Men’s career choices in early childhood education and care – an embodied intersectionality perspective

ABSTRACT The workforce in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is highly gender-segregated with a majority of women. Gender-sensitive professionalization is regarded a way to recruit more men, but there is a call for more empirical research into perspectives that combines bodily aspects of gender, professionalization and men`s career choices. Applying the notion of embodied intersectionality, this article analyses narrative data from Nordic men with varying experience with formal ECEC education and work. It explores how embodied and intersectional experiences of ECEC work and professionalism emerge in the narratives and how embodied and intersectional experiences link to the men’s choices of entering, staying, or leaving ECEC. Such experiences appear in the narratives related to entry to and exit from formal ECEC education to parental cooperation and to professional play practices. The findings are discussed in relation to the professionalization of ECEC, professional exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms and debates about ECEC professionalization.