Teachers, Gender and the Feminisation Debate

Book excerpt: Teachers, Gender and the Feminisation Debate critically engages with the claim that teaching is a feminised profession and offers a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the way gender and power play out in the lives of male and female teachers. Informed by social constructivist, feminist theories of work and education, the book adopts a relational and intersectional approach to gender. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, including national and international datasets, policy and research texts, and an original corpus of interviews conducted by the author in England and France, the book provides a timely assessment of a view of teaching as feminised. It explores the various discourses and debates about the feminisation of teaching which circulate in media and policy circles in a range of local, national and international contexts, and questions some of the claims underpinning these discourses. It also analyses the experiences of men and women who teach, looking at the way gender and power impact on their careers and private lives in the context of the feminisation debate. Teachers, Gender and the Feminisation Debate offers a research-informed and comprehensive account of gender issues in the teaching profession and will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, sociology and gender studies.