Men are a clear under-represented group within early years education and childcare, and discriminatory practice is commonplace. Yet the UK’s poor record on male-inclusive recruitment and retention in the sector has been allowed to continue for well over a quarter-century, and there has been little effort from successive Governments to address these challenges.

This problem is not unique to the UK, but our lack of energy and investment in seeking to solve it sits in stark contrast to the efforts we make to address the lack of gender diversity in male-dominated workforces (e.g. initiatives to encourage more women and girls into STEM careers and the military). Even when faced with an ongoing recruitment crisis and a clear need for workforce expansion to support its proposed increase in childcare provision, the Sunak Government failed to include a clear male-focused element within its early years recruitment campaign.

Clear, gender-differentiated strategies to improve male recruitment and retention could help increase early years educator and childminder numbers, and at the same time demonstrate a commitment to challenging the belief that caring and education are ‘women’s work’. But they need to be well designed and funded.

What could be done to increase recruitment?

Despite decades of progress towards gender equality in UK homes and wider society,  early years education and childcare remains effectively ‘women’s work’. Latest official data shows that only 2% of early years educators and 3% of childminders are male (Source: DFE Childcare & Early Years Provider Survey, December 2023). 

Gender-blind recruitment practices have done nothing to challenge these depressingly familiar statistics, and research suggests that less than a fifth of early years settings have taken specific actions to improve their gender diversity. 

In recent years we have seen no leadership from DFE to require or support more progressive approaches.  

We could and should be taking positive action to show that men are needed to participate in the early childhood education and care workforce. There is much to learn from Norway, whose ECEC workforce is around 10% male (and where evidence is emerging of particular benefits to men participating in this important work); and, in the UK, from the ESRC GenderEYE study, MITEY campaign/network, Male Childcare & Teaching Jobs, and London Early Years Foundation.

A well-planned and resourced, national strategic campaign to provide men with targeted information about early years careers is an obvious place to start. 

Fathers – and especially those with older children – could prove a fruitful target subgroup. Men’s involvement as hands-on caregivers to their own children has increased dramatically over recent decades, and accelerated during the Covid19 lockdowns. Recent ONS data shows that 7.3% of men with dependent children are either unemployed (2%) or economically inactive (5.3%). Many if not most of these men will have substantial experience of looking after young children; some of them may be interested in building on that to develop a new career as a childminder.

Data suggests that as the age of their youngest dependent child rises, men are more likely to join the ‘economically inactive’ group: so, 9.8% of men whose youngest dependent child is aged 16-18 are economically inactive, for example. At this stage in life, fathers may be less focused on high earnings, and those with work experience in other sectors may be open to considering a career change, if the messaging of a targeted campaign was explicitly male-inclusive, and appropriate, gender-sensitive support provided.

The Fatherhood Institute has considerable knowledge and expertise in this area, through its unique role as the UK’s fatherhood research and training organisation, and the MITEY campaign/network, developed in 2017 (and which received £30,000 in funding from the DFE to support the creation of guides, case studies and a national conference). Hundreds of settings across the UK have signed up to the MITEY Charter and downloaded our guides, but without funding we have been unable to provide them with further support since 2020. We have training courses and audit tools ready to use, and a deep knowledge of ‘what works’ in reaching men and fathers, to help kickstart new approaches. In 2022, we collaborated with PACEY on some work to promote childminding and other early years careers via Job Centres.

What could be done to improve retention?

Research shows that men who work in early years education and childcare are more likely to leave the sector, and change roles within it, than their female counterparts (for more on this see the ESRC-funded GenderEYE study). 

Many such men report negative and gender stereotypical attitudes and behaviours among colleagues and parents; a sense of professional isolation; and discriminatory practice (for example managers taking them away from intimate care duties in response to parental objections). Again, much more could be done to address all this – including, for example, the following:

• a public-facing campaign to promote the benefits of male participation in this work
• a nationally coordinated support network for men in the sector
• training for early years education leaders/managers and practitioners, and
• Ofsted inspections that give gender diversity and inclusion in early years education the attention it deserves. 

We remain hopeful that at some point our policymakers will take seriously the potential for ‘the other 50%’ of the adult population to be part of a brighter future for the UK’s ailing early years sector. The time for action is long overdue.