The profession that I am planning to enter upon graduation is that of an elementary school teacher. Our textbook states that 97 percent of pre-secondary school teachers are women, making this a female-dominated field. To become a teacher according to the US Department of Labor Statistics, one has to be licensed granted by the State Board of Education or a licensure advisory committee. Requirements for a license vary by state, but all states require a Bachelors degree and completion of an approved teacher training program, as well as supervised practice teaching. Some states also require a Masters degree in education in a specified time period after beginning teaching. A majority of the states require applicants to be tested for competency in basic skills, as well as exhibiting proficiency in their subject area. After receiving a license, one can begin teaching. Teaching conditions usually vary from school to school, such as older school buildings, or use of technology. Teaching can be a very stressful field. This stress comes from the kids’ behavior and motivation or the heavy workloads. The US Department of Labor Statistics also says that teachers can develop stress due to accountability standards; meaning they are expected to produce students that exhibit satisfactory performance on standardizing tests in core subjects. All of this information I have found on the US Department of Labor’s statistics website: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm#top.
The National Education Association, http://www.nea.org/student-program/about/state.html, provides state by state information on teaching, such as the salary, job outlook and certification requirements. For Virginia a teacher just starting their career makes an average of $33, 815 where as the average teacher salary is $43,823. I searched the internet but I could not really find differences in salary based on gender, specifically for teaching. The national average salary for elementary school teachers is $47,897(http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_ED03000010.html) compared to a secondary school teachers median salary of $41,400 to $45,970 (http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/739/Teacher-Secondary-School.html). The US Department of Labor statistics website also says that in most cases teachers can raise their salary by coaching sports or working with kids in extracurricular activities, receiving a Masters degree or nation certification, as well as teaching summer school.
Our textbook has divided teaching into two categories: elementary/middle school and secondary. The book also gives the percent of women in each field. The elementary/middle school teachers are 96.7 percent women and secondary school teachers are 54.8 percent women. Although I could not find separate gender salaries for teachers I would think that in some cases a man’s salary could be higher in secondary school. I think this because of a teacher’s ability to raise salary by coaching sports. At my high school most of our coaches were men, even in many of the female sports. I think as a culture we generally stereotype men as athletes so we place them into coaching positions as well. For example, at my high school our varsity girls basketball coach was a man and our jayvee girls basketball coach was a female. I feel that both coaches were equally qualified, but the woman got placed in the jayvee position where the man got the varsity position. For the most part however, I can only speculate that salaries in this profession are for the most part equal.
Even though salaries are pretty much equal, women advancing into higher positions in this field are, I feel very gender biased. I say this based on what I have seen in my own high school. We have always had 1 principal and three assistant principals. Every principal that I can remember has been a male in my high school and two of the three assistant principals have been male as well. I have also heard that they only reason that we have one female assistant principal is because she has to deal with all the female issues. One of the assistant principals is also our athletic director, who is a male as well. Our superintendent of schools is also a male and our county school board is made up of mostly males. I feel that our culture’s stereotypes of males and females are the reason for this. The gender constructions that we have learned since birth tell us that men make better leaders than women. We see more men in leadership roles than we do women, so it makes sense for us to see men as typically better leaders, even if this in not the truth. So by placing a male in an administrative position in a school, we assume that he could do a better job than a woman could. Even though this in not the truth, I feel that this is why we see more men in higher positions in the school systems than we do women.
One aspect that I have found interesting in researching this career is the need for teachers in the maths and sciences. I think that this is attributed to the gender construction as well. I think that there is such a need for teachers in these subjects because of the lack of women in working in occupations that deal with math and sciences. These fields are traditionally male dominated fields where as teaching is a female dominated field. Since this is the case, we do not see many women in the maths and sciences, so we do not see the teachers in the maths and sciences either. Basically the professions of teaching and occupations in math/science are I suppose a Catch-22.
I think that we see more women in teaching because, as the book says, it is a pink collar job. Working with and teaching kids are an extension of a women’s role in the household. In the household women perform most of the work raising the children than the men do. Women, first of all, give birth to the children and are the ones that do most of the feeding, changing, and taking care of the child. Even though in today’s world we see more men helping more with raising children, we still think of the children being a woman’s first priority. Since society considers children a “woman thing,” we see more women teaching in schools than men. I feel that we learn more in elementary school than we do in secondary school, so it makes sense to me that 96.7 percent of the teachers in elementary school are women. This is because learning in elementary school is an extension of the development at home, which we also see as more of a “woman thing.”
I think a good comparison of women and men’s roles in the schools is that of roles in the home. As I stated before, we think taking care of children is a woman’s job in the home. We have also been taught by the gender construction that a man’s job in the home is to kind of oversee everything. I think that this is a good analogy for the schools. We see more men in the administrative position because they are seen as the “fathers” who oversee the “home.” Where as we see more women the teaching positions because they are the “mothers” whose main priority is to take care of and teach the children. I think that it is hard for women to break into the administrative fields, because we view them like this. I do not think it is the fact that women do not want to break into this field, but it is possible that they find it more rewarding working with the students rather than working with the teachers teaching the students.
While researching, I did not find any women’s organizations in the teaching field, although I did find that there were some organizations for female teachers on college campuses. I think that the reason that I could not find any women’s organizations is because teaching is a female dominated field, so any teaching organization that is set up, will be a female dominated field. I could also not really find any information on improvements organizations have made to make women more equal to men in the teaching profession. I also think that the only aspect that needs to change about the school systems is to see more women in administrative positions. I feel that the only improvement I can make when I enter this field is just to show that I am just as smart and capable of being a leader as a man is. Also, to show that a woman can be successful in an administrative position and can deal with more problems other than the “female problems.”