Today, we will begin with a mathematical fun fact. In the 1890s, back when the United States referred to public schools as “common schools,” 68% of teachers were women. This was at a time when the Census reported female workforce participation rate at 16%. In 1940, 76% of public school educators were women, although female national workforce participation was closer to 30%. The contrast between these numbers is extreme. When the vast majority of women were not recognized as “gainful workers,” teaching was uniquely female-dominated. Women have represented more than 50% of the teaching work force ever since the public school model became the country’s dominant educational system.
My mother is a (now retired) nurse. When I was younger, I would ask her about what she had wanted to be at my age. She admitted that there were very few options, always commenting with a laugh, “It was become a nurse, a teacher, a secretary, or Miss America.” If she had not become a nurse, teacher would have been the next choice on the list. Of the available options, teaching proved to be highly appealing for many, because it could come with the job security, union membership, and public respect that were otherwise rare for women. (It is worth noting that the prestige of teaching has decreased significantly over time. The status of the profession in my mother’s day and today are not the same.)
Today, the gender composition of the education profession is overall similar to 1940: 75% of K-12 teachers are women. There are more women in primary than in secondary schools, and more men in positions of leadership such as principals and superintendants (where they make more money), but the basic fact remains that public school education is a female-dominated profession. Yet the state of women in the labor force has changed drastically in the intervening 80 years. The number of women in the labor force holding a college degree has more than quadrupled, and the workforce participation rate is nearly 60%. Teaching is no longer one of the most prestigious or lucrative options available to young women entering the workforce; far from it, in fact.
There has been a significant decrease in the number of Bachelor’s degrees in education being conferred nationally, from over 170,000 in 1971 to 85,000 in 2020. In other words, half as many people are receiving undergraduate degrees in education. This is in spite of the fact that the overall number of Americans receiving college degrees has skyrocketed. Only 4% of all degrees awarded nationally in 2022 given were in education, as opposed to 8% in in 2000. Pew Research Center reported in September of 2022 that “[w]omen, in particular, have become much less likely to choose education as their field of study. More than a third (36%) of all bachelor’s degrees conferred to women were in education in 1970–71. By 2019–20, just 6% of the undergraduate degrees awarded to women were in education.”
The reasons why young college graduates might not go into education are the same as why current teachers might leave: poor pay, unrealistic expectations, high stress, and rising rates of burnout. Clearly, women are not leaving teaching in enough numbers to change the demographics of the field. It remains a majority female profession. Yet I think it’s worth considering the role of workplace gender equality when observing the decrease of Americans in general, and women in particular, planning to enter the field of teaching. It is rarely named in conversations regarding teacher burnout and exit from the profession that women now have other professional options to pursue, many of them more lucrative and more highly valued by society. Schools have lost a formerly captive workforce that once had few other available paths.
If schools become places of employment with better working conditions, including higher pay and more respect, they will attract more potential employees of all gender identities. Until that happens, it is worth noting one of the reasons that women choose to leave teaching public schools, or not to teach at all: they now have other options.
