We hear rather a lot about how women are locked out of certain jobs in the economy. That no one is locked out but that people choose for themselves passes all too many by. Still, the insistence in this modern age is that if there’s some gender imbalance then this is evidence, pure and simple, of discrimination.
OK, so, by their standards, what are we going to do about this?
The majority of councils have no men working in their nurseries, as parents assume they pose a risk to young children.
Of the 38 councils in England, Scotland and Wales which still have in-house nurseries, 26 do not hire a single male teacher.
Jamel Campbell, of the London Early Years Foundation, said: “People are entrusting their precious babies to us, to care for them and to teach them. There is a lot of stigma based on negative stories – children being at harm… men not being nurturing, men not being able to work with children that small.”
Of 400,000 early years educators – which includes preschools, nurseries and school reception classes – 98 per cent are female.
My own answer here would be that we’re a sexually dimorphic species which has a division of labour in the raising of snotdribblers. This doesn’t mean that no men are good at it, nor even that no men are interested in doing it. Only that the predisposition to undertake this task varies in occurrence across sexes – if you insist, across genders. And, well, at that point, shrug. That isn’t how the modern world sees any variances in gender running the other way of course so they should be asked how they’re going to solve this one.
Perhaps, even, we should start insisting that they’ve got to solve this one at the same time as they solve that one where more women get the high paid and interesting jobs.
Once they’ve explained their plans there we could move on to the more important question. Why is it that female models are paid so much more than male?
There is a lot of stigma based on negative stories – children being at harm… men not being nurturing, men not being able to work with children that small.”
Let’s add a word to this:
“There is a lot of stigma based on negative stories – children being at harm… Black men not being nurturing, Black men not being able to work with children that small.”
Naaah, it doesn’t sound any better. But some forms of discrimination are clearly better than others.
Think there definitely is a stigma thing. My 8 yr old daughter has two male teachers, one has stayed with the class since year 0 (when they were 6). It’s considered normal here (Sweden) & when I comment on the lack of male teachers in the UK (& why) the locals are amazed.
It’s a spectrum thing though. I couldn’t stand being round young kids that weren’t mine all day long, but these guys enjoy it.
I remember male teachers in junior school in the UK in my youth too.
Amazing! Perhaps this is a cultural thing and not dependent on discrimination (which means, on class hatred) at all.
SMfS: Yes. Making categorical statements about white males is always fair game, almost as high-yield as is stereotyping and discriminating against Catholics and smokers.
Definitely a spectrum thing; I can barely stand being around my young kids for more than a few hours at a time – let alone someone else’s!
I passed a group of council workers recently. They were emptying filthy rubbishy bins, behind a truck spewing exhaust, in drizzling rain.
Not one woman was in the team! Not one!
This must also be addressed. Get the nursery teachers out in the fresh air!
Just because they looked like men, dressed like men and behaved like men doesn’t mean they were men. (LOL just in case you didn’t get it)
Yes, glib as it is, Tim’s point needs a response from someone who’s vocal about the GPG in other fields.In the absence of that the most ideologically consistent that I can think of is that these aren’t free natural choices they are a combination of socialised choices and the result of exclusion from other fields.
Career choices are personal choices, given the iron-clad laws against sex discrimination. Is making a personal choice following cues from others around you, instead, a “socialised choice”? Is it government’s (or anyone’s) business what thought process you used to make a career choice? How important is it that the sums must be equal?
Yes Spike, that’s a good point, free choice is the absence of compulsion, not the absence of influences and choosing what to do for a career is free by that pretty reasonable criteria. The liberal (classic) stops there. However I think if your ideology expects all departures from gender parity to have to be enforced in some way rather than naturally occurring you’d come up with a slightly different definition of free choice, and you’d also be quite happy for government action to counteract that force.
Every personal choice is informed by the person’s values. Some careers require taking phone calls and returning to the office at odd hours, offensive to some of us and not a problem to others. The difference is “socialized,” notably by the way one was reared. There is no remedy other than to mobilize government to norm everyone’s values.
If the desire to enforce gender parity leads someone to redefine free choice as something else, such as “socialized choice,” that’s a problem. The desire for more government action is the basis of this redefinition, not a result dictated by it.
well yes it is a problem but at least it would be consistent. What is rather more common is the outragege and calls for action on GPG are mostly acting as an interest group. Not looking at evening the playing field but tilting it in their groups favour. You know what could square the circle between the two camps? Accept that these senior jobs/ stem careers are more attractive on average to males, but you don’t want to stop there as the classic liberals do. So repeal gender pay discrimination legislation. Businesses can then offer females more to make it… Read more »