Women In Education, A Rant

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Words by Riley Pepper

One of the main things that has been playing on my mind is how many men are principals within schools when teaching is a femaledominated field. When I asked someone why a certain man was being groomed to become principal at the school I was placed at, they replied “oh well, it’s for representation as they don’t have many men at the school” - which is funny when comparing education to other fields. ICT women are very rarely in a position of such authority and power and are more often than not the “covergirl” of the company. This seems to happen in a lot of fields, as women, and more often POC are

tokenised within the institution, but not put in the higher positions of power.

Similarly, there is this super toxic standard within teaching that parents definitely take the advice of white cis men over other staff members. I even remember hearing it and seeing it when I was younger… It is almost ingrained within our society to listen to a man over a woman, and that comes within teaching too. I wonder if that is also another reason why teachers aren’t taken as seriously as other professions (idk if that’s just me being a paranoid ass tho lol).

I should say that within the teaching field, at least in my limited experience, this discrimination doesn’t often happen among your peers. Many academic researchers in education are women and are very popular among educators, just like that of men.

I think the issue of appointing mainly male principal’s comes from the common conception that being a leader is associated with men - see how Julia Gillard got absolutely shat on. Also, oddly enough, a fair amount of vice principals or heads of areas (such as head of English, ICT or even Math) tend to be women, but not top-dog. It easily ties into the argument of how women “pick lower paying jobs” (this of course is a generalisation).

Behind the scenes there are a lot of issues with female teachers and having children as a lot of who decides which teachers to contract are men. I can’t name the teacher, but I know someone who didn’t get their contract renewed because “oh, but what if you have another baby”. Nevermind the women that partake in that toxic culture too, saying things like “oh, why are they hiring such a young woman, she could have children and be off for two years”.

This is a big thing for me. The teaching industry conflates the personal life of a female teacher with her profession. A female teacher who doesn’t have kids will be damned, whereas a male teacher with children isn’t really a topic of discussion, let alone a negative one. I can’t help but think women are judged in teaching when they don’t have children. Teaching is rather different to raising children. There is a saying in teaching, “parents can tell teachers how to teach, but as soon as a teacher tells parents how to parent... it’s different.” At the end of the day teaching is a profession, some even see it as a lifestyle like that of being a nun as you essentially dedicate your whole life to it. Imagine being a woman who has dedicated 5 or more years to getting a degree only to spend your entire career being told that you don’t understand children because you haven’t pushed one from your vagina? Even if parents don’t say it, there are looks and behind the scenes comments like this everywhere.