Gender & Teamwork
Gender sensibilisation
Male educators are mostly seen as making a valuable contribution to pedagogical work in kitas by both kita managers and the other educators. However, women and men do not always work together in kita teams completely without conflict at all times. In cases where a male colleague joins a female dominated team, the result is often that gender-specific subjects and questions which until then tended to play a subordinate role suddenly become a matter of conscious debate.
Gender-typical expectations
- Foto: Tim Deussen
If men and women work together within a kita team, the pedagogical staff have a tendency to carry out gender-specific activities. Male educators are often made responsible for manual tasks and mainly do sport and physical activities, and more rough and tumble activities with the children. The male educators also tend to allow the children to behave in a more venturous manner than is the case with their female colleagues. Male trainees and educators are sometimes also confronted with gender-typical expectations from their colleagues and the children, which are bothersome for them.
Gender sensibilisation during training
As the recruitment of men should bring with it a qualitative advancement in the pedagogical work of educators, it is important that vocational and advanced training institutions as well as the bodies that finance kitas and kitas themselves initiate and evaluate “gender sensibilisation” processes.
Gender sensibilisation means,
- developing a reflective view towards gender-related contexts
- exchanging ideas about and reflecting on attitudes about, prejudices against and expectations of the other sex
- analysing and, if necessary, changing gender-typical allocations of activities at work as well as gender-typical ways of working and communicating
- developing ways towards gender-conscious pedagogy together.
The European research project, gender loops, among others, has developed materials to help people become more aware of gender issues in educational processes.
