“I’d been there maybe 20 minutes. [They said] ‘I’m sorry, we need to move you, I’ll explain in the corridor,’ and he explained that because I was a man, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to work in early years. Basically, ‘because of safeguarding concerns we’re worried particularly what the parents might think’ and stuff like that. So I ended up being moved to Year Four,” he explains.

There is a lot of stigmas out there for men who desire to take up nursery teaching. Stigma based on negative stories – children being at harm… men not being nurturing, men not being able to work with children that small and so on.

The nursery education sector is dominated by women. Of 400,000 early years educators, 98% are female.

Lack of Gender diversity in the early years education sector needs to be addressed. Some children out there may not have a male in their home, there’s a need to be balanced in early years education sector. We need to change gender stereotype by teaching our children gender equality through practical examples. When children tend to be nurtured by both men and women in their early years, they grow up to have a liberated mind without limitations based on gender.

It’s said employing more men would plug the gap in nearly 25,000 early year job vacancies and increase the number of male role models for children. It’s important they (children) see men are nurturing, and not just sporting heroes.

Who says women can’t be a software programmer?

It’s no secret that the tech industry has a gender diversity problem. The technology sector is dominated by men. Over 92% are males.

Here’s Sam’s story:

I am being told almost every single day at the university that girls shouldn’t be programmers. They can’t do it. They don’t have what it takes. It bothers me A LOT to be in a classroom that the teacher praises the guys in and if some girls make a mistake, its a joke. I am emotionally suffering from their attitude towards women programmers. Several teachers have told me that they would rather teach a class full of boys than have some girls in their class. I know they don’t mean me, but it still bothers me and I would like to do something about it.

There’s a lot of stigmas out there for women who desire to be a software programmer. Stigmas based on negative stories – female biology is not suited to coding… their hormonal cycles interfere with their ability to code, their boobs get in the way, their long eyelashes make it hard to see the screen and so on.

Lack of gender diversity in technology sector needs to be addressed. There is also evidence specifically from the open-source software community that there is bias against accepting code produced by women, despite the overall high quality of their contributions.

The campaign to promote women in science, technology, and engineering, apart from being the equitable and fair thing to do, it leads to a more coherent society, it’s good for individuals, families, communities, companies and, ultimately, the country.

The greatest threat to gender equality is the stereotype gender mentality. We need to change this mentality by giving both boys and girls, women and men the free will to express themselves and explore their talent without being judged by their gender.

Men and women deserve to choose their career regardless of gender

Discrimination against one’s career due to gender should be shunned.

#WeSayYesToGenderEqualityMovement
#SayNoToCareerLimitationBasedOnGender