It is not unknown that there is a gender imbalance in the OSHC industry, that the ratio of male to female educators is very much skewed towards female.
But why? I wanted to write a piece on promoting males in the OSHC industry and really thought this would be best coming from a male OSHC educator themselves and from their perspective.
Calum Waldegrave, a long time OSHC Educator, took the time out of his day to write a piece on his thoughts on men working in OSHC:
“In a world where gender equality is at the forefront of world news today, the childcare sector still heavily weighs in favour of women educators. It can be hard to find men willing to work in the industry. We have always been a centre that will search for quality educators of all genders as we believe this is the way forward to benefit all our children.
Come in on any morning or afternoon and you will see a fair percentage of our educators are male. Whilst we don’t have a 50/50 split, out of our current team, 12 out of the 26 educators are male. We aren’t here to fill a quota. We know that gender isn’t binary. But a diverse workforce is one that will be more effective.
We want our children to see men in caring roles and that it isn’t just something a woman does.
Whilst you may see and equate that our male educators love to be outdoors (have you seen the handball courts lately!?), you will always see our team doing the same jobs. Reading, cooking, playing with dress ups; are all part of what we do. We want to break down any of those preconceived ideas that certain activities are for certain genders.
I love where I work and I love that we attract all kinds of people to work with us. It’s these small things that we do that pushes our centre into the right direction and future.”
