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Men ONLY MAKE UP 3% of Preschool & Kindergarten Teachers! WHY ARE WE NOT SCREAMING ABOUT THIS?!?!?!
http://www.menteach.org/resour...
This MUST be some kind of conspiracy to keep MEN out of these jobs!!!!! We need action NOW!

Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?

But there are similiar pushes.

Acknowledging it just doesn't fit your pre-ordained conclusions.

Why isn't there a similar push to get men into kindergarten education or nursing?

Well, there are actually. There are advocacy groups like the American Assembly for Men in Nursing and there are loads of groups who think it would be good to encourage more men in teaching (e.g., look here).

Now, these groups don't tend to get as much media coverage. You're correct. And that you may legitimately wonder about. I don't think it's any mystery why you don't hear about such groups on Slashdot -- a piece on that stuff wouldn't get much response, but put up an article about women and tech, and you're bound to get hundreds of screaming comments (=pageviews = ad revenue).

But there ARE people out there who are concerned about getting men in other professions -- particularly because we have a shortage of good nurses and good teachers (though for teaching the biggest shortage areas are places like high school math and science, a place where a lot of men happen to have qualifications).

As to why we don't see a specific push for male kindergarten teachers, I think it has to do with a much more disconcerting gender bias these days, which is the suspicion of any contact between men and small children likely means "pedophile." Seriously, there was a daycare near where I lived a few years back that hired a man to work with the preschool kids, and I heard parents talking and wondering things like, "Why would a MAN want to spend so much time with such young kids??" Or even "I'm okay with him being around to help out, but he shouldn't be doing things like changing kids or taking them to the toilet alone!"

From my perspective, the current pedophile hysteria is a much more disturbing gender issue than a lot of stuff we talk about... and it's largely targeted at males. (Note that child abduction and abuse rates are much lower than in the past; we just tend to hear about them a lot more often nowadays. Also, note that stats show the vast majority of sexual abuse has always been targeted at underage teens. Those cases make up most "sex offenders." The number of true PEDOphiles who are going to abuse preschool kids is orders of magnitude smaller, yet that seems to be what most people worry about. What they should be concerned about is inappropriate contact with their teenage son or daughter.)

Anyhow, all of this concern about young kids and men reinforces traditional stereotypical gender roles within the family, who is the "caregiver" in the family, etc.., which ultimately influences stuff like the fact that most men don't want to do nursing. (Where would a man have the kind of nursing "caregiver" role modeled for him by another man, unless his dad was unusual in taking a more active role in the family or something?) So personally I'm not so much concerned about trying to shoehorn more men into nursing and kindergarten, but I am somewhat concerned about the societal implications of why there are so few.

And personally I'm really glad that my son had the privilege to have a male kindergarten teacher, who by all accounts seemed to be an excellent teacher and role model.

(I'm not going to comment on the whole women in tech thing, just noting that there are issues are men and careers too.)

I just want to know when they'll be producing Nurse Boy

You might be interested in contacting the American Association of Men in Nursing, to ask if you can assist with that endeavor.

and Teacher Man

You should probably contact the MenTeach organization, as well.

Now, I'll sit here patiently and wait for you to rabidly denounce these sexist gender warriors trying to oust women from their well-paid jobs and force men into roles that they've clearly expressed a preference against! Can't wait to see your outrage when you find out about these organizations!

Get back to me when there is outrage that men are only 10% of the population in teaching and nursing careers. Why aren't we channeling funding to make teaching and nursing careers appealing to male students?

Uh, there are organizations dedicated to fixing these problems -- like here or here or here.

You can argue that we don't provide enough attention to these issues, but there are plenty of people who care deeply about gender divides in these professions and are thinking hard about how to encourage more men to join.

Oh, because male students get to choose careers while minorities and female students are weak and unable to pursue the repressed interests that statistics say they must secretly harbor.

Or perhaps there are social stereotypes and biases that affect career divides. You may not be aware of this, but men encounter serious bias problems when they try to enter primary or preschool education (due to overblown pedophile scares), and while male nurses are becoming more common, they are almost universally derided in popular culture. (Remember Meet the Parents, anyone? That movie, and its sequels, were pretty much continuous riffing on the apparently ridiculous idea that a man should be satisfied in a nursing career.)

But elementary school and high school? Forget about it, that's approaching 100% women.

43% of high school teachers are male. And the number of men in teaching at the pre-school through high school level is growing. And growing is the opposite of "approaching zero", for future reference.

http://www.menteach.org/resour...

I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

Funny enough, there is a concern. MenTeach is about children's success. We want a diverse workforce, both men and women teachers, educating and caring for our children.

Of course, a problem is males are driven away from pre-school, elementary and middle school - it's not for lack of will, but there's an inherent distrust that a male teacher will rape all the female students that basically scare off the male teachers.

It's not for lack of interest or lack of skills, it's from an environment that basically does not allow men to teach.

And that's potentially the problem in IT - it's not the women are less skilled or less interested, it's that the men are somehow driving them away.

It's not a problem if it's simply "women don't want to be in IT" and the reason is "they're just not interested". That's something we can't change - you can't force girls to be interested in computers if they're not interested.

But if they ARE interested, and something else drives them away that we CAN control, then why don't we? Do we create a hostile atmosphere that makes women uncomfortable? Is there something that we don't do that they want us to do (e.g., shower daily)?

And that's what we really need to research. Perhaps 25% of women in STEM is fine, if 25% of them are interested in STEM fields and the 75% are in other areas, then that's perfect representation. It's a problem if say, 50% of women want to go into STEM and half of hose are somehow driven away from STEM, which means there's a problem we should fix.

Of course, this research is hard, and the answers will upset people - it may upset STEM workers because it can say stuff that they don't want to hear (e.g., "STEM workers are awfully misogynistic and should undergo gender sensitivity training as part of a regular ongoing training program"). Or it may upset women when it turns out they just aren't interested to begin with.

NBA is granted permission to be gender segregated by the US congress. I don't really approve, but it is the law.

We do have programs to work on gender ratios in Nursing, teaching, and Salons aren't exactly a career people aspire to, as if that were equivalent.

The difference is feminists don't come whining about people trying to make progress in these areas because they feel threatened. They welcome the break in stigmatized job roles.

MRAs, on the other hand, just love to pretend any attempt at social progress are an attempt to discriminate. And their whines pierce the vale of every single debate.

http://www.menteach.org/resour...

http://aamn.org/

http://www.oregoncenterfornurs...

Nursing schools started doing some outreach to men in the early 2000's. It's not as much as I'd like to see though and they really don't do a good job of advertising that they do so. I am seeing more male nurses, but it's still rare. I'm in "social services" myself, working with persons with disabilities, which is majority female...but more men there than in nursing or other types of "social services". But I'm GLBT and thusly not the "Typical male"

Strangely EMT's tend to be fairly diverse representative of society as a whole, at least here they are.

I definitely don't deny that males are underrepresented in elementary education - the number I see floating around most often is 18% to 20%. I am having a lot more trouble finding statistics on how male teachers are perceived, but since you guys say that this is a real problem, I believe you.

Does what I was saying about the reason that men are viewed as pedophiles not make sense to you all? It seems really straightforward to me, that since we believe women "should" care for children, we view men with suspicion.

By the way, http://www.menteach.org/about_... might be a resource you'd like to send money to. They look like they do good work promoting male teachers in elementary schools (though their website is a little outdated).