Balancing the equation

From the mid 80s until 2010 I was an IT professional. Over that period I can honestly say I had my fill of working with fellow suited men in an atmosphere that ranged from outright macho to general blokeiness… not really my kind of thing.

So I absolutely applaud the drive to get more women working in STEM; like any other industry, to have an innovative and creative edge it needs people with a range of backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives. And it would be great if about 50% of those people were female.

Roll forward to 2017 and I’m working in disability, part of the broader D&I landscape, itself part of the broader HR landscape; I host a disability recruitment event, of the 40 people in the room I’m the only man.

After the event, I reflected that this wasn’t an exception – many of the events I attend are predominantly female, as is the HR team in which I work. Why is HR as gendered as IT? Why does gender imbalance in female dominated professions such as HR or nursing get less attention than gender imbalance in male dominated professions like STEM?

This got me thinking.

For many years my wife ran our village preschool. The staff were entirely female. For a short period they employed a man who was excellent but sadly left and future male applicants were non-existent. This is pretty typical and not surprisingly 98% of people working in Early Years education in the UK are female.

It’s the same deal in childcare: just 2.5% of childcare BTec students are male with male representation in that sector correspondingly equally low.

This isn’t just a UK issue; in 1991 Norway only had 3% men working in early years, by 2010 that increased to 10% with a target of 20% - better, but still nowhere near parity, and that’s in a country known for being very proactive on gender balance.

The causes of the disparity are numerous, from low wages (why should women be more willing to accept this than men?) through to negative attitudes towards men in childcare (though Mumsnetters, amongst others, appear very much in favour).

For now I want to focus on impact rather than cause.

It’s pretty clear that giving birth and taking time out to raise children has an impact on career progression and earnings, and it’s women who are currently bearing the brunt of that. There’s not much men can do about the giving birth bit, but there’s no biological evidence that they’re any less capable of the raising bit, so why the reluctance?

Because attitudes are entrenched, with many men and women still seeing child rearing as a female role and this is reinforced by the lack of men working in the early years professions.

The overtly female nature of the early years scene can make fathers feel awkward or disinclined to get involved, especially as they’ve been conditioned to feel less capable, bumbling and stupid, or worse, viewed as a paedophile in waiting.

And little boys grow up seeing no adult men around them whilst at nursery, preschool (or even primary school) so they grow up seeing this as a woman’s world and not one for them in the future.

My argument is that we need to balance the equation on both sides – we cannot fix female career progression without fixing the role of men in childcare.

Is it right or practical for one group of women to stay in low paying early years jobs to care for the children of another group of women enabling them to have better-paid careers? Surely men have got to take an equal share, thus fostering an environment that will encourage more fathers to take career breaks.

And maybe if we start by doing the simple stuff – like encouraging more men to work in traditionally female professions such as HR and nursing – we can challenge gender stereotypes at the more challenging end of the spectrum.

So a big slap on the back to Coventry University who are tackling the gender gap in nursing by introducing a bursary for men. We need more schemes like this.

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p.s. I had a tough time finding a stock image for this article; there’s a dearth of images relating to “men childcare” and the first one on iStock was a cartoon of a man panicking changing a nappy. I ask you.