May 19, 2014 • 51 mins
A majority of teachers around the world are women -- why? Cristen and Caroline chart the feminization of the teaching profession and how gender at the front of the classroom affects student learning.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristin and I'm Carolyn, And today we're looking at one
area of employment that is so widely dominated by women,
(00:24):
and that is teaching. That's right. Teaching is sort of
like totally the opposite trend of STEM fields. Yeah, stem
fields being male dominated, trying to recruit more women into them,
get more women interested in young girls. Teaching is super
female dominated and a lot of people are curious as
to why. I was curious as to why, because it's
(00:44):
not like it's always been that way exactly. There is
a distinct feminization of the teaching profession that we will
get into. But first of all, as we like to
do on the podcast, let's throw some stats your way.
This is coming from the National Center for educa Asian Information.
As a fall two thousand twelve, there were an estimated
three point seven million full time teachers and secondary and
(01:07):
elementary schools, three point three million of which are public
school teachers. And the average salary not too shabby. Actually,
the average salary for public school teachers is just under
fifty seven thousand dollars. But when you look at being
adjusted for inflation and all that stuff, the average teacher
salary from twelve and that year was only about one
(01:32):
percent higher than it was in nineteen, So not a
lot of like raises going on. And also, I'm sure
for all the teachers who are listening to this podcast
right now, I just want to acknowledge how many hours
you do work. I mean, you deserve having summers off, right, Um.
(01:52):
But the workforce also is trending younger, which is kind
of interesting to see. The proportion of teachers under thirty
was dramatically from two thousand five to two thousand eleven,
and now more than one in five teachers surveyed are
under thirty, compared to just eleven percent in two thousand five. Right. Yeah,
(02:13):
The proportion of teachers who are fifteen older dropped from
forty two percent in two thousand five to thirty one
percent in twenty eleven. And this equates to fewer years experience.
Not saying that it's you know, a teacher who's twenty
nine years old is going to be not good. It
simply means that we have less experience. Um. The proportion
of public school teachers with five or fewer years of
(02:35):
teaching experience increased from eighteen percent in two thousand five
to twenty six percent in eleven. And when you look
at the demographics, it is still an overwhelmingly white profession,
with a four percent of public school teachers being white.
And Hispanics are the fastest growing non white group entering
the profession. And we should note to that, as with
(02:57):
a lot of podcasts, a lot of these statistics and
what we're going to talk talk about is very US centric,
but these kinds of trends you will also see in
other countries as well. So looking at gender in the US,
eighty four percent of American public school teachers are women,
and that's actually up from sixty nine percent in nineteen
(03:20):
eighty six. Right, and the u N looked at a
bunch of different regions and countries and for the US,
they broke down, um, how many women are in different
levels of education, you know, like high school versus kindergarten
or whatever. They found that pre primary education has the
most women teachers at ninety four point one percent. That's
(03:42):
followed by primary education at eighty seven percent, secondary education
at sixty two. In tertiary, which would be like college
at forty seven point seven percent women. And speaking of men,
this is kind of interesting. They're more likely than women
to enter teaching through altern of routes. So, in other words,
you see a lot of women who start college saying
(04:05):
I want to become a teacher. I will pursue an
education degree, whereas men are more likely to graduate from
college and be like, hey, you know, what's a good
idea of teaching? Right? Like, I have a friend who
was a biology major in college. He actually majored in
food science, and so he was all on track to
make boku debucks working in the food science industry until
(04:28):
he realized that would involve just like working in a
bunch of slaughter houses for for years and years, and
he was like, I'm not going to do that. So
he ended up going back to school, getting his master's,
getting his you know, teaching certificates and all that stuff,
and now he is a biology teacher and he loves it. Ps.
But that is just one example of an alternate route
of like majoring in something completely different than setting out
(04:48):
from the get go to be a teacher. Yeah, but
that gender gap of teaching being an overwhelmingly female dominated
career in the United States is not just specific to
the US. The u N looked around the world and
it is common to find more female teachers, particularly when
(05:09):
you're looking at primary school education. Like go all around
the world except for Sub Saharan Africa, and you usually
have women in the front of the classroom. So there
seems to be this global pattern of teaching being dominated
by women. But like we said, it was not always
the case. And if you just look at the feminization
(05:31):
of the teaching profession in the United States, it takes
some unexpected twists and turns. Right. We we read a
lot about the history of teaching and this so this
is coming from sources including PBS, the Department of ED,
and writer Dana Goldstein Um who all looked at sort
of how the the industry has and the profession have
(05:53):
changed over centuries. If we look back in America to
colonial times up through the eighteenth century, most teachers were
meant they were They were dudes, but they they weren't
set out to be teachers. They were probably on their
way more likely to becoming lawyers, doctors, or ministers, and
so the professional connections they made by heading up a
(06:14):
classroom and teaching kids in a community was a great
way to make connections in that community. Yeah, and you
also have to realize too that prior to the early
eighteen hundreds, education itself was pretty spotty. I mean, just
looking at the US in the late seventeen hundreds, there
were very high illiteracy rates among girls that around fifty percent.
(06:37):
Most kids were taught reading, specifically so that they could
read the Bible. I mean, you might have wealthy girls
who would be who would be taught by governesses, and
some kids might be taught more in the form of apprenticeships,
but education being something that you know, mandatory schooling for
kids was certainly not the norm back then, right, That
(06:59):
was that was still far off at this point. And
if women were going to be teaching, typically they were
quote unquote teaching in these things called dame schools, which
is funny, um, just the name, not the not the institution. Uh.
They served really more as babysitters than actual teachers. These
were usually poor women who would take in a ton
(07:19):
of kids and teach them basic things for a few
pennies a day, like the alphabet and sewing. It's I
mean to me, dame schools just sound like the old
school equivalent of sort of in home daycare centers today
with probably lower levels of quality of care. Right, Yeah,
it was just families who had were not rich by
(07:40):
any means, but who had enough extra cash on hand
to be able to send their kids to learn to
learn some basics, getting kind of a basic foundation. So
we get to eighteen hundred and in the US, nine
of school teachers are men. And if you wanted to
become a teacher back then, you kind of just needed
(08:01):
to breathe. Basically, uh you. All you had to do
really was persuade a local school board that you were
of good moral character and maybe possibly pass a test
of general knowledge. It's not even until eighteen thirty four
that Pennsylvania becomes the first state to require future teachers
to pass a test of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Before then,
(08:22):
it was just like are you a good guy? Yes,
sir I am? And do you know things? Do you
have a small chalkboard? You can take it all right? Godspeed?
And as far as education developments go, um in the
twenties and thirties is when we see the rise of
(08:42):
the common school era, and these common schools are the
precursor to public schools. You have reformers like politician Horace
Man and intellectual Catherine Beecher arguing that there needed to
be both more schools and more teachers, And a lot
of people were getting on the bandwagon that the government
should be providing free basic education to all kids, that
(09:03):
it shouldn't just be a privilege for rich kids in
wealthy homes. Yeah. Dana Goldstein writes about how, particularly as
you're approaching the eighteen thirties, quote, American political, business and
intellectual elite begin to come to a consensus that state
government should guarantee children a free and basic education. And
(09:23):
Horace Man and Katherine Beecher and also John Dewey are
all about that. So they're like, Okay, let's open all
these schools. This would be great. Who's going to teach
all these kids? Right? Yeah. The whole thing is that
opening these schools is going to be expensive. Where would
all of these teachers come from. How are we going
to be able to afford it? Well, obviously we're going
(09:45):
to look at the other half of the population, the
people who you know, we don't have to pay that
much to women. Women. Yeah, because one thing that's happening
at the same time too, because you might be thinking, well,
if they're opening all these schools, guys were teach years
in eight hundred, why don't you just have you know,
more jobs for that guys. That's great, but we also
(10:05):
have the industrial revolution opening up all these new and
better paying fields that men are being attracted away from
teaching to go pursue, especially in larger urban areas, and
so it makes sense that okay, maybe we can have
particularly younger, unmarried women common fill these roles, because also
(10:26):
we should know that literacy rates among women are now
also starting to catch up to men. Right. But along
with this this whole like, yeah, let's just shove all
this cheap labor into our classrooms, you also have the
whole societal hurdle of women working, women working outside the home.
That's indecent. And so people like Horace Mann and Katherine
(10:49):
Beecher had to figure out a way to sell it
to people that yes, you want to be a teacher,
and hey, parents, you want your daughter to be a
teacher before she's married off. And so in the forties
you start to see this is when you start to
see the real, like legit feminization of the teaching profession.
Because people like Man and Beech are emphasized to serve
(11:11):
a purpose women's moral superiority. Man, for instance, wrote, as
a school teacher, a woman would be like an angel,
quote her head encircled with a halo of heavenly light,
her feet sweetening the earth on which she treads, blah
blah blah blah blah, going on and on about the
beauty of her virtue. That just because of the fact
(11:33):
that she was born with a uterus, she's clearly moral
superior to men, and she would serve your children. Well,
he was. He wasn't heavy handed at all. And I
also liked though, how Beecher took the approach of just
throwing men under the bus. She said, yeah, obviously we
(11:54):
want women in the classroom because they're super moral, and
also male teachers are quote low vull are obscene and
temperate and utterly incompetent to which, okay, also a little
heavy handed Katherine Beecher. But you gotta remember too that
in the context of the time we have this, you know,
the reign of the cult of true womanhood during this
(12:14):
Victorian era, So this ties totally in with that, with
the idea of you know, women's you know, on the
domestic front, that being the rightful place for women because
you want them around the children to set the moral example.
Because this is when you have this idea of really
emerging and taking shape of women being again the moral
(12:36):
superiors to men, so naturally they should be in charge
of not only their moral education, but also the intellectual education.
And hey, better yet, we're a bargain. Yeah, um, so,
I mean, yeah, that's that's great that you're telling us
that we are so superior by virtue of the fact
(12:57):
that we have ovaries. But really, I mean, this is
just covering up for the fact that they are trying
to attract women because they're cheaper um. And so by
the eighteen fifties and sixties, women are just flocking to
teaching because not because they all grew up wanting to
be teachers, because probably when they were growing up that
wasn't even an option yet. But they would have a salary,
(13:19):
they had a degree of independence, a sense of purpose,
they were leading children. I mean that that is a
noble cause no matter what generation you're growing up in.
And perhaps the sense of adventure as well, because in
the eighteen forties, the National Board of Popular Education sent
six hundred female teachers to frontier towns, go west, young woman,
teach our teach our kids. And I mean this this
(13:41):
is tying into to our past episodes on secretarial work,
the feminization of clerical and secretarial work sort of in
a similar way, how it became more female dominated again
because they could pay us half what they would pay men,
and there weren't many options, so we flooded that and
also our Madam's podcasts where hey, the going West was
(14:04):
also very appealing. So you have all these different factors
starting to swirl around, and with all these women flocking
to the classroom, you have the rise of what are
called normal schools to train this new teaching workforce. Yeah,
it's interesting, is that. Like, so as teaching is becoming
quote unquote feminized and more, the percentage of women over
(14:27):
men as teachers is increasing, there's this sort of uneasiness
that settles over everybody where they start to look at
each other and they're like, oh, wait, We've got all
these women because we told them they were more morally
superior to men, but we don't actually think women are
smarter than men. What are we gonna do to make
sure that the quality of education is maintained and so
(14:49):
there were a lot of political reformers, mainly men around
this time, who were saying, look, women just aren't cutting it,
and they sought to attract a quote higher class professional.
They wanted to make the class u room more standardized,
you know, just across cities, across regions, and make it
into a test measured practice. And so that's when you
get those normal schools established to basically teach the teachers
(15:12):
um but as teaching as we go along and teaching
becomes more professionalized, those classes move out of the normal
schools and into regular universities. And so as a result
of this professionalization of the teaching industry, you kind of
have a giant wedge between the actual teachers in the classroom,
(15:32):
the boots on the ground. They end up at the
bottom of the hierarchy. Hierarchy and the leadership and administration.
These leaders who wanted education to be recognized the same
way that law and medicine were as a white collar,
upstanding profession and the bulk of those people were men. Yeah,
I mean, if you just look at principles, you typically
(15:55):
would have a male principle installed in schools. They would
say to handle disciplinary problems basically have a guy around
to make sure that if these young teachers, and we're
talking very young, some of these teachers would still be
teenagers teaching teenage boys sometimes who might match them or
(16:16):
be larger than them physically. So they said, well, we
need you know, we've been around to make sure that
we can keep everybody in the line um. But then
also the whole issue of the professionalization compounds that as well,
So overwhelmingly you have women in the classroom, but men
overseeing the administration. Right. So, moving into the eighteen nineties
(16:37):
and nineteen tens, women are still and now the majority
of teachers, making up only a small minority of administrators
and above um. And because of this, they really end
up with little say over their classrooms. They didn't have
as many resources as they would have liked, They've made
far less money than they would have liked. But as
(16:57):
human beings in the United States, they couldn't vote. What
are you gonna do? So you see a lot of
women organizing into first teachers associations and then unions, women
like educators Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin, who were angry
enough at the state of teaching that they formed the
first teachers only union, the Chicago Teachers Federation, and they
(17:20):
rallied for improved pay, retirement benefits, and tenure. Yeah, and
Gold Team talks about how essentially the strategy behind this
was since they could not vote, they would align themselves
with unions to kind of get the men in the
unions to flex their muscles at the ballot boxes on
(17:41):
their behalf. Um, and just thinking though about the lack
of resources. I mean, teachers have a lack of resources today,
let's face it. But even back then, imagine having even
fewer resources than you would today in front of a
classroom of sixty kids. That wasn't uncommon it And you
also have this massive influx of immigrants, and so you're
(18:05):
not even guaranteed that all your kids can even understand
you or communicate in English with you. Yeah. You start
to see around this time, especially um from Margaret Haley,
we start hearing like teachers should be able to teach
how they want to teach, and how they recognize that
they know they need to teach. Because if half of
your class can't even speak English, you're gonna need to
(18:27):
switch up your teaching style just a little bit. And so,
but that's something you still here today, Like, not wanting
to teach to the common core, not wanting to teach
according to No Child Left Behind, wanting to have kind
of a democratization of the classroom under the teacher. Yeah.
And the very fact that Haley was organizing women and
aligning themselves with unions that also was a major no no.
(18:50):
Like the the elite businessmen of the time were scandalized
at the idea of women getting involved in unions. I mean,
because again, remember we couldn't even vote back then, right.
Hayley ended up being called a nasty, unladylike woman after
one episode where she uh ended up suing corporations who
weren't paying taxes on land that they were leasing from
(19:11):
Chicago public schools, and then allied her Chicago Teachers Federation
with the Chicago Federation of Labor, establishing teachers unions as
a powerful force. So she was at the forefront of
all this stuff. And as a result, I mean, she
must have been doing some right to be called nasty
and unladylike exactly. It's kind of a compliment in contemporary terms. Uh.
(19:32):
And the historical note, in November nine two, we have
the very first teacher strike in the US in Chicago
due to this union organization that was happening, and it
was led off by a woman named Janice mckeann who
kicked a kid out of class for using profanity against
these these probably these issues are still happening today, pretty
(19:54):
much all of them that we touch on. The principle
then sends the kid back to class, but McKean's like, no, no, no, no,
you can't come back. So she was then though, suspended
for thirty days without pay, and a week later, four
hundred students, parents and teachers protested in support of her. Yeah,
(20:14):
I mean, that's that's pretty incredible that, you know, you
can say all this about feminization of the industry. But still,
feminization isn't necessarily a nice term when you think about
what people associate with traditional femininity. But the fact that
all these people during this era were coming out in
support of this woman and her ruling that no profane
student you shall not red into the classroom, that's pretty impressive. Yeah,
(20:36):
feminization should certainly not be interpreted as weakening of the profession,
right right exactly. Um So, moving into the twentieth century,
in the nineteen tents to the nineteen thirties, just as
it had earlier, women's women teachers increased cloud and power
in education started to make men uneasy. And this is
(20:59):
where we start to see the rise of worries about
women's emasculating effects on their male students, because if you
look at nineteen five, for instance, male teachers make up
only a quarter of the workforce, and so it's just
it's funny to see how women dominating anything, even if
they were originally invited to it by being told that
(21:22):
they're morally superior. Everybody's still a little nervous and biting
their nails over it. Well, even the fact that in
men were making up a quarter of the teaching force,
that actually represented some a little bit of ground that
they had gained back, because uh, once more of those
you know, secretarial and office jobs started opening up to women,
(21:43):
kind of in the same way that the Industrial Revolution
drew men away from teaching, some women were being drawn
away from teaching, you know, at the prospect of a
secretarial job, and so you have a few more men
coming into it, but still you have I mean, how
long did it take what sixty years for the feminization
(22:03):
process to be firmly cemented for all of time, all time.
In fact, from nineteen fifty, this feminization process was so
firmly entrenched that school districts generously started dropping their practices
of banning married women from teaching. This is very uncommon. Basically,
(22:27):
teaching was a socially acceptable stepping stone in between living
with your parents essentially being a teenager and becoming a mother.
And once you got married, you would probably become a
mother soon thereafter, and no, ma'am, you would stay in
the home. That's right. I wonder if that's where we
get like our stereotype of like old spinster stern teachers from.
(22:51):
It might the fact that they weren't married women were
not welcome in the professional Oh yeah, that's very true.
That's a good point. Although you know what we don't
have information on either though, is why we give teachers
apples interesting brain food. I don't know, I don't cheap
cheap gifts, bribery. Well, speaking of apples, actually, not speaking
(23:13):
of apples at all. We're going to take a quick
break and get right back into this conversation on women
and teaching, and now back to the show. Okay, so
we mentioned before the break we touched on the fact
that while teaching is a majority woman lad uh profession
(23:37):
and that it's very feminized, so to speak, there is
a divide between the actual teachers in the classroom and
then the individuals who are leading the schools in the
school district. And it's talked about as a glass ceiling
and education that um, basically women just aren't entering those
(23:59):
higher level professions and education and the foundation for this
was laid in the mid eighteen hundreds when you see
that professional professionalization that needs your reaction to all of
these women in the classroom and men getting really concerned
and so taking over almost instinctively those top tier positions.
And that's something we even still see today because there
(24:21):
are all of these When we look at the modern
teaching profession, you do see a lot more intensive efforts
to recruit more male teachers. But at the same time,
there's this general view of teaching as a lower rung profession,
even though it is so integral to our societal functioning
and you know, global competitiveness, and even though teaching is
(24:42):
still sort of sold to women as a quote unquote
woman friendly profession, it doesn't necessarily mean that education is
allowing a lot of opportunities for advancement beyond just teaching
kindergarten or whatever it might be. Right, Yeah, you look
at I mean, I absolutely I'm not. I never have
been in the teaching profession, but even I recognize that
(25:06):
stereotype of teaching being sold as a woman friendly professional.
Oh you know, you get off work at three, you're
off all summer. It's great. No, no, that's not how
it works. My friend who is a elementary or preschool teacher,
I mean she works all the time. She has two
very young kids. I mean, this girl does not leave
(25:28):
work at three. She works many hours, and she works
practically all summer. I mean I would think she takes
off maybe two weeks during the summer, but she's got
to work on lesson plans, she has to plan all
sorts of stuff. Being a teacher is not like an
easy walk in the park. Yeah. I mean it's because
some would say that there's never really been um and
(25:48):
maybe because it's impossible a standardization of the profession the
same way as you would see with something like law
or medicine. Okay, so so yeah, so like we were
talking about, I mean, it's considered a woman only job,
but is it because women aren't exactly taking advantage of
those opportunities for advancement. So anyway, the study in two
(26:09):
thousand seven that was in the journal Gender and Education
looked at three main gender imbalances generally identified with teaching.
So the first one is across education phases. So women
are concentrated in the nursery and primary sectors, which maybe
cause correlation, I don't know, are less valued and less rewarded.
(26:31):
There's also an imbalance across subjects taught, so there's a
lower proportion of women in math and science compared with
other subjects like reading or English. And there's an imbalance
across positions themselves, so women are underrepresented, like we're saying,
and promoted posts across all education phases. But when you
talk to teachers, the fact that statistically there are so
(26:53):
many women in the classroom, it creates this perception that
there are no professional barriers to advancement because they would
look around them and say, we aren't being you know,
prevented from doing anything. How that would be impossible. There
are so many of us here, and yeah, I mean
if you look over in the UK, for instance, and
the statistic is a little bit old, this is coming
(27:14):
from two thousand five, but at least at that time,
men were three point one times more likely to become
head teachers than women. And that's in nursery and primary schools.
And then if you move into secondary schools there two
points six times likely or to become head teachers compared
to women. Right, and if you move over to the US,
this is coming from rand Um. In public schools in
(27:39):
two thousand, in that school year, forty percent of all
principles were women, up from thirty five percent in nine
and up from twenty five percent in nineteen eighty eight. Um,
in nine and two thousand women made up fifty five
percent of public elementary school principles but just twenty one
percent of public high school insciples, which is where the
(28:01):
money is. So you can see that as the kids
are aging up as like you know, I guess the
difficulty level of course is moving up. Um, we see
fewer women. And then if you look at superintendents, no
big surprise, the number drops off even more. This is
coming from two thousand, which again a little bit dated,
but women comprise only thirteen percent of superintendence, which actually
(28:25):
represented double the proportion from n SO ground was being made.
But when you think about again the fact that today
eight six percent of teachers in the US are women,
those numbers of you know that, the fact that we're only, say,
thirteen percent of superintendence, that's not really a reflection of
(28:47):
how many of us are in sort of the feet
on the ground workforce. Now, what's interesting is that in
charter schools, among among the principles of charter schools, women
make up more than half of those principles thousand, but
men still made up a majority of the secondary school
(29:08):
principles in both the public and the private sector. And
looking at private schools, women made up the majority of
all elementary and combined school principles, and we're thirty eight
percent of high school principles. So it is notable that
when you move out of the public school system into
private and charter you do start to see some differences.
There was also and I don't have the statistics right
(29:29):
in front of me, but you also see a similar
pattern too. I want to say when it comes to
racial diversity an administration, where when you move into private
and charter schools, it does tend to get more diverse
at the top, at least I'm thinking about because I
grew up. Um I started, I started in public schools,
(29:49):
moved to a private school, and you know, I literally
didn't think about it until right this second. But my
public elementary school principle was a woman, My private elementary
school principle was a woman, My private middle school principle
was a woman. It wasn't until I got to high
school that the principle was a man. So that's interesting.
It's like, oh, good, yeah, women leading the pack, but
(30:12):
oh wait, until you actually get to the upper grades.
Exact same pattern for me, explained though by the fact
that my mom was my principal bearing home school. So
I don't know if that counts, um. But then that
leads to questions, as with any conversation about women and professions,
(30:32):
and why are there more of us at the top?
Are we simply not to use a phrase that causes
some people to cringe? Are we not leaning in? Is
it because of the motherhood off ramp thatts it's sometimes
called that is preventing more women from taking on more
administrative duties because we're already bogged down enough. I'm saying
we as though I'm also teaching America's youth. But teachers
(30:56):
are already bogged down enough as it is, just with
all of a testing that has to be done, then
if you want to advance, you gotta take on even
more responsibility. Right. This is coming from that two thousand
seven Gender and Education study over in the UK where
a lot of the teachers they interviewed UM cited work life,
(31:17):
family balance, all of that stuff as a reason why
they themselves personally and maybe why they can see other
women were not pursuing those higher level positions because you know,
you have those things like career breaks after childbirth UM
or just returning part time after you have a baby
that are identified as major factors in women's under representation
(31:39):
at management level UM. A lot of women also told
the researchers about moving to support a husband's career because
it was viewed as more important rather than staying put
for a woman's teaching career, because teaching is seen as
a more portable position, even though, as we talked about
in our Military Spouses episode, if you're moving all the time,
(31:59):
it's not like you can move up the ranks as fast.
And the Guardian looked at barriers and pointed out that
a lot of recruiters themselves have prejudices, you know, based
on your appearance. You know, women are supposed to look
a certain way, act a certain way, and so if
they're perceived as too confident or too aggressive, then oh,
(32:20):
I don't know, you might not fit that that spot
very well. Versus like a confident man who walks in
the room. It's like, I got this. He's viewed as
more competent than a woman who acts the same but
is just viewed as aggressive. Yeah, I mean, there are
clearly so many variables going on. I mean, it's not
just an issue of something like institutional sexism that is
barring more women from you know, climbing the ladder in
(32:42):
the teaching profession. But another question along with that is
sort of in the reverse of Okay, maybe we need
more women at the top, sure to balance things out
a bit, But what about having more men in the classroom,
because it does raise some red flags for people who
study education or or or more um education critics if
(33:05):
you will, that teaching is so overwhelmingly female dominated because
perhaps who is in front of the classroom the gender
influences how girls and particularly boys learn, right, Yeah, um,
I would I would say that the bulk of the
(33:27):
studies that Kristen and I read on this issue as
far as like does the teacher's gender affect the students
and how they learned? I would say the bulk of
them were either murky or they said no, it doesn't
really have an effect, where where one study did show
that it had it did correlate to students success. Is
an international study by the u N, so this global
(33:50):
perspective is important, but it's also worth pointing out that
they're not necessarily looking at more developed countries. They're looking
at countries where maybee girls education is not priority has
as highly as boys and so in this study, the
u N found that the percentage of female teachers in
primary education roughly correlates with girls gross enrollment ratios or
(34:10):
g e r s in secondary education. They found that
in versely, countries with the lowest g e r s
for girls in secondary education typically have the lowest shares
of female teachers in primary education. And the significance of this,
they point out in this international study, is that, hey,
you know, this is a big deal when you consider
(34:32):
that six of the people worldwide who can't read are women. Yeah,
but things break down differently. The Chips fall a little
bit differently when you're looking at countries like the US,
the U k UM. While some researchers have said yeah,
absolutely affects, you know, how boys and girls learn to
(34:53):
read or how they learn to do math, I would
say that in my totally expert opinion, I would say
that it seems like more studies are showing it's really
more the teacher's expertise and the teacher's confidence and their
familiarity with the material and their ability to clearly convey
that to the students that has a whole lot more
to do with it than what's in their pants. Yes,
(35:18):
over and over again, you see, particularly for if you
look at STEM courses, the science, tech, engineering, and math.
Let's talk about a female math teacher. Studies find that
that woman will have positive outcomes for female students who
we would think of as lagging behind boys in math traditionally.
(35:40):
But if she is taught by a female teacher who
is excellent and confident at math, then she will succeed.
I mean, it's all these kind of no brainer findings
and in my again uh lay opinion reading the study findings,
but I mean there there was massively controversial study finding
(36:02):
not too long ago, uh, led by the Stanford professor
Thomas d who was looking at survey data among thousands
of eighth graders, and he acknowledged that, I know, seventeen
ninety is a little bit data dated, but this data
is really rich, and he found a very solid gender
(36:24):
based interaction. Basically, boys do that better with male teachers,
girls do better with female teachers, to which people said, well,
are you arguing for same sex classrooms. That's a controversial idea.
He said no, because once you start breaking down those
very general findings, yet again, you just start digging into
all of these classroom variables of well, how well is
(36:47):
the teacher trained in a subject matter? What is the
classroom like? Where are these schools that you're looking at,
Because you also have to look at the schools that
are being examined, whether or not they are in a
lower socio economic area that might not be receiving as
many rich learning resources as other, say, charter schools and
wealthier areas. Right, and you also have to look at
(37:09):
one thing that we've talked about on the podcast before
and in different contexts, but but that is the fact
that both men and women respond often better to male students,
and so, you know, there's a whole lot of moving
parts with this, but um an study in the Journal
(37:30):
European Sociological Review, for instance, points to They basically found that, okay,
there's no correlation between you know, gender and the students success.
And the significance of that, they said, is that the
popular call to have more male teachers in primary schools
is not the key to tackling the growing disadvantage of boys.
(37:54):
Because we see, there's all these trend stories lately about
you know, girls are surpassing boys at every level of
a education. More young women than young men are going
to college and and going on to get their masters
and PhD, on and on and on, and they're saying
that it's not because there weren't enough male teachers in
their younger years. There's just probably so many factors at play. Yeah,
(38:16):
the effort take for instance, now this is moving into China,
so let's toss another variable onto the pile. But there
was the study looking at Chinese primary school students in
two thousand ten, and it found no support for the
idea that boys learned better from men. Rather, they found
that both boys and girls learned better from women. But Again,
(38:38):
it has nothing to do, as Caroline said, with what
is in their pants or skirt or kulats. Rather, they
found that the kids simply preferred learning from a woman
because the women tended to have a more patient teaching style,
whereas the men in these classrooms tended to have a
more authoritarian style. Again, you can't extrapolate that to every
(39:00):
individual teacher. But that's just, you know, a clear example
of how you really making these broadbrush generalizations of women
are better for girls, men are better for boys. Is
that's really hard to back up once you start unraveling
all of the different influencers in how classroom learning actually
(39:24):
takes place. Right, Because when I'm thinking back over my
own personal experience and I talked about my principles, you know, um,
my favorite some of my favorite teachers were men, and
they were teaching me in English and language arts. Um,
and I didn't feel like I was not able to
(39:44):
speak up. I didn't feel like I was being made to,
you know, feel dumb or anything like that. I felt
just as engaged as when I had a brilliant woman
for an English teacher in high school. Um, I think
it all depends, all depends. I don't know. I think
a lot of it depends on teaching style. Does the
child respond to that teacher. Is the teacher, you know,
(40:06):
taking the extra time to make sure that the students
get it, whether they're male or female, however, they do
engage the students. Yeah, in high school, the teachers that
I most responded to, and pretty evenly split between men
and women, were the ones who I felt were the
most invested in my learning, who respected me as a student,
(40:28):
and who I had two English teachers, actually female English
teachers in high school who I just on a personal level,
just did not like me. They would make comments to me,
they would call me out, they would I was a
very good student, but they just didn't like me, and
(40:48):
it was always a terror being in that classroom, whereas
I had, you know, a male English teacher for instance,
who was very nurturing and would ask me questions, ends,
and the same with all your kids in the classroom,
you know. But again that's just going to depend to
on where you're sitting. I mean, what kind of resources
(41:09):
do you have, how large how many kids are you
having to oversee? Are you dealing with kids who might
have learning disabilities in the class as well, what kind
of classroom management do you have to deal with? So
many factors and the fact that what's unfortunate about the
feminization of teaching is that it's almost like and Dana
Goldstein talks about this, how that's sort of been manipulated
(41:32):
to underscore the vital importance and and seriousness and professionalization
of that job, whereas it's like, oh, how sweet girls
just want to become kindergarten teachers. Give him an apple.
That's really precious. But the job itself is a lot tougher,
I think than than people have historically given it credit for.
(41:54):
Oh sure, I mean, like, do you have teacher friends?
My mom is a teacher. Oh yeah, course of course.
I mean there's so much work, like it blows me away,
like I'll have a stressful day, and it does not
even equate to my my friends. Who's the who's a
teacher her stressful day, because I mean, we just get
(42:14):
to go to work and just do our jobs and
talk with people over the water cooler, and it's fine.
She has to go to work and deal with grown ups,
but also deal with a million children with running noses
and making sure they get it and they comprehend the
material and Johnny's not running out the door. And you know,
in college, I tutored kids in middle school and elementary
school for the crc T test, and Caroline, it was
(42:38):
a daily test of my patients. Granted I didn't go
to school for teaching, but it gave me a holly
new found respect for the people who do that day
in and day out, because even working in small groups
with kids is no small task. It's not. It is not,
(43:01):
and and that's why, you know, some of the stereos,
some of the lingering stereotypes really kind of bong on
my mind. But there is I mean, there's so much
spinning though when you look at all of the studies
on education and all these professionals really trying to find
out what works and what doesn't. And we've been through
we haven't even gotten into conversation on all of the
different teaching fads of you know, back in the day
(43:23):
when teachers were discouraged from reading out loud to kids
because they thought it was bad for children's comprehension, that
they should learn to just read silently to themselves, which
is also important. I digress, But there's it's like that
we've never really figured it out for some reason, and
maybe it's just because our clients, the children continue changing
(43:47):
and their environments. So we could go on and on
and on, but I want to hear from teachers out there,
or any of you listening with this. I hope informative
and not even more exhausting van your day job. Let
us know what you think though about all of this
mom stuff at Discovery dot com. Male teachers want to
(44:08):
hear from you as well, And are there any teachers
out there who have tried climbing up the ladder? Have
you encountered challenges to that? And let us know what
it's like to be a teacher today. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com again is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send us
a message on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
(44:28):
messages to share with you right now about video games.
Libby is writing to us from New Zealand, and she
said she wanted to share her experience as a girl gamer.
Libby says, I'm in my late twenties and I started
gaming when I was very young because I lived with
male cousins who gamed extensively, and I eagerly joined in.
(44:51):
I was also very lucky to have my mom who
loved consoles and was enamored with tomb writers, so it's
been a normal part of my life for almost as
long as I can remember. I don't really enter myself
a girl gamer, but simply a gamer. Sometimes I might
refer to myself as a lady gamer, and I have
a few female friends who I game with and we
sometimes call this time we satisfied the game with each
other as lady gaming. I was surprised to hear the
(45:13):
definition of hardcore on the podcast because I never really
thought of myself as falling into this category, but I
very much do. I easily play a couple of hours
each night and then several hours on the weekend. Fortunately,
my husband is a gamer too, and we enjoy playing
games and spending time together in this way. How I
managed to fit all the other life things in is
a mystery. I can absolutely relate to having a resume
(45:37):
or a catalog of games in the back of my
mind ready to go should someone question my gamer cred,
the ones I've played, the ones I've liked and dislike,
and what's happening currently in the gaming world. I'm even
tempted to start listing them here as if I need
to prove myself as a gamer, but I'll spare you.
Often people are surprised that I play games at all,
but they're even more surprised when they realize I play
first person shooters among other genres. Once they have settled
(46:00):
into this idea, I've found that it does mean I
often have something in common with men as well as
a few women, and we form a friendship around this
shared interest with online or m m O games. I
try not to reveal my gender to strangers, and I've
not really had too many negative experiences. I've had the
occasional comment like that's hot or you're really good. Mostly,
I feel like I want my gaming to be judged
(46:21):
on its own merits, and if I reveal my gender,
I will automatically have something extra attached to my abilities,
like oh, you sweet little girly thing, you've done so well.
Even though this can be kind of annoying, I feel
very lucky that this is the worst I've had. I've
not had too many people doubt my gamer cred and
I've generally been accepted into gamer circles in real life. Well,
so that's awesome, Livy, thanks for sharing your story. Well,
(46:44):
and I've got an email here from John and it's
a pretty long email, so I can't read the whole thing,
but just wanted to pull out some of the stuff
that he talked about. So he writes, the portrayal of
all characters and video games isn't great, not just women.
Men in most games are trade as being an impossible
shape for example. None of these are representations of normal people.
(47:05):
If anything, the women are more realistic than the men.
As far as for women being fully fleshed out characters,
bring it on for male characters as well. For most
of gaming history, all characters and video games have been
one dimensional. If even that, games are not originally made
to tell stories. They were built on a game mechanic
with goals to accomplish. The Two Paddles and Pong were
not given complex backstories, and neither were Mario or Princess Peach.
(47:27):
There are calculators now that are more powerful than the
system that Mario originally appeared on, and Mario is only
slightly more advanced technologically than one of those paddles in Pong.
The hardware didn't really exist back then to tell complex stories.
Plus the people making the games were not good writers.
It's only been very recently that the video games industry
has been attracting good writers, and most writers initially went
(47:49):
into games if their career as a novelist or screenwriter
didn't take off. It's also taken a long time to
figure out how to tell a story through the medium
of a game, except for the genre of point and
click adventure games, which lent itself to storytelling much more. However,
games have slowly been getting better, with games such as
Walking Dead, which is an excellent story and good female characters,
both strong and flawed. Movies started out in a similar way.
(48:11):
They were initially just a gimmick showing something like a
train moving with no plot, and then developed into its
own art form over time as technology progressed, and he
goes on to say, I think that what makes mail
gamers irritated, myself included, is that criticism of video games
seems to be coming from people who don't know that
much about video games or their history. I've been waiting
my whole life or something like the Citizen Kane of gaming,
(48:33):
as have most other passionate gamers. The outrage and demands
for fully developed female characters, especially when referring to old
games like Mario, seems silly misrepresents the gaming community and industry.
Video games is still a very young medium, and the
ability to tell good stories with good plot development is
only a recent thing. I just like that that although
I've been using terms like gamer and gaming community, they
(48:55):
mean as much as movie goer or movie watching community.
It can make it seem like there's one big block
cup gamers with a hive mind. And I'm sure someone
would have told me by now if that existed. I
hope you get a chance to read my email. I've
been a regular listener for a couple of years, and
this is the first time I've written in. It would
be great if you could address these points. Somehow, I
realized that, although I've tried to keep this as short
as possible, it's too long to be read out on
(49:16):
the show, which, surprise, surprise, John, we're reading your letter,
and something that we addressed heavily in our two episodes
that was not addressed in the part that you read,
Kristen is just the culture, the gaming culture at large.
You know. It's like the conversation is so much bigger
than just like who's on the screen, it's also who's
(49:38):
holding the controller and just sort of Yeah, Anita Sarkisian
isn't demanding a backstory for Princess Peach. It's more using
Princess Peach as an example of how maybe we should
think a little bit bigger and instead of just using
women as props and a male protagonists hero arc, why
(50:00):
not get more women in there who you don't have
to brutally murder and get out of the way. I
know that there's a lot of mail and mail violence
in video games too. I just I honestly, I don't
understand the outrage at this radical notion that maybe women
could be portrayed a little bit better in video games
(50:21):
or could be the heroes protagonists. Yeah, but I appreciate, though,
your thoughtful response, And because this is a conversation, I'm
sure that is not going to go away anytime soon.
So if you have thoughts you want to share with
us again, our email address is mom Stuff at Discovery
dot com. You can also find all of our podcast,
blogs and videos in one place that you should visit
(50:43):
every single day to keep us alive. It's stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com For more on this, and
thousands of other topics. Does it, how stuff works, dot
com fo
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristin and I'm Carolyn, And today we're looking at one
area of employment that is so widely dominated by women,
(00:24):
and that is teaching. That's right. Teaching is sort of
like totally the opposite trend of STEM fields. Yeah, stem
fields being male dominated, trying to recruit more women into them,
get more women interested in young girls. Teaching is super
female dominated and a lot of people are curious as
to why. I was curious as to why, because it's
(00:44):
not like it's always been that way exactly. There is
a distinct feminization of the teaching profession that we will
get into. But first of all, as we like to
do on the podcast, let's throw some stats your way.
This is coming from the National Center for educa Asian Information.
As a fall two thousand twelve, there were an estimated
three point seven million full time teachers and secondary and
(01:07):
elementary schools, three point three million of which are public
school teachers. And the average salary not too shabby. Actually,
the average salary for public school teachers is just under
fifty seven thousand dollars. But when you look at being
adjusted for inflation and all that stuff, the average teacher
salary from twelve and that year was only about one
(01:32):
percent higher than it was in nineteen, So not a
lot of like raises going on. And also, I'm sure
for all the teachers who are listening to this podcast
right now, I just want to acknowledge how many hours
you do work. I mean, you deserve having summers off, right, Um.
(01:52):
But the workforce also is trending younger, which is kind
of interesting to see. The proportion of teachers under thirty
was dramatically from two thousand five to two thousand eleven,
and now more than one in five teachers surveyed are
under thirty, compared to just eleven percent in two thousand five. Right. Yeah,
(02:13):
The proportion of teachers who are fifteen older dropped from
forty two percent in two thousand five to thirty one
percent in twenty eleven. And this equates to fewer years experience.
Not saying that it's you know, a teacher who's twenty
nine years old is going to be not good. It
simply means that we have less experience. Um. The proportion
of public school teachers with five or fewer years of
(02:35):
teaching experience increased from eighteen percent in two thousand five
to twenty six percent in eleven. And when you look
at the demographics, it is still an overwhelmingly white profession,
with a four percent of public school teachers being white.
And Hispanics are the fastest growing non white group entering
the profession. And we should note to that, as with
(02:57):
a lot of podcasts, a lot of these statistics and
what we're going to talk talk about is very US centric,
but these kinds of trends you will also see in
other countries as well. So looking at gender in the US,
eighty four percent of American public school teachers are women,
and that's actually up from sixty nine percent in nineteen
(03:20):
eighty six. Right, and the u N looked at a
bunch of different regions and countries and for the US,
they broke down, um, how many women are in different
levels of education, you know, like high school versus kindergarten
or whatever. They found that pre primary education has the
most women teachers at ninety four point one percent. That's
(03:42):
followed by primary education at eighty seven percent, secondary education
at sixty two. In tertiary, which would be like college
at forty seven point seven percent women. And speaking of men,
this is kind of interesting. They're more likely than women
to enter teaching through altern of routes. So, in other words,
you see a lot of women who start college saying
(04:05):
I want to become a teacher. I will pursue an
education degree, whereas men are more likely to graduate from
college and be like, hey, you know, what's a good
idea of teaching? Right? Like, I have a friend who
was a biology major in college. He actually majored in
food science, and so he was all on track to
make boku debucks working in the food science industry until
(04:28):
he realized that would involve just like working in a
bunch of slaughter houses for for years and years, and
he was like, I'm not going to do that. So
he ended up going back to school, getting his master's,
getting his you know, teaching certificates and all that stuff,
and now he is a biology teacher and he loves it. Ps.
But that is just one example of an alternate route
of like majoring in something completely different than setting out
(04:48):
from the get go to be a teacher. Yeah, but
that gender gap of teaching being an overwhelmingly female dominated
career in the United States is not just specific to
the US. The u N looked around the world and
it is common to find more female teachers, particularly when
(05:09):
you're looking at primary school education. Like go all around
the world except for Sub Saharan Africa, and you usually
have women in the front of the classroom. So there
seems to be this global pattern of teaching being dominated
by women. But like we said, it was not always
the case. And if you just look at the feminization
(05:31):
of the teaching profession in the United States, it takes
some unexpected twists and turns. Right. We we read a
lot about the history of teaching and this so this
is coming from sources including PBS, the Department of ED,
and writer Dana Goldstein Um who all looked at sort
of how the the industry has and the profession have
(05:53):
changed over centuries. If we look back in America to
colonial times up through the eighteenth century, most teachers were
meant they were They were dudes, but they they weren't
set out to be teachers. They were probably on their
way more likely to becoming lawyers, doctors, or ministers, and
so the professional connections they made by heading up a
(06:14):
classroom and teaching kids in a community was a great
way to make connections in that community. Yeah, and you
also have to realize too that prior to the early
eighteen hundreds, education itself was pretty spotty. I mean, just
looking at the US in the late seventeen hundreds, there
were very high illiteracy rates among girls that around fifty percent.
(06:37):
Most kids were taught reading, specifically so that they could
read the Bible. I mean, you might have wealthy girls
who would be who would be taught by governesses, and
some kids might be taught more in the form of apprenticeships,
but education being something that you know, mandatory schooling for
kids was certainly not the norm back then, right, That
(06:59):
was that was still far off at this point. And
if women were going to be teaching, typically they were
quote unquote teaching in these things called dame schools, which
is funny, um, just the name, not the not the institution. Uh.
They served really more as babysitters than actual teachers. These
were usually poor women who would take in a ton
(07:19):
of kids and teach them basic things for a few
pennies a day, like the alphabet and sewing. It's I
mean to me, dame schools just sound like the old
school equivalent of sort of in home daycare centers today
with probably lower levels of quality of care. Right, Yeah,
it was just families who had were not rich by
(07:40):
any means, but who had enough extra cash on hand
to be able to send their kids to learn to
learn some basics, getting kind of a basic foundation. So
we get to eighteen hundred and in the US, nine
of school teachers are men. And if you wanted to
become a teacher back then, you kind of just needed
(08:01):
to breathe. Basically, uh you. All you had to do
really was persuade a local school board that you were
of good moral character and maybe possibly pass a test
of general knowledge. It's not even until eighteen thirty four
that Pennsylvania becomes the first state to require future teachers
to pass a test of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Before then,
(08:22):
it was just like are you a good guy? Yes,
sir I am? And do you know things? Do you
have a small chalkboard? You can take it all right? Godspeed?
And as far as education developments go, um in the
twenties and thirties is when we see the rise of
(08:42):
the common school era, and these common schools are the
precursor to public schools. You have reformers like politician Horace
Man and intellectual Catherine Beecher arguing that there needed to
be both more schools and more teachers, And a lot
of people were getting on the bandwagon that the government
should be providing free basic education to all kids, that
(09:03):
it shouldn't just be a privilege for rich kids in
wealthy homes. Yeah. Dana Goldstein writes about how, particularly as
you're approaching the eighteen thirties, quote, American political, business and
intellectual elite begin to come to a consensus that state
government should guarantee children a free and basic education. And
(09:23):
Horace Man and Katherine Beecher and also John Dewey are
all about that. So they're like, Okay, let's open all
these schools. This would be great. Who's going to teach
all these kids? Right? Yeah. The whole thing is that
opening these schools is going to be expensive. Where would
all of these teachers come from. How are we going
to be able to afford it? Well, obviously we're going
(09:45):
to look at the other half of the population, the
people who you know, we don't have to pay that
much to women. Women. Yeah, because one thing that's happening
at the same time too, because you might be thinking, well,
if they're opening all these schools, guys were teach years
in eight hundred, why don't you just have you know,
more jobs for that guys. That's great, but we also
(10:05):
have the industrial revolution opening up all these new and
better paying fields that men are being attracted away from
teaching to go pursue, especially in larger urban areas, and
so it makes sense that okay, maybe we can have
particularly younger, unmarried women common fill these roles, because also
(10:26):
we should know that literacy rates among women are now
also starting to catch up to men. Right. But along
with this this whole like, yeah, let's just shove all
this cheap labor into our classrooms, you also have the
whole societal hurdle of women working, women working outside the home.
That's indecent. And so people like Horace Mann and Katherine
(10:49):
Beecher had to figure out a way to sell it
to people that yes, you want to be a teacher,
and hey, parents, you want your daughter to be a
teacher before she's married off. And so in the forties
you start to see this is when you start to
see the real, like legit feminization of the teaching profession.
Because people like Man and Beech are emphasized to serve
(11:11):
a purpose women's moral superiority. Man, for instance, wrote, as
a school teacher, a woman would be like an angel,
quote her head encircled with a halo of heavenly light,
her feet sweetening the earth on which she treads, blah
blah blah blah blah, going on and on about the
beauty of her virtue. That just because of the fact
(11:33):
that she was born with a uterus, she's clearly moral
superior to men, and she would serve your children. Well,
he was. He wasn't heavy handed at all. And I
also liked though, how Beecher took the approach of just
throwing men under the bus. She said, yeah, obviously we
(11:54):
want women in the classroom because they're super moral, and
also male teachers are quote low vull are obscene and
temperate and utterly incompetent to which, okay, also a little
heavy handed Katherine Beecher. But you gotta remember too that
in the context of the time we have this, you know,
the reign of the cult of true womanhood during this
(12:14):
Victorian era, So this ties totally in with that, with
the idea of you know, women's you know, on the
domestic front, that being the rightful place for women because
you want them around the children to set the moral example.
Because this is when you have this idea of really
emerging and taking shape of women being again the moral
(12:36):
superiors to men, so naturally they should be in charge
of not only their moral education, but also the intellectual education.
And hey, better yet, we're a bargain. Yeah, um, so,
I mean, yeah, that's that's great that you're telling us
that we are so superior by virtue of the fact
(12:57):
that we have ovaries. But really, I mean, this is
just covering up for the fact that they are trying
to attract women because they're cheaper um. And so by
the eighteen fifties and sixties, women are just flocking to
teaching because not because they all grew up wanting to
be teachers, because probably when they were growing up that
wasn't even an option yet. But they would have a salary,
(13:19):
they had a degree of independence, a sense of purpose,
they were leading children. I mean that that is a
noble cause no matter what generation you're growing up in.
And perhaps the sense of adventure as well, because in
the eighteen forties, the National Board of Popular Education sent
six hundred female teachers to frontier towns, go west, young woman,
teach our teach our kids. And I mean this this
(13:41):
is tying into to our past episodes on secretarial work,
the feminization of clerical and secretarial work sort of in
a similar way, how it became more female dominated again
because they could pay us half what they would pay men,
and there weren't many options, so we flooded that and
also our Madam's podcasts where hey, the going West was
(14:04):
also very appealing. So you have all these different factors
starting to swirl around, and with all these women flocking
to the classroom, you have the rise of what are
called normal schools to train this new teaching workforce. Yeah,
it's interesting, is that. Like, so as teaching is becoming
quote unquote feminized and more, the percentage of women over
(14:27):
men as teachers is increasing, there's this sort of uneasiness
that settles over everybody where they start to look at
each other and they're like, oh, wait, We've got all
these women because we told them they were more morally
superior to men, but we don't actually think women are
smarter than men. What are we gonna do to make
sure that the quality of education is maintained and so
(14:49):
there were a lot of political reformers, mainly men around
this time, who were saying, look, women just aren't cutting it,
and they sought to attract a quote higher class professional.
They wanted to make the class u room more standardized,
you know, just across cities, across regions, and make it
into a test measured practice. And so that's when you
get those normal schools established to basically teach the teachers
(15:12):
um but as teaching as we go along and teaching
becomes more professionalized, those classes move out of the normal
schools and into regular universities. And so as a result
of this professionalization of the teaching industry, you kind of
have a giant wedge between the actual teachers in the classroom,
(15:32):
the boots on the ground. They end up at the
bottom of the hierarchy. Hierarchy and the leadership and administration.
These leaders who wanted education to be recognized the same
way that law and medicine were as a white collar,
upstanding profession and the bulk of those people were men. Yeah,
I mean, if you just look at principles, you typically
(15:55):
would have a male principle installed in schools. They would
say to handle disciplinary problems basically have a guy around
to make sure that if these young teachers, and we're
talking very young, some of these teachers would still be
teenagers teaching teenage boys sometimes who might match them or
(16:16):
be larger than them physically. So they said, well, we
need you know, we've been around to make sure that
we can keep everybody in the line um. But then
also the whole issue of the professionalization compounds that as well,
So overwhelmingly you have women in the classroom, but men
overseeing the administration. Right. So, moving into the eighteen nineties
(16:37):
and nineteen tens, women are still and now the majority
of teachers, making up only a small minority of administrators
and above um. And because of this, they really end
up with little say over their classrooms. They didn't have
as many resources as they would have liked, They've made
far less money than they would have liked. But as
(16:57):
human beings in the United States, they couldn't vote. What
are you gonna do? So you see a lot of
women organizing into first teachers associations and then unions, women
like educators Margaret Haley and Catherine Goggin, who were angry
enough at the state of teaching that they formed the
first teachers only union, the Chicago Teachers Federation, and they
(17:20):
rallied for improved pay, retirement benefits, and tenure. Yeah, and
Gold Team talks about how essentially the strategy behind this
was since they could not vote, they would align themselves
with unions to kind of get the men in the
unions to flex their muscles at the ballot boxes on
(17:41):
their behalf. Um, and just thinking though about the lack
of resources. I mean, teachers have a lack of resources today,
let's face it. But even back then, imagine having even
fewer resources than you would today in front of a
classroom of sixty kids. That wasn't uncommon it And you
also have this massive influx of immigrants, and so you're
(18:05):
not even guaranteed that all your kids can even understand
you or communicate in English with you. Yeah. You start
to see around this time, especially um from Margaret Haley,
we start hearing like teachers should be able to teach
how they want to teach, and how they recognize that
they know they need to teach. Because if half of
your class can't even speak English, you're gonna need to
(18:27):
switch up your teaching style just a little bit. And so,
but that's something you still here today, Like, not wanting
to teach to the common core, not wanting to teach
according to No Child Left Behind, wanting to have kind
of a democratization of the classroom under the teacher. Yeah.
And the very fact that Haley was organizing women and
aligning themselves with unions that also was a major no no.
(18:50):
Like the the elite businessmen of the time were scandalized
at the idea of women getting involved in unions. I mean,
because again, remember we couldn't even vote back then, right.
Hayley ended up being called a nasty, unladylike woman after
one episode where she uh ended up suing corporations who
weren't paying taxes on land that they were leasing from
(19:11):
Chicago public schools, and then allied her Chicago Teachers Federation
with the Chicago Federation of Labor, establishing teachers unions as
a powerful force. So she was at the forefront of
all this stuff. And as a result, I mean, she
must have been doing some right to be called nasty
and unladylike exactly. It's kind of a compliment in contemporary terms. Uh.
(19:32):
And the historical note, in November nine two, we have
the very first teacher strike in the US in Chicago
due to this union organization that was happening, and it
was led off by a woman named Janice mckeann who
kicked a kid out of class for using profanity against
these these probably these issues are still happening today, pretty
(19:54):
much all of them that we touch on. The principle
then sends the kid back to class, but McKean's like, no, no, no, no,
you can't come back. So she was then though, suspended
for thirty days without pay, and a week later, four
hundred students, parents and teachers protested in support of her. Yeah,
(20:14):
I mean, that's that's pretty incredible that, you know, you
can say all this about feminization of the industry. But still,
feminization isn't necessarily a nice term when you think about
what people associate with traditional femininity. But the fact that
all these people during this era were coming out in
support of this woman and her ruling that no profane
student you shall not red into the classroom, that's pretty impressive. Yeah,
(20:36):
feminization should certainly not be interpreted as weakening of the profession,
right right exactly. Um So, moving into the twentieth century,
in the nineteen tents to the nineteen thirties, just as
it had earlier, women's women teachers increased cloud and power
in education started to make men uneasy. And this is
(20:59):
where we start to see the rise of worries about
women's emasculating effects on their male students, because if you
look at nineteen five, for instance, male teachers make up
only a quarter of the workforce, and so it's just
it's funny to see how women dominating anything, even if
they were originally invited to it by being told that
(21:22):
they're morally superior. Everybody's still a little nervous and biting
their nails over it. Well, even the fact that in
men were making up a quarter of the teaching force,
that actually represented some a little bit of ground that
they had gained back, because uh, once more of those
you know, secretarial and office jobs started opening up to women,
(21:43):
kind of in the same way that the Industrial Revolution
drew men away from teaching, some women were being drawn
away from teaching, you know, at the prospect of a
secretarial job, and so you have a few more men
coming into it, but still you have I mean, how
long did it take what sixty years for the feminization
(22:03):
process to be firmly cemented for all of time, all time.
In fact, from nineteen fifty, this feminization process was so
firmly entrenched that school districts generously started dropping their practices
of banning married women from teaching. This is very uncommon. Basically,
(22:27):
teaching was a socially acceptable stepping stone in between living
with your parents essentially being a teenager and becoming a mother.
And once you got married, you would probably become a
mother soon thereafter, and no, ma'am, you would stay in
the home. That's right. I wonder if that's where we
get like our stereotype of like old spinster stern teachers from.
(22:51):
It might the fact that they weren't married women were
not welcome in the professional Oh yeah, that's very true.
That's a good point. Although you know what we don't
have information on either though, is why we give teachers
apples interesting brain food. I don't know, I don't cheap
cheap gifts, bribery. Well, speaking of apples, actually, not speaking
(23:13):
of apples at all. We're going to take a quick
break and get right back into this conversation on women
and teaching, and now back to the show. Okay, so
we mentioned before the break we touched on the fact
that while teaching is a majority woman lad uh profession
(23:37):
and that it's very feminized, so to speak, there is
a divide between the actual teachers in the classroom and
then the individuals who are leading the schools in the
school district. And it's talked about as a glass ceiling
and education that um, basically women just aren't entering those
(23:59):
higher level professions and education and the foundation for this
was laid in the mid eighteen hundreds when you see
that professional professionalization that needs your reaction to all of
these women in the classroom and men getting really concerned
and so taking over almost instinctively those top tier positions.
And that's something we even still see today because there
(24:21):
are all of these When we look at the modern
teaching profession, you do see a lot more intensive efforts
to recruit more male teachers. But at the same time,
there's this general view of teaching as a lower rung profession,
even though it is so integral to our societal functioning
and you know, global competitiveness, and even though teaching is
(24:42):
still sort of sold to women as a quote unquote
woman friendly profession, it doesn't necessarily mean that education is
allowing a lot of opportunities for advancement beyond just teaching
kindergarten or whatever it might be. Right, Yeah, you look
at I mean, I absolutely I'm not. I never have
been in the teaching profession, but even I recognize that
(25:06):
stereotype of teaching being sold as a woman friendly professional.
Oh you know, you get off work at three, you're
off all summer. It's great. No, no, that's not how
it works. My friend who is a elementary or preschool teacher,
I mean she works all the time. She has two
very young kids. I mean, this girl does not leave
(25:28):
work at three. She works many hours, and she works
practically all summer. I mean I would think she takes
off maybe two weeks during the summer, but she's got
to work on lesson plans, she has to plan all
sorts of stuff. Being a teacher is not like an
easy walk in the park. Yeah. I mean it's because
some would say that there's never really been um and
(25:48):
maybe because it's impossible a standardization of the profession the
same way as you would see with something like law
or medicine. Okay, so so yeah, so like we were
talking about, I mean, it's considered a woman only job,
but is it because women aren't exactly taking advantage of
those opportunities for advancement. So anyway, the study in two
(26:09):
thousand seven that was in the journal Gender and Education
looked at three main gender imbalances generally identified with teaching.
So the first one is across education phases. So women
are concentrated in the nursery and primary sectors, which maybe
cause correlation, I don't know, are less valued and less rewarded.
(26:31):
There's also an imbalance across subjects taught, so there's a
lower proportion of women in math and science compared with
other subjects like reading or English. And there's an imbalance
across positions themselves, so women are underrepresented, like we're saying,
and promoted posts across all education phases. But when you
talk to teachers, the fact that statistically there are so
(26:53):
many women in the classroom, it creates this perception that
there are no professional barriers to advancement because they would
look around them and say, we aren't being you know,
prevented from doing anything. How that would be impossible. There
are so many of us here, and yeah, I mean
if you look over in the UK, for instance, and
the statistic is a little bit old, this is coming
(27:14):
from two thousand five, but at least at that time,
men were three point one times more likely to become
head teachers than women. And that's in nursery and primary schools.
And then if you move into secondary schools there two
points six times likely or to become head teachers compared
to women. Right, and if you move over to the US,
this is coming from rand Um. In public schools in
(27:39):
two thousand, in that school year, forty percent of all
principles were women, up from thirty five percent in nine
and up from twenty five percent in nineteen eighty eight. Um,
in nine and two thousand women made up fifty five
percent of public elementary school principles but just twenty one
percent of public high school insciples, which is where the
(28:01):
money is. So you can see that as the kids
are aging up as like you know, I guess the
difficulty level of course is moving up. Um, we see
fewer women. And then if you look at superintendents, no
big surprise, the number drops off even more. This is
coming from two thousand, which again a little bit dated,
but women comprise only thirteen percent of superintendence, which actually
(28:25):
represented double the proportion from n SO ground was being made.
But when you think about again the fact that today
eight six percent of teachers in the US are women,
those numbers of you know that, the fact that we're only, say,
thirteen percent of superintendence, that's not really a reflection of
(28:47):
how many of us are in sort of the feet
on the ground workforce. Now, what's interesting is that in
charter schools, among among the principles of charter schools, women
make up more than half of those principles thousand, but
men still made up a majority of the secondary school
(29:08):
principles in both the public and the private sector. And
looking at private schools, women made up the majority of
all elementary and combined school principles, and we're thirty eight
percent of high school principles. So it is notable that
when you move out of the public school system into
private and charter you do start to see some differences.
There was also and I don't have the statistics right
(29:29):
in front of me, but you also see a similar
pattern too. I want to say when it comes to
racial diversity an administration, where when you move into private
and charter schools, it does tend to get more diverse
at the top, at least I'm thinking about because I
grew up. Um I started, I started in public schools,
(29:49):
moved to a private school, and you know, I literally
didn't think about it until right this second. But my
public elementary school principle was a woman, My private elementary
school principle was a woman, My private middle school principle
was a woman. It wasn't until I got to high
school that the principle was a man. So that's interesting.
It's like, oh, good, yeah, women leading the pack, but
(30:12):
oh wait, until you actually get to the upper grades.
Exact same pattern for me, explained though by the fact
that my mom was my principal bearing home school. So
I don't know if that counts, um. But then that
leads to questions, as with any conversation about women and professions,
(30:32):
and why are there more of us at the top?
Are we simply not to use a phrase that causes
some people to cringe? Are we not leaning in? Is
it because of the motherhood off ramp thatts it's sometimes
called that is preventing more women from taking on more
administrative duties because we're already bogged down enough. I'm saying
we as though I'm also teaching America's youth. But teachers
(30:56):
are already bogged down enough as it is, just with
all of a testing that has to be done, then
if you want to advance, you gotta take on even
more responsibility. Right. This is coming from that two thousand
seven Gender and Education study over in the UK where
a lot of the teachers they interviewed UM cited work life,
(31:17):
family balance, all of that stuff as a reason why
they themselves personally and maybe why they can see other
women were not pursuing those higher level positions because you know,
you have those things like career breaks after childbirth UM
or just returning part time after you have a baby
that are identified as major factors in women's under representation
(31:39):
at management level UM. A lot of women also told
the researchers about moving to support a husband's career because
it was viewed as more important rather than staying put
for a woman's teaching career, because teaching is seen as
a more portable position, even though, as we talked about
in our Military Spouses episode, if you're moving all the time,
(31:59):
it's not like you can move up the ranks as fast.
And the Guardian looked at barriers and pointed out that
a lot of recruiters themselves have prejudices, you know, based
on your appearance. You know, women are supposed to look
a certain way, act a certain way, and so if
they're perceived as too confident or too aggressive, then oh,
(32:20):
I don't know, you might not fit that that spot
very well. Versus like a confident man who walks in
the room. It's like, I got this. He's viewed as
more competent than a woman who acts the same but
is just viewed as aggressive. Yeah, I mean, there are
clearly so many variables going on. I mean, it's not
just an issue of something like institutional sexism that is
barring more women from you know, climbing the ladder in
(32:42):
the teaching profession. But another question along with that is
sort of in the reverse of Okay, maybe we need
more women at the top, sure to balance things out
a bit, But what about having more men in the classroom,
because it does raise some red flags for people who
study education or or or more um education critics if
(33:05):
you will, that teaching is so overwhelmingly female dominated because
perhaps who is in front of the classroom the gender
influences how girls and particularly boys learn, right, Yeah, um,
I would I would say that the bulk of the
(33:27):
studies that Kristen and I read on this issue as
far as like does the teacher's gender affect the students
and how they learned? I would say the bulk of
them were either murky or they said no, it doesn't
really have an effect, where where one study did show
that it had it did correlate to students success. Is
an international study by the u N, so this global
(33:50):
perspective is important, but it's also worth pointing out that
they're not necessarily looking at more developed countries. They're looking
at countries where maybee girls education is not priority has
as highly as boys and so in this study, the
u N found that the percentage of female teachers in
primary education roughly correlates with girls gross enrollment ratios or
(34:10):
g e r s in secondary education. They found that
in versely, countries with the lowest g e r s
for girls in secondary education typically have the lowest shares
of female teachers in primary education. And the significance of this,
they point out in this international study, is that, hey,
you know, this is a big deal when you consider
(34:32):
that six of the people worldwide who can't read are women. Yeah,
but things break down differently. The Chips fall a little
bit differently when you're looking at countries like the US,
the U k UM. While some researchers have said yeah,
absolutely affects, you know, how boys and girls learn to
(34:53):
read or how they learn to do math, I would
say that in my totally expert opinion, I would say
that it seems like more studies are showing it's really
more the teacher's expertise and the teacher's confidence and their
familiarity with the material and their ability to clearly convey
that to the students that has a whole lot more
to do with it than what's in their pants. Yes,
(35:18):
over and over again, you see, particularly for if you
look at STEM courses, the science, tech, engineering, and math.
Let's talk about a female math teacher. Studies find that
that woman will have positive outcomes for female students who
we would think of as lagging behind boys in math traditionally.
(35:40):
But if she is taught by a female teacher who
is excellent and confident at math, then she will succeed.
I mean, it's all these kind of no brainer findings
and in my again uh lay opinion reading the study findings,
but I mean there there was massively controversial study finding
(36:02):
not too long ago, uh, led by the Stanford professor
Thomas d who was looking at survey data among thousands
of eighth graders, and he acknowledged that, I know, seventeen
ninety is a little bit data dated, but this data
is really rich, and he found a very solid gender
(36:24):
based interaction. Basically, boys do that better with male teachers,
girls do better with female teachers, to which people said, well,
are you arguing for same sex classrooms. That's a controversial idea.
He said no, because once you start breaking down those
very general findings, yet again, you just start digging into
all of these classroom variables of well, how well is
(36:47):
the teacher trained in a subject matter? What is the
classroom like? Where are these schools that you're looking at,
Because you also have to look at the schools that
are being examined, whether or not they are in a
lower socio economic area that might not be receiving as
many rich learning resources as other, say, charter schools and
wealthier areas. Right, and you also have to look at
(37:09):
one thing that we've talked about on the podcast before
and in different contexts, but but that is the fact
that both men and women respond often better to male students,
and so, you know, there's a whole lot of moving
parts with this, but um an study in the Journal
(37:30):
European Sociological Review, for instance, points to They basically found that, okay,
there's no correlation between you know, gender and the students success.
And the significance of that, they said, is that the
popular call to have more male teachers in primary schools
is not the key to tackling the growing disadvantage of boys.
(37:54):
Because we see, there's all these trend stories lately about
you know, girls are surpassing boys at every level of
a education. More young women than young men are going
to college and and going on to get their masters
and PhD, on and on and on, and they're saying
that it's not because there weren't enough male teachers in
their younger years. There's just probably so many factors at play. Yeah,
(38:16):
the effort take for instance, now this is moving into China,
so let's toss another variable onto the pile. But there
was the study looking at Chinese primary school students in
two thousand ten, and it found no support for the
idea that boys learned better from men. Rather, they found
that both boys and girls learned better from women. But Again,
(38:38):
it has nothing to do, as Caroline said, with what
is in their pants or skirt or kulats. Rather, they
found that the kids simply preferred learning from a woman
because the women tended to have a more patient teaching style,
whereas the men in these classrooms tended to have a
more authoritarian style. Again, you can't extrapolate that to every
(39:00):
individual teacher. But that's just, you know, a clear example
of how you really making these broadbrush generalizations of women
are better for girls, men are better for boys. Is
that's really hard to back up once you start unraveling
all of the different influencers in how classroom learning actually
(39:24):
takes place. Right, Because when I'm thinking back over my
own personal experience and I talked about my principles, you know, um,
my favorite some of my favorite teachers were men, and
they were teaching me in English and language arts. Um,
and I didn't feel like I was not able to
(39:44):
speak up. I didn't feel like I was being made to,
you know, feel dumb or anything like that. I felt
just as engaged as when I had a brilliant woman
for an English teacher in high school. Um, I think
it all depends, all depends. I don't know. I think
a lot of it depends on teaching style. Does the
child respond to that teacher. Is the teacher, you know,
(40:06):
taking the extra time to make sure that the students
get it, whether they're male or female, however, they do
engage the students. Yeah, in high school, the teachers that
I most responded to, and pretty evenly split between men
and women, were the ones who I felt were the
most invested in my learning, who respected me as a student,
(40:28):
and who I had two English teachers, actually female English
teachers in high school who I just on a personal level,
just did not like me. They would make comments to me,
they would call me out, they would I was a
very good student, but they just didn't like me, and
(40:48):
it was always a terror being in that classroom, whereas
I had, you know, a male English teacher for instance,
who was very nurturing and would ask me questions, ends,
and the same with all your kids in the classroom,
you know. But again that's just going to depend to
on where you're sitting. I mean, what kind of resources
(41:09):
do you have, how large how many kids are you
having to oversee? Are you dealing with kids who might
have learning disabilities in the class as well, what kind
of classroom management do you have to deal with? So
many factors and the fact that what's unfortunate about the
feminization of teaching is that it's almost like and Dana
Goldstein talks about this, how that's sort of been manipulated
(41:32):
to underscore the vital importance and and seriousness and professionalization
of that job, whereas it's like, oh, how sweet girls
just want to become kindergarten teachers. Give him an apple.
That's really precious. But the job itself is a lot tougher,
I think than than people have historically given it credit for.
(41:54):
Oh sure, I mean, like, do you have teacher friends?
My mom is a teacher. Oh yeah, course of course.
I mean there's so much work, like it blows me away,
like I'll have a stressful day, and it does not
even equate to my my friends. Who's the who's a
teacher her stressful day, because I mean, we just get
(42:14):
to go to work and just do our jobs and
talk with people over the water cooler, and it's fine.
She has to go to work and deal with grown ups,
but also deal with a million children with running noses
and making sure they get it and they comprehend the
material and Johnny's not running out the door. And you know,
in college, I tutored kids in middle school and elementary
school for the crc T test, and Caroline, it was
(42:38):
a daily test of my patients. Granted I didn't go
to school for teaching, but it gave me a holly
new found respect for the people who do that day
in and day out, because even working in small groups
with kids is no small task. It's not. It is not,
(43:01):
and and that's why, you know, some of the stereos,
some of the lingering stereotypes really kind of bong on
my mind. But there is I mean, there's so much
spinning though when you look at all of the studies
on education and all these professionals really trying to find
out what works and what doesn't. And we've been through
we haven't even gotten into conversation on all of the
different teaching fads of you know, back in the day
(43:23):
when teachers were discouraged from reading out loud to kids
because they thought it was bad for children's comprehension, that
they should learn to just read silently to themselves, which
is also important. I digress, But there's it's like that
we've never really figured it out for some reason, and
maybe it's just because our clients, the children continue changing
(43:47):
and their environments. So we could go on and on
and on, but I want to hear from teachers out there,
or any of you listening with this. I hope informative
and not even more exhausting van your day job. Let
us know what you think though about all of this
mom stuff at Discovery dot com. Male teachers want to
(44:08):
hear from you as well, And are there any teachers
out there who have tried climbing up the ladder? Have
you encountered challenges to that? And let us know what
it's like to be a teacher today. Mom Stuff at
Discovery dot com again is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or send us
a message on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
(44:28):
messages to share with you right now about video games.
Libby is writing to us from New Zealand, and she
said she wanted to share her experience as a girl gamer.
Libby says, I'm in my late twenties and I started
gaming when I was very young because I lived with
male cousins who gamed extensively, and I eagerly joined in.
(44:51):
I was also very lucky to have my mom who
loved consoles and was enamored with tomb writers, so it's
been a normal part of my life for almost as
long as I can remember. I don't really enter myself
a girl gamer, but simply a gamer. Sometimes I might
refer to myself as a lady gamer, and I have
a few female friends who I game with and we
sometimes call this time we satisfied the game with each
other as lady gaming. I was surprised to hear the
(45:13):
definition of hardcore on the podcast because I never really
thought of myself as falling into this category, but I
very much do. I easily play a couple of hours
each night and then several hours on the weekend. Fortunately,
my husband is a gamer too, and we enjoy playing
games and spending time together in this way. How I
managed to fit all the other life things in is
a mystery. I can absolutely relate to having a resume
(45:37):
or a catalog of games in the back of my
mind ready to go should someone question my gamer cred,
the ones I've played, the ones I've liked and dislike,
and what's happening currently in the gaming world. I'm even
tempted to start listing them here as if I need
to prove myself as a gamer, but I'll spare you.
Often people are surprised that I play games at all,
but they're even more surprised when they realize I play
first person shooters among other genres. Once they have settled
(46:00):
into this idea, I've found that it does mean I
often have something in common with men as well as
a few women, and we form a friendship around this
shared interest with online or m m O games. I
try not to reveal my gender to strangers, and I've
not really had too many negative experiences. I've had the
occasional comment like that's hot or you're really good. Mostly,
I feel like I want my gaming to be judged
(46:21):
on its own merits, and if I reveal my gender,
I will automatically have something extra attached to my abilities,
like oh, you sweet little girly thing, you've done so well.
Even though this can be kind of annoying, I feel
very lucky that this is the worst I've had. I've
not had too many people doubt my gamer cred and
I've generally been accepted into gamer circles in real life. Well,
so that's awesome, Livy, thanks for sharing your story. Well,
(46:44):
and I've got an email here from John and it's
a pretty long email, so I can't read the whole thing,
but just wanted to pull out some of the stuff
that he talked about. So he writes, the portrayal of
all characters and video games isn't great, not just women.
Men in most games are trade as being an impossible
shape for example. None of these are representations of normal people.
(47:05):
If anything, the women are more realistic than the men.
As far as for women being fully fleshed out characters,
bring it on for male characters as well. For most
of gaming history, all characters and video games have been
one dimensional. If even that, games are not originally made
to tell stories. They were built on a game mechanic
with goals to accomplish. The Two Paddles and Pong were
not given complex backstories, and neither were Mario or Princess Peach.
(47:27):
There are calculators now that are more powerful than the
system that Mario originally appeared on, and Mario is only
slightly more advanced technologically than one of those paddles in Pong.
The hardware didn't really exist back then to tell complex stories.
Plus the people making the games were not good writers.
It's only been very recently that the video games industry
has been attracting good writers, and most writers initially went
(47:49):
into games if their career as a novelist or screenwriter
didn't take off. It's also taken a long time to
figure out how to tell a story through the medium
of a game, except for the genre of point and
click adventure games, which lent itself to storytelling much more. However,
games have slowly been getting better, with games such as
Walking Dead, which is an excellent story and good female characters,
both strong and flawed. Movies started out in a similar way.
(48:11):
They were initially just a gimmick showing something like a
train moving with no plot, and then developed into its
own art form over time as technology progressed, and he
goes on to say, I think that what makes mail
gamers irritated, myself included, is that criticism of video games
seems to be coming from people who don't know that
much about video games or their history. I've been waiting
my whole life or something like the Citizen Kane of gaming,
(48:33):
as have most other passionate gamers. The outrage and demands
for fully developed female characters, especially when referring to old
games like Mario, seems silly misrepresents the gaming community and industry.
Video games is still a very young medium, and the
ability to tell good stories with good plot development is
only a recent thing. I just like that that although
I've been using terms like gamer and gaming community, they
(48:55):
mean as much as movie goer or movie watching community.
It can make it seem like there's one big block
cup gamers with a hive mind. And I'm sure someone
would have told me by now if that existed. I
hope you get a chance to read my email. I've
been a regular listener for a couple of years, and
this is the first time I've written in. It would
be great if you could address these points. Somehow, I
realized that, although I've tried to keep this as short
as possible, it's too long to be read out on
(49:16):
the show, which, surprise, surprise, John, we're reading your letter,
and something that we addressed heavily in our two episodes
that was not addressed in the part that you read,
Kristen is just the culture, the gaming culture at large.
You know. It's like the conversation is so much bigger
than just like who's on the screen, it's also who's
(49:38):
holding the controller and just sort of Yeah, Anita Sarkisian
isn't demanding a backstory for Princess Peach. It's more using
Princess Peach as an example of how maybe we should
think a little bit bigger and instead of just using
women as props and a male protagonists hero arc, why
(50:00):
not get more women in there who you don't have
to brutally murder and get out of the way. I
know that there's a lot of mail and mail violence
in video games too. I just I honestly, I don't
understand the outrage at this radical notion that maybe women
could be portrayed a little bit better in video games
(50:21):
or could be the heroes protagonists. Yeah, but I appreciate, though,
your thoughtful response, And because this is a conversation, I'm
sure that is not going to go away anytime soon.
So if you have thoughts you want to share with
us again, our email address is mom Stuff at Discovery
dot com. You can also find all of our podcast,
blogs and videos in one place that you should visit
(50:43):
every single day to keep us alive. It's stuff Mom
Never Told You dot com For more on this, and
thousands of other topics. Does it, how stuff works, dot
com fo
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