Games for equality in care work

The Early Care and the Role of Men project has produced a national study Masculinities and Caring: A needs analysis of gender-sensitive education in early childhood education and an international report Caring masculinities in early childhood education and care services and primary schools in Europe. Both reports provided the state of the art and needs analysis in the field of gender sensitive and (self)reflective pedagogical practice that would work towards reducing gender stereotypes, hierarchies and power relations in the earliest stage of identity formation, with a focus on boys and care work.

Among others, both studies highlighted that gender-sensitive pedagogical tools such as toys, games, visual images, etc. for pre-school and kindergarten are extremely rare. Those that are available mostly address girls and their competences in technical and science activities. However, there is very little focus on alternative images of masculinity and on the relationship between masculinity and care work. To fill this gap, in collaboration with illustrator Ivan Mitrevski, we have developed a set of puzzles and a workbook with playful tasks that in a sparkling way visualise care work as human connectedness, empathy and solidarity. For children, especially boys, they promote the perception of care work as a gender-neutral and socially important field, and open up spaces for imagination of egalitarian and non-hegemonic models of masculinity.