Inequalities in the field.

There is an article in the Education Guardian today with some rather disheartening, if not unexpected, statistics. It turns out that even in a field dominated by women we’re still losing out to our male counterparts. Over half of all secondary level teachers are women (it’s a percentage in the high 80s for primary level positions) and, if we judge by the number of female candidates entering postgraduate teacher training, that doesn’t look set to change. Despite all this the number of men in leadership roles after twenty years of service is more than double that of women in similar positions. As in the majority of other professions we see that men are more likely to ask for pay rises and actively seek promotions. Like I said before, this isn’t unexpected. Teaching is a popular career choice for women who intend to take time off in order to raise children – unlike jobs in the business or research sectors the teaching profession won’t move on in leaps and bounds if you take a few years out to “have a family” – your career won’t be progressing while you do it though.

"Career patterns show women are less likely to experience swift promotion and face discrimination in relation to career breaks in a profession structured around a ladder of promoted posts.

"Women are also less likely to seek promotion on account of issues such as personal priorities, as well as experiencing negative attitudes."

Part of me would expect a little more from a field “dominated” by women but experience tells me not to hold my breath. That’s beside the point, it’s the same for the majority of career paths I could have chosen, it’s universal sexism (and universally unfair) but not what I want to talk about today.

The issue at the forefront of my mind is the almost invisible inequalities of employment – not the ones that affect my pay (I’ve never been in a position where my salary is defined by anything other than an arbitrary number on a pre-defined scale so I’ve yet to experience the pay gap first hand) or my rate of career progression but rather the ones that niggle every day and make my life just that little bit harder. I’ve experienced this all the positions I’ve worked in, except my current post in academia (there I suspect any difficulty in doing my job is not brought about by my gender but rather the fact that my job really shouldn’t have existed in the first place). The obvious issues associated with being a young, female member of bar staff sadly still go with the job, sleazy customers offering back massages and well dressed professional couples leaning over the bar and confiding that I looked like “the kind of girl who really enjoys it rough and dirty” (Erm, thanks?) were par for the course and upsettingly just became part of the daily grind. Working in the store I did in my retail days meant that some customers would actively avoid me because I was a woman (only to be sent straight back to me when it turned out they had a question my non video game playing male colleagues couldn’t answer) and a primarily male environment meant that occasionally “banter” got out of hand. I did once have to threaten to file a sexual harassment complaint if the current line of conversation did not stop (this was before my days as labelling myself as a Feminist. I’m still highly impressed with myself, and with my colleagues who took it in very good grace and apologised profusely). Teaching however has thrown up some other, more interesting issues that won’t apply to my male colleagues.

Aside from having to buy an entirely new work wardrobe (appearing too “sexy” in your manner of dress is something that a relatively conservative dresser such as myself has never had a problem with before but apparently 90% of what I own is inappropriate for dealing with teenagers. Although I get the feeling that I’d still get heckled even if wearing a floor length, shapeless dress fashioned from Kevlar, which may actually be a sensible option for my inner city placement, safety-wise), issues with being 5’1” and attempting to control a class full of kids twice my size who all look older than me and all the fun sexual harassment I get to observe and have very little power to counteract to look forwards to I also have the small issue of my name.

I identify as Ms O’Irishname. Not “Miss”, not “Mrs” but “Ms”. I find the use of Miss to be infantilising and have felt uncomfortable being defined by it for as long as I can remember (I used to think it was just my old surname I took issue with, apparently it wasn’t). I’m not married and I’d like to think that if I were I’d choose not to be defined by my marital status so Mrs is out. But how in the hell do you convince kids and colleagues of that? I already have issues with getting banks and my mobile phone companies to use the correct title even my flatmates find it weird (as I’m “not divorced or in [my] forties”). It’s a minor issue when compared with classroom control, the possibility of violence or parents questioning your decisions but it’s one that bothers me all the same.