Do we need more men?

Ross Donaldson is the only male nursery nurse at Lexden Lodge Kindergarten in Colchester, working with 18 female nursery nurses. That is unusual – the majority of nurseries do not employ any male workers at all. “I think there is a label attached,” says Donaldson. “If you say ‘nursery nurse’, rightly or wrongly you automatically think of a lady. I don’t think men are put off by working in a nursery; I think it is more that it’s not an avenue they think about.”

The number of men staying at home to look after children might be increasing, but when it comes to the workplace, male childcarers are conspicuous by their absence. While this dearth is most notable in the childcare sector – just two per cent of nursery workers are male – the children’s and young people’s workforce as a whole is significantly skewed towards women. Whether in health, education, youth justice, play work, social care or youth work, the voluntary sector, independent sector or public sector, a profes­sional that works with children is significantly more likely to be female than male.

Download PDF chart: The Proportion of the Workforce that is Male

In local authority children’s services, for example, 82 per cent of workers are female, with the rate higher for those in direct care providing roles, according to the Local Authority Children’s Social Care Services Workforce Report. Unsurprisingly, mirroring wider employment trends, men are better represented in the upper echelons. Eighty-three current directors of children’s services are women (55.7 per cent) and 66 are men (44.3 per cent), with three posts vacant.

As children get older, the workforce tends to include more men. But even in work with adolescents, specifically in the fields of youth work, youth justice and outdoor education, men are in the minority. The latest available figures are contained in a Children’s Workforce Development Council report from 2009. These show that men accounted for 23 per cent of professional youth and community workers and 38 per cent of support workers.

So why are men so outnumbered in the sector? There are a number of potential reasons, not least the relatively low pay and perceived status of working with children and young people, and the stereotype that child-related work and caring professions are “for women”. On top of this, some parents and employers remain uncomfortable about the idea of men working directly with young children. At its deepest, this discomfort extends to fears about their motivation – fears that the national publicity on the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal will only fuel.  

Positive presence
Ken McArthur, owner of Polly Anna’s nursery in York, says a mother emailed him recently, questioning whether a male worker had been involved in changing her daughter’s nappy. He says it is important to challenge prejudices, “such as a man not being able to understand the intimate body parts of a female baby well enough to ensure nappies are changed correctly; that men can’t play with very young children; they are too rough and will hurt a child; and that men are naturally more likely to have sexual urges to abuse young children than a woman would.” When challenged, he says, the mother was able to examine her prejudices and conclude that the presence of the male worker was positive rather than negative.

Early years consultant Dr Margaret Simms, says research shows that parents, childcare students and tutors believe that if more men were to work in childcare, abuse allegations would rise. But, she warns, vigilance is important across the board when childcare and education settings recruit women as well as men, exemplified by the conviction of Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George.

Male volunteers, as well as paid workers, also face barriers. Erin Goddard, until last summer a co-ordinator with the charity Home-Start, was involved in recruiting volunteers to support new mothers in their homes. She says: “When it came to male volunteers, there were sometimes issues with the husbands of the women they were supporting. The husbands might feel threatened by a man offering support where they would not be by a woman.”

But the debate about gender balance is not simply about the numbers. Many feel that men can bring a distinctive approach in the way they work with children. Indeed, 75 per cent of childcare staff believe men offer something different for children, according to a report from the London Early Years Foundation. “Men in early years work in very much a different way to female practitioners. Male practitioners like to get really involved in play, very hands-on,” observes Stella Ziolkowski, director of quality and workforce development at the National Day Nurseries Association. “Women work in a different way.” She says female workers will tend to approach matters by saying “let’s plan for this, let’s develop this”.

But others argue that women can be just as hands-on as men and men can be equally as nurturing as women, so a gender-skewed workforce is not necessarily a big issue. Lesley Gannon is head of research and policy development at the National Association of Head Teachers. “I would have no truck with the sort of argument that says it is good or bad for individual children to only be taught by women or only be taught by men,” she contends. “I don’t think it makes a lot of difference one way or another. It is important to have a range of people with a range of skills and personality types – the gender of those people is completely irrelevant.”

But McArthur argues that men in the workforce are essential to provide children with male role models. He says: “In a society where so many children are raised in single-parent families where the main carer is female and where a male influence is sorely lacking, it is important for that child to build relationships and see male role models, who so enrich their lives. This should be done from their earliest years.”

The absence of male role models in many children’s lives is frequently cited as a factor contributing to inner-city crime. Meg Hillier, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, linked the 2011 riots to a lack of male role models in schools and nurseries during a parliamentary debate last month. “When older gang members have been put in prison, the youngsters, aged nine and 10, have sometimes begun to act the big man and to act as the leaders of their groups,” she said. “The lack of male role models in schools, communities and often homes can therefore make a difference. We need to have a serious adult discussion nationally about what is happening, particularly in our primary schools.”

Just by their presence, a male worker is showing those he comes into contact with that working with children is just as much a job for men as women. But when a man is the only male worker in a nursery or school, charging them with role modelling ideal masculinity as well as doing their day-to-day job can be seen as an unfair burden. Some complain that they are expected to deal with all the IT problems that arise, for example, since this is thought of as being a “man’s job”. To avoid such “role model pressure”, the London Early Years Foundation has a policy of appointing two male workers at each nursery (see box, p25).

Recruitment onto training courses shows that the issue is not about to go away: the proportion of men on youth work courses, for example, fell below a third for the first time since 2005 in 2010/11. The male/female ratio for primary school trainees is rising, but at a snail’s pace – from 18 per cent male in 2010/11 to 20 per cent male in 2012/13. Donaldson says that on his university course, there were initially “about five or six men, but gradually some dropped out to go onto PE courses and the like or just decided it wasn’t for them.”

Maralyn Smith, national programme manager for workforce at the National Youth Agency, says: “In an ideal world, we would have a gender-balanced workforce to act as role models to young people, but the reality is that across the board, males have traditionally not chosen learning in areas that involve work with children and young people. Employers and higher education institutions have worked hard to ensure recruitment materials and sector promotional material have positive role models of males and females within their literature, especially recruitment materials.  We need to encourage a workforce that is reflective of the communities we support.”

Donaldson agrees that the onus is on employers and trainers. “The people doing the course could come out to schools and say: ‘If you like working with children, this is something you could do’,” he says. “It is such a rewarding career and it’s the little progressions you see – when a child writes their first letter or says something. It’s all about job satisfaction. Working with children is very satisfying.”


Recruiting men into childcare: By June O’Sullivan, chief executive, London Early Years Foundation
“The absence of men in the early years workforce is borne out by statistics. If we are to increase their numbers, we need to use techniques that bring them out of the shadows and into the limelight. Research shows that parents and female childcare staff would like to see more male staff. Yet there remains an intransigent societal view that childcare is women’s work.  This is also reflected, consciously or otherwise, in recruitment and training. The consequence is that childcare remains one of the most gender-skewed occupations in many Western countries with the rates of men in childcare ranging from one to four per cent.  

"However, there are good examples of how best to encourage men into childcare. The German government invested €13m on the “More Men in Early Childhood Education and Care” programme. This was a big campaign to raise the profile of men in childcare including conferences, information tours and mentoring. The results were positive. German parents are now demanding that they have the right to childcare with male workers. An initiative by the Scottish government found that recruitment and training tends to be very female-focused. So it set up male-only courses and advertising targeted at males. As a result, it saw a significant increase of young men enrol on childcare courses.

"There is a view that childcare is too low in status to attract men. But the status needs to be raised across the board. We should have multiple campaigns that help parents and the public to understand the value of good quality childcare for all our children. We can then demand that we have a better gender-balanced workforce as part of the status-raising awareness. Employers are generally more inclined to a balanced workforce as they are better associated with successful businesses.

"The advertising message needs to place more emphasis on the education and learning aspect of early years work if it is to move away from the view that caring for children is women’s work.

"Men often say they feel isolated in the workplace, so employers need to consider how to retain men once they are recruited – including thinking about recruiting more than one man if possible. The launch of networks such as the London Network of Men in Childcare helps address this by raising the profile of men by men and increasing research to shape the arguments.

"Surrey County Council ran a campaign a couple of years ago to encourage more men to apply for childcare positions through a website, careers guidance and college advertising.

"If we genuinely want more men to choose a career in childcare, there needs to be a clear pipeline, from small boys with male role models to senior men leading very successful settings. The routes to success have much to do with getting a clear message to everyone as we all have a part to play to make this happen.”


Life as a male primary school teacher
“I am one of four men out of 19 teachers. For a primary school, this is probably an above-average proportion of male teachers. In general, I perform my job well and am happy. But there can be moments when what I perceive as gender-biased ways of thinking can cause tension.

"Sometimes I feel out of place socially. I previously worked in non-school organisations where I had a large number of male friends and acquaintances. I do miss being able to find someone to chat to or have a drink with. I’ve never felt any discrimination in the attitude of my female head teacher towards me based on my gender. I don’t regard gender as an issue between my colleagues and me. I’m a man, most of them are women, but we’re all trying to achieve the same outcome.

"Children treat me differently. Many of my female colleagues can be tactile and “huggy” with the children. While I have come to feel more comfortable with physical contact with children, such a relationship is just not who I am. I tend to have more of a “rough-and-tumble” interaction outside learning time with the children, who understand this and feel comfortable with it. Some children don’t want to interact this way and I respect that.

"Parents have a different attitude towards me compared with my female colleagues. A couple of times I have noticed parents avoiding me absolutely during their child’s time with me, while they have harangued their child’s female teacher.

"It is a shame there are so few men teaching in primary schools, and that a child might pass through these years with little or no male presence. They might develop a slanted view of the world up to the age of 11 and of men’s roles in it. Boys might find it difficult to understand their own outlook without people to base themselves on and confide in.

"So why do so few male teachers opt for primary school? There might be some intellectual snobbery, where it is seen as messing around in the shallows. In my case, I prefer working across a number of subjects and love seeing children learn something for the first time. In my experience, most, if not all, parents are happy to have a man teach their child at this level, and indeed welcome it. I’ve never encountered any suspicion of paedophilic motives directed towards me, or any of my male colleagues.

"Allegations of child abuse by predatory men are deeply disturbing. I can’t imagine how men considering entering the profession feel about what others might think about their reasons for working in a classroom. I hope that it will not deter potentially valuable future teachers. I would reiterate to them that I have never encountered any suggestion of such suspicion, not even as a joke.”

The contributor teaches in a north London school