Partners or managers? Mothers or bosses? Conflicting Identities of Israeli Daycare Managers

This paper is based on a study about managers of daycare centres in Israel, which provide early childhood education (ECE) for the ages of birth to three years old. It focused on the daycare managers’ professional and female identities. On the background of the relatively low educational standards in the centres, the study strives to make the managers’ voices heard. The study which applied a qualitative methodology, reveals that although the participants’ female identity is embedded in their professional identity and their daily routine, they are unaware of it. Two contexts are discussed: the managers’ relationships with the staff and the parents, and the managers’ manoeuvring between the organizational-economic constraints, which affect their professional and female identity substantially. These findings are of importance since they project on a population hardly studied previously and give it a voice. On a broader level, they might help policymakers dealing with ECE.