During the 19th Century education was seen as a masculine job and women were only there to assist the men in teaching (Smedley, 2007), although through evolution, starting in the 1840’s, diverse careers and jobs became increasingly appealing to men, resulting in gender defined jobs being apparent in 20th century Britain, introducing sexism into society influencing gender-bias professions (Griffin, 2008). The government document green paper: Meeting the Childcare Challenge 1998 demonstrated that even back in 1998 the media and the government viewed childcare primarily a female profession although were still aware/conscious of the importance of males within childcare. Between 2011-2012 statistics show only 2% of men employed in early years …show more content…
Ideas counteracting the media ‘views’ of men in childcare being: ‘paedophiles’, ‘abusers’, doing a ‘women’s’ job, and further ‘stereotypical’ views (Haywood, 2011; Sak, Sahin and Sahin, 2012; Smedley, 2007) necessitates action, not only in the United Kingdom but throughout Europe to publicise males work within early years/child care and education (Harty, 2011). Promotion via media campaigns, guidance and encouragement from co-workers and career advisors supporting boys/men into this profession, and even as far as wages to be taken into consideration in order for the next cohort to make a change on how media views and government influences male practitioners, (Inside MAN, 2014; Sak, Sahin and Sahin, 2012; Skeleton, 2012), however Skeleton (2002) highlights different strategies deemed to encourage males into childcare to increase the numbers is inappropriate and ineffective to the settings. On the other hand Peeters (2012) considers that a ‘hidden curriculum’ in education where the government documents used are aimed at the feministic approach, impacting on both the males and practitioners viewpoint of the way childcare and the gender-bias is