through education. In September 2015, Education Scotland published the Career Education Standard for practitioners, parents, carers and teachers involved in the care and education of three- to 18-year-olds, which aims to tackle gender stereotyping and improve young people’s ability to make informed decisions about their future.
We need to ensure that all students, regardless of background or personal circumstances, have the best chance of accessing the right education for them – one which leads them to employment. In turn, workplaces should reflect the communities that surround them to create the right products and services for society.
Whether or not Scotland, or any other country, can prosper and be economically successful depends upon the strengths and talent of its young people. Our belief is that the workforce in key areas such as early years education should not be restricted to the talent of half the population – it should be open to all.
The SFC provides funding to all 25 colleges and 19 universities in Scotland. Its interim Gender Action Plan is at www.sfc.ac.uk.
‘MEN IN CHILDCARE’ NETWORKS
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC)’s action plan has been called an ‘ambitious set of proposals’ by campaign body Men in Childcare. Founder Kenny Spence said, ‘Childcare, as with most other gender-under-represented occupations, can be a difficult nut to crack due to lack of awareness, lack of opportunity and lack of structured key training paths.
‘Although this report does not set targets, it is an ambitious set of proposals to change the way that colleges and universities approach gender under-representation, an ambition which we applaud.’
The group previously ran a press campaign to attract more men into the profession using the slogan ‘Children Need Men Too’ in Scotland, which it credits with the numbers of men in childcare in Edinburgh standing at 8 per cent.
The news also comes as ‘men in childcare’ networks are springing up around the country. The Bristol Men in Early Years network has been given funding by Bristol City Council to ensure the organisation can continue working with schools and training providers to encourage more men into the profession.
Meanwhile, on 13 February, the first-ever UK national Men in Early Years conference was held, in Southampton, to promote the issue.