How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession?
Gender affects the teaching profession in many ways. Two of which are the roles that sexism and gender identity play in the profession.
Despite the fact that teaching is a woman dominated field, men make up the majority of the leadership positions. According to Tanya Tarbutton, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Concordia University Irvine, "within K–12 systems, women made up approximately 75% of the teaching force and held approximately 21% of superintendent positions" as of 2008. These numbers are obviously completely disproportionate which is because of the deeply rooted sexism within our society that makes it harder for women to be seen as leaders. This isn't the only way sexism affects teaching though. Because education is a woman dominated field it is also less valued. People tend to place less significance on fields of work that are mostly women because people don't take women as seriously in the work place. One effect of this is that these fields also tend to get paid less. According to the World Economic Forum "as women start moving into traditionally male-dominated positions, the pay falls."
Another way gender affects teaching is gender expression. Many students may not fall within the typical binary of gender (examples being non-binary or transgender) and teachers need to know how to make the classroom a safe and accepting environment for them. Students' education should not suffer due to their gender identity and they should not be treated any differently, especially negatively, by students or teachers.
Sources:
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1250147.pdf
Hello Alissa! I really enjoyed reading your blog post this week. it was clear that you put a lot of thought into the question. i hate reading about the statistics of how even though teaching is generally a female dominant field, only a small fraction of the higher positions are held by women. However, I did not know that "as women start moving into traditionally male-dominated positions, the pay falls." I had only heard that teaching doesnt get paid enough, but never really been given a reason why. I don't know what can bring these wages back up, but I know that something needs to be done, and people should be talking about this, before there are no more teachers simply because they cannot afford to live on a teacher salary.
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