Pedagogical professionalism and gender in daycare

In the Netherlands, moral panic about boys' education and behavioural problems has led to public concern about the almost exclusively female environment in which young boys in daycare find themselves. Female daycare workers are attacked for creating a feminized culture in daycare centres. In this article we explore the extent to which these media stereotypes about female workers in daycare coincide with their own ideas and experiences of their work. In 2004 we conducted a (preliminary) study involving more than 80 childcare students in an intermediate vocational training programme in Social Pedagogic Work to qualify them to work in daycare centres in the Netherlands. The results of the study do not support the binary stereotypical representation of women's professional and personal characteristics as an adequate picture of these trainees' opinions of their work in early childhood care.