The Sexist History of Underpayment in Education

In the United States in 2022, roughly 75 percent of all teachers are women, and that figure becomes closer to 97 percent when focusing on early childhood education. This is the primary reason that the teaching profession is so notoriously underpaid in our current age.

Across the board, fields in which women dominate the workforce are among the lowest paying fields of employment. Education, childcare, nursing, administration — largely service-oriented, these fields are believed to be ideal for women based on cultural assumptions about women’s natural strengths: nurturing, caregiving, cooperation. Unfortunately, women’s work is and has always been undervalued by society, which means that workers in these fields are expected to be satisfied by wages that are dramatically out of sync with the effort workers put in as well as with workers’ necessity within their workplaces.

Teaching was not always considered women’s work. In fact, looking at the history of teaching, the truth about the societal undervaluing of women’s work becomes abundantly clear.

Education Before Industrialization

For much of humankind’s history, education has been solely a male pursuit. Initially siloed in religious institutions but gradually expanded to include the wealthy, education was believed to be a pure and noble activity for men who enjoyed a stable lifestyle free from expectations of manual work. Any women who had access to formal education were limited in what they were allowed to learn, due in large part to a widespread belief that women’s biological inferiority hindered their intellectual capacity. While men learned to consume the humanities, complete complex mathematical equations and perform scientific experiments, women gained knowledge and skill related to homemaking and, at best, the social arts.

Enter: the Age of Industrialization. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, massive developments in technology radically altered the employment landscape. Industrialization allowed for greater economic mobility, as those born to lower socio-economic statuses were able to increase their wealth thanks to factories, railroads, the stock market and many other innovations. Men previously committed to teaching and learning migrated to more lucrative careers — which left a significant gap in in the education space for women to fill.

The Feminization of Education

Unfortunately, as men were fleeing education for better opportunities to increase their wealth, the demand for education was only increasing. Over the same period of the 19th and 20th centuries, America and other Western nations saw massive influxes of immigrants searching for better opportunities. Ultimately, this brought large numbers of children into cities and rural communities — children who needed training in schools while their parents worked.

Fortunately, plenty of women were willing and able to take up education’s torch. Early women’s rights activist Catharine Beecher argued fervently that women were better suited than men to function as educators because of their innate understanding and skill with human development. In fact, the opportunity for women to work in any capacity was an exciting and progressive step that many women eagerly took, as it provided independent income, elevated social status and a sense of self-worth. At least initially, the space reserved for women in the field of education was invaluable at liberating women from the constraints of their current society.

Yet, women met with hardship in the classroom almost as soon as they took over the mantle of education. Many schools were little more than a single room, in which a single teacher was expected to instruct 60 or more children of varying ages and intellectual levels. Women’s work in the classroom was carefully monitored by male coworkers or school administrators, and job security was non-existent; if a woman did or said something their male peer objected to, they were very likely to lose their employment. Finally, because this was one of so few economic opportunities for women, pay was meager — and women were careful to be happy with whatever they got.

The Desperate Need for Reform

Though there have been some changes to the field of education since the turn of the 20th century — most notably the unionization of teachers and the integration and systemization of school districts — the treatment of female teachers is frustratingly similar to how it began almost two centuries ago. There are ways for women in education to increase their earnings, by pursuing an online master’s in education, for example, or by finding work at a private institution or in a wealthy public school district. However, until our society recognizes the supreme importance of education and prioritizes funding of this critical service, regardless of the majority gender of its workers, female teachers will continue to struggle.