Wiebke Tennhoff

Men in early childhood education (ECE) are subjected to different discourses: while they are facing serious mistrust on the one hand, their otherness to the field is also interpreted as new and potentially innovative on the other hand. This article explores how male childcare workers create and take up different subject positions by drawing on these competing discourses in order to acquire a legitimate position as men in the female-dominated context of Swiss day-care centers. In constructing themselves as professionals they create a subject position that seems to move beyond the gender binary. Analysing the position of the professional in depth, the article first shows how this position is accomplished and then explores how gender unfolds between the lines by infusing professionalism with masculinity.

As childcare workers, men are in a contested position. On the one hand, they are in danger of being depicted as the pedophile; on the other, they are expected to bring something new and innovative to the thus-far female-dominated field. These men are experiencing ‘identity dissonance' and have to find ways to manage and facilitate legitimate subject positions as both childcare workers and as men. Applying a perspective of discursive positioning, this article discusses men's positioning practices in nine qualitative interviews conducted with male childcare workers in German-speaking Switzerland. We identified a total of six discursive practices that men engage in to manage identity dissonance and construct a legitimate subject position. We found that men are engaging in a greater variety of practices than have been discussed so far. Unlike findings from other studies of men in female-dominated occupations, ours do not point to a clear-cut typology with regards to hegemonic and alternative masculinities; instead they show a variety of practices that are mobilized throughout all interviews. => http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7b3d9hmI2zjCU7irm292/full