Being a man doesn’t guarantee a teaching job in New Zealand

Just because you play rugby, shave your face and have a deep voice doesn’t mean you'll get a job at a Taranaki primary school in New Zealand. Primary school principals contacted in Taranaki February 5, 2008, were in broad agreement a shortage of male teaching staff would not mean men got an easy run into primary teaching jobs.

The comments were in response to research which found many primary school principals wanted “real men” as role models in the primary sector and not “wussy, ineffectual or homosexual” males. The findings, to be published in the Gender and Education journal, were gleaned from the results of a survey first sent to 250 primary school principals in 2005 and come amid repeated calls to raise the number of male teachers in primary schools. Read the article in The Taranaki Daily News online.