Male performance in childcare－A new script of gender roles

• Main Authors: Wan-Ling Huang, 黃琬玲
• Other Authors: Hsiao-Chuan Hsia
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44473208086947730429

碩士 === 世新大學 === 社會發展研究所(含碩專班) === 101 === While Taiwanese society has gone through various changes over the course of history and diversified role development, early childhood educators and caregivers are only 1-2% male preschool staffs or teachers. Clearly, traditional gender norms based on patriarchal culture are still followed; women are still the primary caregivers for young children. Under the restrictions of dual gender framework and conventional daily gender work division, it’s difficult for men to cross over the traditional gender boundary. Attempts to overturn caregiver stereotype roles with innovative early childhood education have encountered many obstacles. Based on concepts from Erving Goffman's Dramaturgical Theory, Total Institutions, Frame Analysis, and The Management of Spoiled Identity, this report portrays how individuals’ behaviors oscillate between assimilating and rejecting the traditional practices of early childhood care/education. This article describes how male workers participating in early childhood education and care-giving works are of the minority including gender role transformation, dual gender power struggles, ambiguous roles and characteristics, and most distinctively "sexuality's scrip" in traditional gender structure. In this paper, the author interviewed several male educators and caregivers, documenting their continuous negotiation and cultural transition, based on repeated experiences of gendering / de -gendering / re-gendering, and how to reconstruct a diversified gender environment with more male characteristics for early childhood educators and caregivers.