The topic for our fourth week of class readings explored the gendered expectations of youth and the feminization of teaching. As the feminization of teaching is what I have chosen to explore for my research project, I was excited to delve into the readings for this week and learn not only how and why the feminization of teaching took place, but also about the experiences of different women throughout the country. As Eric W. Sager writes in his article, “Women Teachers in Canada, 1881-1901: Revisiting the ‘Feminization’ of an Occupation,” “[The feminization of teaching] was marked by extreme regional variations: in Lower Canada a majority of teachers were female at mid-century; at the same time almost 78 per cent of common or public school teachers in Upper Canada were male.” [1] This information tells us that the experience of female teachers, as well as male and female students, would have varied greatly depending on their geographical location. While some believed that the rise in female educators could simply be explained as an affordable “supply of labour” [2] hired by “penny-pinching school trustees,” [3] scholars such as Alison Prentice, whom Sager refers to in his article, suggest that the topic is much more complicated. [4] Although it is likely that because women were more willing to accept lower wages than men, reasons such as the idea that “women had a natural aptitude for working with young children” [5] and that the classroom was viewed as “an extension of the private sphere” [6] were also driving forces in the increase in employment of female teachers. The rate at which the industry became composed of a large number of female teachers is astonishing and can also be attributed to women seeking higher education at the turn of the 20th century. However, as indicated in the article, “‘I Am Here to Help If You Need Me’: British Columbia’s Rural Teachers’ Welfare Officer, 1928-1934” by J. Donaldson Wilson, the feminization of teaching was not glamorous nor without challenges, for both teachers, families, and students. Just as there was a need for educators in urban centres, there was a need for educators to teach children in rural areas — communities that all desired “to have their own schools,” [7] regardless of their population. Wilson shares how the “‘rural school problem’ created by small, ill-equipped, one-room schools with inefficient teachers and lack of financial resources” [8] was a growing concern for the Department of Education in British Columbia. In order to be effective, there needed to be a partnership between teachers and parents, which continues to be the case in present-day society. Although it is challenging to compare the experience of female teachers in urban communities with those in rural communities, it is evident though the readings that the feminization of teaching impacted Canadian women across the country in both urban and rural settings, presenting challenges such as gender stereotypes and limitations as well as lack of support from the government when dealing with challenging condition, as seen in the article regarding rural schools.
[1] Eric W. Sager, “Women Teachers in Canada, 1881-1901: Revisiting the ‘Feminization’ of an Occupation,” in Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, ed. Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 143.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Janet Guildford, “‘Separate Spheres’: The Feminization of Public School Teaching in Nova Scotia, 1838-1880,” Acadiensis 22, no. 1 (1992): 45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30302883.
[6] Ibid., 47.
[7] J. Donald Wilson, “I Am Here to Help If You Need Me’: British Columbia’s Rural Teachers’ Welfare Officer, 1928-1934,” in Schooling in Transition: Readings in the Canadian History of Education, ed. Sara Burke and Patrice Milewski (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 205.
[8] Ibid.