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Fine, important, strenuous you are, the profession of teacher! You demand the whole heart and also the whole mind if we want to perform you conscientiously and worthily. You are fine; since in you we have contact with the most beautiful thing that the world offers: with the unadulterated, innocent spirits of our youth. ... In you blossoms happiness, which is closest to motherhood, that which in a certain sense it even surpasses. Among professions for women, which are still multiplying in the present time, there is no profession to which women have such a natural right as to you.” Marica pl.
Kleinmayr, Kaj zahteva sedanja doba od slovenske učiteljice (What does the present era require from a Slovene (female) teacher), Slovenski učitelj, 15.2.1912, p. 25.
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A schoolmistress, who is distinguished by great unselfishness, who expressed these sincere words: ... We get pay like that of male teachers, who have greater care for their family and are barely victorious in their life struggles. And we single teachers? My colleague X in a neighbouring village walks in silk among the tattered farmers, hat at a tilt, and is even grateful for the high price! Another colleague boasts in society: Dear me, I don’t really need to work at school any more, since I have so much money I don’t know what to do with it. – Such matters then go from village to village and do us incalculable harm. …. Bridka Resnica (Bitter truth).” Učiteljski tovariš, 7.1.1920, no. 1, p. 13.
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How should our schoolmistresses dress? Minister of Education Vukičević issued order O.N. no.
31,084 of 28 July 1925 by which he orders that female teachers must dress in the streets and especially in school in a dignified dress, which corresponds to their position and profession. The minister bases his decree on the grounds that teachers had until now skirts to the knee, arms bare to the shoulder and a low neckline that does not correspond either to beauty or to the circumstances in which they live.” Učiteljski tovariš, 19.9.1925, p. 6.
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The second paragraph of one of these circulars reads: »Teachers shall not be fashionable ladies, with shorn hair, painted cheeks, luxurious and fashionable clothes and glittering jewellery, all of which turns on it the attention of the street and gives cause for suitable and unsuitable remarks and degrades the dignity and importance in particular of the upbringing side of her profession …” Obleka
učiteljic v šoli in izven nje (Dress of female teachers in and out of school), Slovenski učitelj, 15.7.1926, p. 127.
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So one of the crucial tasks of the Society of (Female) Teachers is to educate teachers into being conscious and independent members of their profession and thus also their professional organisation, so that they will once really share decision-making as full actors not just as numbers in voting.// And as a second existential right, the society of teachers sees wise and in depth work for raising our women culturally. A woman in today’s society is such an important part of the national vanguard that educated women must place themselves among it as one of their most important tasks, to raise its cultural and ethical level ... we are above all a women’s cultural society with a very important role, to spread culture among the womanhood of the nation.” Angela Vode, Smoter društva učiteljic in njegovo stališče naprem skupni stanovski organizaciji UJU (The significance of the Society of Women Teachers and its standpoint towards thea common professional association UJU), Učiteljski tovariš, 12.6.1930, p. 1.
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it is necessary to point out the great injustices to which women teachers have been subjected, to point out the inequality that divides them from male teachers, with whom by education and by work they are entirely the same. A married female teacher lost the right to full inflation allowance and allowance for rent and heating and the Damocletian sword of the amendment to Article 93 of the Primary Schools Act, by which partial celibacy was enacted, hangs over single female teachers. ... Both these questions do not signify merely inequality but also the slighting of female teachers and encroach deeply into the development of the question of teaching mothers. ... The difference was enough and it should already be the time to accede to enforcing the slogan of equal pay for equal work and removing all differences in the rights of male and female teachers..” Za enakopravnost učiteljic (For the equality of female teachers), Učiteljski tovariš, 17.2.1938, p. 1.
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