Developing and Sustaining a Gender-Balanced Early Childhood Teaching Profession

Abstract

There is a need for gender representation, equality, inclusion, and professional balance in the Early Childhood Education teaching profession just the way it is done in other professions. A mixed team in the provisions for young children has the potential to contribute to a new culture in childcare, with men and women dividing the tasks evenly between them. This is an important step towards equal opportunities for men and women, in which the future generation will also be involved. This study examined developing and sustaining a genderbalanced early childhood teaching profession. The explanatory sequential design of a mixedmethod approach was adopted for this study which involves the integration of quantitative and qualitative research approaches where the qualitative method is designed to further explain the quantitative results. In this study, the quantitative approach was explored more extensively than the qualitative one. The qualitative data was used in the subsequent interpretation for clarification of the results from the quantitative data analysis. In light of the findings from the study, it is recommended that the education workforce must challenge stereotypes and demonstrates gender equality opportunities for young children, and provides them with a more accurate reflection or example of the gender mix of their community. Training programmes, conferences, and school-toschool workshops will be organized by the researcher and other experts in the field of early childhood education to sensitize schools, educational recruiting firms, and institutions about the importance of developing and sustaining a gender-balanced early childhood teaching profession. Also, schools should encourage more participation of fathers in academic and non-academic activities so they can be more involved, and the children will in turn gain and experience substantial support.