to thibk this is sexist.

[Starbrite00]

My girls school have started swimming lessons, they requested parent helpers to supervise each week to get to pool and organise children in changing rooms.
The pool has a boys changing facility and a boys with individual cubicles.
My husband is training to be a teacher so volunteered has helper because I'm unable with due to me having a 6 month old baby.
My husband doesn't attend every week but is the only male volunteer or teacher.
I asked how its set up when he isn't able to supervise the boys, I was told a female teacher supervises the boys when a male teacher isn't available.
Thing is a male teacher isn't allowed to be in the girls changing rooms.
Is this not utterly sexist and the wring thing to do? Are they saying only males can be paedophiles and females cant?
Why is it ok for female staff to supervise 9 year old boys but no males in 9 year old girls?

I'm not sure about this to be honest.
Let's face it, paedophilia is overwhelmingly a male problem, we don't know the exact percentages, but to suggest it is equal among me. And women is ridiculous.
I'm not saying ALL men are paedophiles by the way, just that the majority of paedophiles are men.
Saying that, if a male teacher was to abuse children, aren't they just as likely to abuse boys as well? Again, don't know figures..
So I don't understand it in that context...
Unless the answer is to ban men working with children in any capacity (which is obviously ridiculous) then I don't know.
I think YANBU, just not for the reasons you think...

And again, not saying women can't be paedophiles, but even in the high profile cases, they always seem to be acting in conjunction with men?

Presumably the preference is for a female to supervise the girls and a male to supervise the boys.

As your husband is the only male volunteer I would think it strange for him to supervise the girls when there are plenty of females available to do so

I used to supervise boys in a communal changing room after swimming and was surprised at how unselfconscious they were. It was as if they thought I was their mum. Maybe kids are just generally more used to women in carer type roles at this age though obviously this isn't always the case. We did have a rule that no volunteers or temp staff supervised boys or girls.

It sounds like complete common sense to me that if there are more women helpers and the boys need supervising then it seems logical.

I don't think it is sexism.

And as someone pointed out, if there are not men to supervise the boys then it could end up that all the boys, or even all the kids miss out, on swimming. Maybe it is a feature of our society that many more men will be at work full time so not able to help with daytime activities - but I don't think that is what you meant, Starbrite00.

Yeah I had to do that on my 1st teaching job. The boys weren't bothered.

Most child sexual abuse is committed by men; studies show that women commit 14% to 40% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse

Being wiki, I'm not 100% convinced but it's the only stats I can reliably find that isn't biased as there is little reporting.

If these stats are to be trusted and due to probabilities that the majority in education are female, then using the term '98% of men are abusers' is a little disingenuous in this scenario no?

I agree with pp that it's societal norms being played out here though, most boys at this age will still be happy getting undressed in front of females, a couple of years older is generally when it becomes an issue for boys IMO

Phantom, you've misread IUSe's post - she said "on the same floor...but in their own room" ie, they put all the girls on the first floor and all the boys on the 2nd floor or whatever.

Most abuse by teachers is by women though is it not?

No mcgiblets it is not.

I can't quite fathom where you would get that idea from? In fact I can only conclude you don't think that at all.

Sadly, there are a small number of cases where women are responsible and of course these must be taken very seriously, but the idea they are the majority is very bizarre.

This data is quite old (1999). It clearly it says...

"According to the Justice Department's most recent statistics, sex offenses are still very much a man's crime. Female sex offenders are very rare: 96 percent of the sex assaults reported in 1999 involved male perpetrators."

I can't verify it and I am off to bed but any search of the internet will confirm what everyone knows, that most sexual abuse of children happens at the hands of men.

If you were including other abuses, such as emotional abuse and neglect, as in by parents, then I am sure the figures may look different but that is not the case relevant here.

abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92325

My experience is based on seeing thousands of pictures and videos of "child porn" for my job, so my experience of the percentage of abusers that are men comes from that. It is possible that men are more likely to record their abusive behaviour, so contact abuse stats may be different.

I can only talk from my experience, which may differ from other child protection workers.

So the "conservative estimate" that 98% of abuse is by men appears to be an "over estimate" the percentage of female abusers thought to be less than 2% just doubled?

I think...
If there is no need for young girls to be supervised by a man (I.e. Plenty of women available to supervise them) then why should a man want to supervise them.
Are you sure the rule is "men can't supervise girls" or is it wherever possible supervision should be by people of the same gender?

Rigid rules would lead to kids of either gender missing out if there weren't men or weren't women available on any given day.

The Lucy Faithful Foundation suggests that 20% of sex offenders are female.

I said abuse by teachers. Where is the data for that?

You also need to adjust the Wiki figures because the page also says that more than twice as many offenses are reported against girls than against boys. So 96% of those who abuse girls are men and almost 20% of girls report being abused. Between 14-40% of those that abuse boys are women and less than 10% of boys report being abused.

Say 100000 boys and 100000 girls
19700 girls abused, 18912 by men, 788 by women
7900 boys abused, 5767 by men, 2133 by women (midpoint of 27%)

Men: 24679, Women: 2921
89% of abuse by men and 11% by women

So at a population level both boys and girls are more at risk from men, but girls are far more at risk from men than boys are. So if women are in short supply, girls should be supervised by women and boys by men.

I would suspect however that the decision isn't so much about the real risk and more about the perception of risk (ie 'what would the parents think'), plus a feeling that the risk might be offset by the view that male role models are a good thing for boys and to be encouraged.

Alternatively the school just have a traditional mindset and haven't really thought much at all.

Also it's quite difficult to track the source data that the Wiki piece is using, lots of references of references, some repetition and I think it's quite likely that the numbers might come from different sources too.

Imagine it the other way round:

Imagine a school where all the teachers are male and most of the volunteers are too. Every now and then they have a woman help out.

Whenever the woman helps out she is put in the female changing rooms. Never with the boys because it is a luxury to have a female helper and it makes sense for her to be with the girls. When she isn't there a male teacher supervises the girls - not ideal as 9 year olds if either sex are entering puberty, but its that or no swimming.

See it's not sexist it is sensible.

The bigger sexist issue is why are there so few male teachers and helpers.

But the woman was only going in boys' changing room because there was no other option. There is no need for the male teacher to go in with the girls.

Also it is true that vast majority of abusers are male.

(actually vast majority of all criminals if we get down to it but that's another thread)

"Something like 98% of child sex offenders are male. That is a HUGE number, so let us not pretend women are as likely to abuse children as men. Men are FAR more likely."

A lot of sexist and racist cliches have a grain or even a boulder of truth behind them, does this make it alright to do them? Presumably not.

...except I think that child abuse is too important a topic, too grievous an atrocity, to risk just to maintain the fantasy bubble that some people aren't more likely to abuse children.

For me, I think protecting children has to come ahead of any consideration of "isms" against adults - at the point you are placing a real child in harm's way to uphold an ideology or make a political point, you have completely left the path of wisdom.

We in the UK have recently seen, if the original BBC reports were to be believed at least 2,000 or so reported cases of child rape, abuse and murder go largely facilitated and swept under the carpet by local social services and police forces - ostensibly in the name of "not fostering an ism", I think most people who have had any contact with it would say... why does discrimination even slightly weigh up against the safety of a child from abuse, and it is way past time to decide it can't.