How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession?

 We see stereotypical gender norms play out everyday in society, but today we are specifically diving into the role gender, and diversity in general, affects the teaching profession. 

Throughout my years of public education, I have always had a majority of White, female teachers educating me. I feel as if this affects future generations of educators because it is what we are used to seeing in the classroom, and it leaves males to believe that teaching is strictly for women. This constructs a bias that only women can teach because we have been portrayed as nurturing, and the caregivers for children since the beginning of time, which are both very important traits to have in the classroom, but in no way do these projections suggest that men are not capable of this occupation as well. These early on-set opinions that men work the hard-labor jobs while the women are the "housekeepers" create a stigma in young developing minds, making them believe that they also have to follow in the same footsteps.

The inequality we have seen throughout history with men and women in the workforce has also drastically affected teaching and who we view as educators. In the PBS document "Only A Teacher," it takes us through the becoming of female educators in the classroom, where we see women only began teaching because the "promising" young men were being hired by more prestigious professions, and the Common School movement had begun for the fight against the public to integrate women in the education field. Even after being accepted by the public for female teachers, we still saw inequality in pay, because women were not "fit" or "educated" enough to teach others and their intellectual capabilities were doubted by many. Although the fight for equal pay between male and female educators was eventually resolved, I believe that the long running view that women are lesser than men heavily affects why we see such a difference in gender within the education system today.