Celebrating International Women’s Day in Early Education Services

There’s a popular analysis by the New York Times stating that there are more Johns at the helm of the biggest companies than there are females. A similar research was prompted in Australia, and we found out that there were more Peters who chair or are CEOs of ASX 200 than there were females. (26 vs 23 to be precise). Well my friend Laura Youngson recently reminded me that we are actually moving backwards, now less than 10 women occupy these roles in ASX 200 companies. But in a female dominated industry like early education services, surely this wouldn’t be the case?

Check out this fantastic tweet from 2017:

97% of the industry is female but if you look at CEOs, CFOs, COOs and board members of early childhood organisations are there only 3% of men in those roles? Not even close.

When International Womens Day was first celebrated in 1909, it was to focus on women’s economic and social progress that needed to happen. In all these years of celebrations, we have a great opportunity to reflect on those progress in a setting with not only a high representation of women but also one that involves the education and development of future women and men.

But what does that have to do with children? It has everything to do with children, and more importantly the kind of women and men they will grow up to be. If we don’t explore these issues in appropriate ways with young children, then we aren’t being completely honest about our progress.

This day should be a day of reflection on how we can go about achieving women’s rights in the things we already do everyday with our children

It should be a day to think about what is happening for young girls as they grow older — especially when we work with both young girls and boys. Educators in this industry should be reminded of their sense of purpose as they go on their roles everyday. We should not be guilty of saying that children are too young to be having questions about gender equality. It is especially ironic as the ECEC Learning and Development Framework (which looks at principles and practices that we are meant to embody) include high expectation of children and equity & diversity. Our expectations of children are robust enough that we should say these things aren’t too tricky to speak to children about.

We need to stop summarising things because the issue is too big or too complex to explain to children. Nothing is, it’s how we have those conversations and that’s on us. Discussions of equity and fairness is very important to have. Only with such conversations can we assist young girls to understand that they will probably still be struggling when they grow up, but that does not mean they and other girls and boys can’t acknowledge or do things to prevent such discrimination from a young age.

An easy way to start is through audits of resources to see if resources are representing woman in the right way. A good start would be to think about the language we use when it applies to gender. How is the language that we use with your children perpetuate stereotypes? From that we can start having more meaningful conversations about the issue of equity.

On this IWD, my one wish for all women is to be more willing to take on opportunities. There may be a myriad of reasons why not more talented women are moving up but we should not be less likely to put ourselves forward for leadership roles because of these reasons. Meeting job description is often one way we often sell ourselves short. Women only apply for positions when they meet 100% of the qualifications listed in the job posting, as opposed to men, who would apply if they only meet 60%. We need to change that. Women were also much less likely to apply for a job if they had been rejected for a similar job in the past. The implications are not trivial, because rejection is a routine part of corporate life and even more common if you are female. Giving up after the first few tries is just not something we can afford to do.

So, is it worth it to act when you are 60% confident? Yes. That is how we can lead change ourselves.