Men in Caring Occupations


Book Description

Exploring how men in service and caring occupations (cabin crew, primary school teachers, nurses and librarians) both 'do' and 'undo' gender as they manage the potential mismatch between gender and occupational identity, this book engages with the key theoretical concepts of identity, visibility and emotions to examine men's experiences.




Exploring Career Trajectories of Men in the Early Childhood Education and Care Workforce


Book Description

The role of men in early childhood education and care is crucial for the future of all children growing up in a gender sensitive world. Achieving greater diversity and gender balance in the workforce has proved a challenging goal, despite concerted efforts on the part of individuals, institutions, and governments around the world. Many men remain reluctant to enter the profession, and once they choose this work many leave. This book explores how men in the field make their career decisions to remain in or leave the profession. Taking a broad international perspective and exploring the role of gender in these career decisions, contributors from around the globe unpack how gender concepts influence men’s career trajectories. Through their collaborative research, the team of 17 gender and early childhood researchers investigate various critical and relevant factors such as professionalisation, workplace environment, leadership, day to day interactions in the workplace, societal considerations, internal motivations, agency, masculinities, and critical moments in career decision making. Using cultural, racial, ethnic, and social class lenses to examine men’s career decisions over their professional lives, the contributors’ unique approach uncovers the complexity of the issue and offers evidence-based recommendations for policy both on national and local levels. These include practical suggestions to directors and managers who care about achieving a gender-mixed workforce. Accessible and enlightening, this is a unique resource for scholars, policymakers, and any others in the education community who support boosting the inclusion of men in early childhood education.




Exploring Career Trajectories of Men in the Early Childhood Education and Care Workforce


Book Description

"The role of men in early childhood education and care is crucial for the future of all children growing up in a gender sensitive world. Achieving greater diversity and gender balance in the workforce has proved a challenging goal, despite concerted efforts on the part of individuals, institutions, and governments around the world. Many men remain reluctant to enter the profession, and once they choose this work, many leave. This book explores how men in the field make their career decisions to remain in or leave the profession. Taking a broad international perspective and exploring the role of gender in these career decisions, contributors from around the globe unpack how gender concepts influence men's career trajectories. Through their collaborative research, the team of 17 gender and early childhood researchers investigate various critical and relevant factors such as professionalisation, workplace environment, leadership, day to day interactions in the workplace, societal considerations, internal motivations, agency, masculinities, and critical moments in career decision making. Using cultural, racial, ethnic, and social class lenses to examine men's career decisions over their professional lives, the contributors' unique approach uncovers the complexity of the issue and offers evidence-based recommendations for policy both on national and local levels. These include practical suggestions to directors and managers who care about achieving a gender-mixed workforce. Accessible and enlightening, this is a unique resource for scholars, policy makers, and any others in the education community who support a gender balance the inclusion of men in early childhood education"--




Still a Man's World


Book Description

Men who do "women's work" have consistently been the butt of jokes, derided for their lack of drive and masculinity. In this eye-opening study, Christine Williams provides a wholly new look at men who work in predominantly female jobs. Having conducted extensive interviews in four cities, Williams uncovers how men in four occupations—nursing, elementary school teaching, librarianship, and social work—think about themselves and experience their work. Contrary to popular imagery, men in traditionally female occupations do not define themselves differently from men in more traditional occupations. Williams finds that most embrace conventional, masculine values. Her findings about how these men fare in their jobs are also counterintuitive. Rather than being surpassed by the larger number of women around them, these men experience the "glass escalator effect," rising in disproportionate numbers to administrative jobs at the top of their professions. Williams finds that a complex interplay between gendered expectations embedded in organizations, and the socially determined ideas workers bring to their jobs, contribute to mens' advantages in these occupations. Using a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, Williams calls for more men not only to cross over to women's occupations, but also to develop alternative masculinities that find common ground with traditionally female norms of cooperation and caring. Until the workplace is sexually integrated and masculine and feminine norms equally valued, it will unfortunately remain "still a man's world." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995. Men who do "women's work" have consistently been the butt of jokes, derided for their lack of drive and masculinity. In this eye-opening study, Christine Williams provides a wholly new look at men who work in predominantly female jobs. Having conducted ex




Men, Masculinities and the Care of Children


Book Description

Sharing the care of children in families is increasingly becoming the norm in modern-day society as more mothers enter paid work and government campaigns endeavour to increase the number of men working in childcare. However, running alongside debates of gender imbalance in childcare, there has also been mounting anxiety from the media and public about the risks of child abuse, often perceived as being mostly perpetrated by men and calling for firmer regulation of men’s involvement with children. This book asks whether men’s care for children, both as fathers and practitioners, actually differs at all from the care provided by mothers and female carers? In what ways do men and concepts of masculinity need to change if they are to play a greater role in the care of children or are such societal perceptions based on outdated gender stereotypes? Bringing together cutting-edge theory, up-to-date research and current practice, this book analyses the role of both fathers and male professionals working with children and highlights the implications of this for future policy and practice. It also examines dominant notions of masculinity and representations of male carers in the media and popular culture, asking how our societal expectations may need to evolve if men are to play an equal role in the care of children as demanded by current policy and wider social developments.




The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy


Book Description

The transformation of women's lives over the past century is among the most significant and far-reaching of social and economic phenomena, affecting not only women but also their partners, children, and indeed nearly every person on the planet. In developed and developing countries alike, women are acquiring more education, marrying later, having fewer children, and spending a far greater amount of their adult lives in the labor force. Yet, because women remain the primary caregivers of children, issues such as work-life balance and the glass ceiling have given rise to critical policy discussions in the developed world. In developing countries, many women lack access to reproductive technology and are often relegated to jobs in the informal sector, where pay is variable and job security is weak. Considerable occupational segregation and stubborn gender pay gaps persist around the world. The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy is the first comprehensive collection of scholarly essays to address these issues using the powerful framework of economics. Each chapter, written by an acknowledged expert or team of experts, reviews the key trends, surveys the relevant economic theory, and summarizes and critiques the empirical research literature. By providing a clear-eyed view of what we know, what we do not know, and what the critical unanswered questions are, this Handbook provides an invaluable and wide-ranging examination of the many changes that have occurred in women's economic lives.




The Care of Men


Book Description

Authors Neuger and Newton Poling explore the various crises afflicting men today. Changing role expectations, gender expectations, and diminishing economic opportunities force men to find new foundations for self-esteem and identity.




For the Love of Men


Book Description

A nonfiction investigation into masculinity, For The Love of Men provides actionable steps for how to be a man in the modern world, while also exploring how being a man in the world has evolved. In 2019, traditional masculinity is both rewarded and sanctioned. Men grow up being told that boys don’t cry and dolls are for girls (a newer phenomenon than you might realize—gendered toys came back in vogue as recently as the 80s). They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners, they must be the romantic pursuers. This hasn’t been good for the culture at large: 99% of school shooters are male; men in fraternities are 300% (!) more likely to commit rape; a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than to be killed by enemy fire. In For the Love of Men, Liz offers a smart, insightful, and deeply-researched guide for what we're all going to do about toxic masculinity. For both women looking to guide the men in their lives and men who want to do better and just don’t know how, For the Love of Men will lead the conversation on men's issues in a society where so much is changing, but gender roles have remained strangely stagnant. What are we going to do about men? Liz Plank has the answer. And it has the possibility to change the world for men and women alike.







Career and Family


Book Description

In this book, the author builds on decades of complex research to examine the gender pay gap and the unequal distribution of labor between couples in the home. The author argues that although public and private discourse has brought these concerns to light, the actions taken - such as a single company slapped on the wrist or a few progressive leaders going on paternity leave - are the economic equivalent of tossing a band-aid to someone with cancer. These solutions, the author writes, treat the symptoms and not the disease of gender inequality in the workplace and economy. Here, the author points to data that reveals how the pay gap widens further down the line in women's careers, about 10 to 15 years out, as opposed to those beginning careers after college. She examines five distinct groups of women over the course of the twentieth century: cohorts of women who differ in terms of career, job, marriage, and children, in approximated years of graduation - 1900s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s - based on various demographic, labor force, and occupational outcomes. The book argues that our entire economy is trapped in an old way of doing business; work structures have not adapted as more women enter the workforce. Gender equality in pay and equity in home and childcare labor are flip sides of the same issue, and the author frames both in the context of a serious empirical exploration that has not yet been put in a long-run historical context. This book offers a deep look into census data, rich information about individual college graduates over their lifetimes, and various records and sources of material to offer a new model to restructure the home and school systems that contribute to the gender pay gap and the quest for both family and career. --