In society today, it’s widely accepted and understood that teaching is a profession solely for women. Therefore, many of us would be surprised to learn that teaching was initially a male dominated profession; what caused the change? The employment of the sociological imagination allows us to connect the experiences in the present with our history and larger social forces in order to better understand the evolution of teaching from a male-dominated profession to a female-dominated profession. Teaching itself isn’t inherently gendered, but our current societal context has gendered it, and history will help us understand how that came to be. In this reflection, I will use the concept “sociological imagination” to argue how and why teaching has …show more content…
126). The actual act of teaching is not inherently biased towards one gender, but women were considered better teachers because of their “motherly instincts, virtue, and less violent nature” which complemented their teaching and the overall classroom atmosphere (Bennett deMarrais & LeCompte, 1990, p. 126). In addition to these attributes, America just needed more teachers at that period in time. After the American Civil War, schools were booming during Reconstruction and there weren’t enough willing males to fill these schools, so women entered the workforce. However, what was unfair was that teaching was already seen as a low-status job because during that time, people “valued hard manual labor [and] teaching was defined as ‘easy’” and because women made less money than men, it only fostered more female teachers (Bennett deMarrais & LeCompte, 1990, p. …show more content…
Teachers are predominantly women and in the grand scheme of education, teachers do not have much control over curriculum, textbooks, or standardized testing. Teachers are considered minor, even though they have the most direct contact with the actual students. Regardless, the weakness attached to them is also connected to the oppression women face. Since both teachers and women are considered weak, society has deemed it appropriate that a weak position should be held by a weak person. In contrast, men are more likely to occupy positions of administrator or superintendent. The power and control associated with those positions align with the power of the male gender. The position of administrator or superintendent is not inherently gendered, but it is because they have power that more men have these positions. Women are hindered by their societally deemed weaker gender and thus do not have equal vertical mobility within the hierarchy of education. For example, sociologist Maienza discussed that women would finish certification through graduate school, teach for thirteen years, and then finally rise to superintendency “in their forties or fifties” (Bennett deMarrais & LeCompte, 1990, p. 143) whereas men would complete everything “in their thirties” (Bennett deMarrais & LeCompte, 1990, p.