"It happened right at the birth of childcare because before that it was predominantly kindergartens," he said.
"It was like two steps forward, and one step backwards."
An early childhood teacher at the time, Ballantyne said it was a difficult phase for the industry as a whole.
"It was quite a hard thing for a lot of people to deal with, and a lot of guys felt under threat," he said.
He said there's always been an elephant in the room, and even now, male teachers feel they need to justify their right for being there whereas women do not.
Ballantyne said New Zealand's early childhood sector should be representative of communities.
"So that all children growing up in their communities can see people like themselves, but at the moment our early childhood centres don't do that"
"For the life of me, I am bemused about what little action is happening in terms of promoting [males in teaching]", he said.
He said he finds it ironic that the New Zealand Government is talking about female representatives around board tables.
"Early childhood is one of the most gendered professions in the country, and yet no one is prepared to admit there is an issue."
Open Polytechnic Regional Lecturer, Early Childhood Education, Derek Hartley agreed the impact on the industry was almost immediate.
Hartley said he was called to a meeting soon after Ellis was first accused. He says there were around 30 men from Christchurch's early childhood sector present.
Six months later, he said 12 male teachers turned up to the meeting, while that number dropped even further, to just six, within a year.
Hartley said the Shadow Minister at the time, Chris Hipkins, attended a meeting about males in early education in 2014 and was open to supporting getting more males into the industry.
"It was basically about, do we look at scholarships? Or do we look at somehow how the government could support men or maybe employing men to promote it as a viable career for males? He was very open to that but, of course, nothing ever came of it," he said.
"And that is where the door shut."
Hartley said he'd like to see some of the ideas explored again, on the back of the Supreme Court judgment in the Ellis case.
"The Government aren't doing anything at the moment to promote or encourage males to get involved in ECE," he said.
"What's the answer? You probably need to create roles for people who need to go into schools and someone can say 'hey tell me about this ECE stuff, what's it all about?'"
The Ministry of Education refused to comment on the Peter Ellis case itself.
"We do not have any comment about the impact of Mr Ellis's conviction or the Supreme Court's decision," it said in a statement.
The Ministry of Education did acknowledge it is important men see themselves in any promotions of teaching as a career.
The Ministry's Hautū (Leader) Education Workforce Anna Welanyk said the recently launched 'Become a Teacher' recruitment campaign is all about promoting teaching as a career to all New Zealanders.
"Our marketing is targeted at all genders and we tested the concepts with groups of men as we developed the campaign," she said.
"An ECE dedicated campaign will be launched in early 2023. This campaign will be informed by research to understand barriers to entering ECE ITE for groups, including men."
