Will a lightbulb go on for Australia? (doubt it)

[99bottlesofkombucha]

The news in Melbourne for the past week has been dominated by the news of a male childcare worker being charged with abuses against multiple children, and he's worked at 20 childcares in the west and north, some of them being multiple different childcares from a chain. Quite a few articles have raised the increased risk of males in childcare, and one chain has announced men will no longer be able to change nappies and toilet children. I have no idea whether that restriction is legal, and am not totally decided on how I feel about it, but wonder if anyone will realise that if they put this in place they are only restricting the nappy change and toileting role to staff who identify as female? I do have children in childcare in Melbourne.

I really think this discussion is only about care roles and vulnerable people ie babies and children. There is no extension of this argument to say only men should be allowed to work in other industries /roles.

just to be clear, the announcement made by a childcare was men not changing nappies, not no men working there.

That’s right. No need for the rudeness, though.

That's an interesting point, and I can see that. If there is this one time of work where sex is inherently an issue, who is to say there aren't others? And maybe others that feminists would not like. Something maybe like military combat roles?

On the other hand, if it is true that some roles are like that, maybe that is just something we may have to live with.

There's a more balanced and locally grounded discussion happening on an actual Australian forum, if anyone is interested:

Should males be prohibited from working with very young children?

I won't get into the implications some people seem to be dancing around here, but I think we need to be careful not to blur lines between safeguarding, sex and discriminatory assumptions

Whether it’s done by law or not, any parent with any common sense will vote with their feet and not place their pre school child in the care of a male who has not been extremely carefully vetted and who is not continuously monitored. This is not possible in early childhood centres so err on the side of caution and avoid the ones who employ men. Unless you personally and intimately know everything about the man involved. In families this is at least possible. Creepy uncles or grandfathers can be quietly ring fenced away from young children. Male partners should be monitored by mothers (though women often fail in this duty). Sexual abuse is so rife in society because women are told, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to give men the benefit of the doubt, over and over again. Hundreds of thousands of pedophile men became priests the world over to gain access to children. Now the spotlight is on priests they’ve slithered over into new ideologies like TWAW or feminism of the ‘babies need male teachers and excluding men from nappy changing is sexist’ variety. We are being used. A man who wants to change nappies and clean up baby puree for minimum wage all day in an almost inevitably understaffed early childhood centre when just about any other industry with similar entry barriers will pay him at least twice as much for half the bother should be regarded with some skepticism at the very least. If you want to ‘be kind’ and are so convinced that your preschooler is desperately in want of male role models, even at the risk of being molested, go ahead. But you’ve been warned.

https://theconversation.com/childcare-sexual-abuse-is-mostly-committed-by-men-failing-to-recognise-that-puts-children-at-risk-260292

Article here discussing the issue. More needs to be done to protect children from abuse generally because there’s been some horrific cases of physical abuse from female childcare workers(And some sexual) but I do think it wise to acknowledge that men are a greater risk than women.

All interesting that other staff may be less willing to report their concerns about male workers for fear of being seen as discriminatory.

A reminder again that these steps are legally useless in Australia as after Tickle v Giggle, Australian sex is changeable.

You likely have a point. Commercial childcare is the problem rather than who is employed. A commercial provider is after maximising profits not caring for children. So, community childcare? State run and regulated (and well-paid) childcare, which is therefore subsidised out of tax? Encourage parents to take long parental leave with children under 5?
Any other model than commercial childcare has to admit that making profits for businesses is not the be-all and end-all of an economy. The economy is for the people, to provide that which they need, not the other way round. We need to learn this!

Well, rights and wrongs aside, it's impossible for as long as Australia doesn't know what a woman is and thinks sex is changeable and men can become women to get a women-only job.