# Gender divide in elementary education & child care **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 3, 2018, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366 "2018-10-03T13:18:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2018, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/21 "2018-10-03T23:15:55Z")
Almost 50 years ago, not only did my elementary school have several male teachers, one of them in a wheelchair, but the principals were always women, as was my junior high principal. When I was a young adult, that school got a black female principal who made a blip in the regional news when she banned Halloween costumes. Some people thought she had some agenda, but she said she didn’t; she did this because this school had students with wealthy parents, and students who lived in dire poverty, and everything in between, and she didn’t want any child to feel left out because they couldn’t afford a costume, or had parents who were not particularly artistic. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2018, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/22 "2018-10-03T23:26:24Z")
I had the “only three male teachers” in elementary school, too. (One taught fifth grade, the other two taught music and gym.) But my son’s had more male teachers (including in the classroom) than that. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/23 "2018-10-04T00:39:29Z")
Teaching used to be one of the only professions open to women, so you got lots of educated women going into the field for little pay. Men wouldn’t go there because of the little pay. Then other jobs opened up to women. Lots of educated women went to those jobs. The pay increased some, but not much\*. The job is stigmatized as women’s work, so lots of men don’t want to do it. That said, in my school’s staff of about 30 teachers (including specialists), we have a male kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade teacher, as well as our tech teacher and an EC teacher. A couple of the assistants are dudes. AFAIK, this is a pretty high fraction. - Elementary school teachers are primarily made up of folks willing to take the lower salary because they believe so strongly in the work, and people for whom it really is the best money they can make with a college degree. The latter group can be a problem. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/24 "2018-10-04T01:04:35Z")
I’m not getting rich as an elementary school librarian, but I’m making a good bit more than I would if I had stayed in a nonsupervisory public library job. There are way more female librarians in our school system, but I’m far from being the only guy. We have the same pay scale for all teachers/specialists. I wonder if the lower average pay for elementary school teachers is due to a lot of them burning out before they climb too far up the pay scale. I don’t know that middle of high school is any easier,.though. ---
**Author:** ![Kimera757](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimera757/32/3765_2.png) [@Kimera757](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimera757)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/25 "2018-10-04T02:34:37Z")
I’m a guy, and I don’t like kids. I thought about being a teacher, but would only have want to teach high school students. I don’t know if that’s a guy thing, though. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > Some fields are extremely highly sex biased. I work in manufacturing IT for a mega-corp and absolutely all of us that do hands on work are male. There are some female managers but they do things like handle budgets. When is the last time you saw a female mechanic? For that matter, when is the last time you had a male dental hygienist? It isn’t discrimination. It is self selection. Men and women are not the same and that is a good thing. I recall doing a phone survey with electricians. There was **one** woman’s name in a list of hundreds, but she refused to do the survey. _Sigh_ There is self-selection, but maybe there’s also cultural selection. Perhaps men in teacher’s college decide they don’t want to teach kindergarten students because of the high number of female teachers, sort of like how few men become nurses as they might view the job as “feminine” despite there being nothing particularly feminine about nursing. (What is feminine about being thrown up on?) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/26 "2018-10-04T02:52:26Z")
> [@P-man](#): > > I’m not getting rich as an elementary school librarian, but I’m making a good bit more than I would if I had stayed in a nonsupervisory public library job. There are way more female librarians in our school system, but I’m far from being the only guy. > > We have the same pay scale for all teachers/specialists. I wonder if the lower average pay for elementary school teachers is due to a lot of them burning out before they climb too far up the pay scale. I don’t know that middle of high school is any easier,.though. I bet it’s coaching and other things with stipends. I don’t know how much of that there is in elementary school, but there’s quite a bit in high school. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/27 "2018-10-04T03:45:43Z")
Several times in this thread it has been mentioned that the low pay for elementary school teachers may drive away men. It’s also possible that the direction of causation goes the opposite way. Elementary school teacher pay is low because it is a job mostly performed by women. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/28 "2018-10-04T04:01:27Z")
I am a man who has spent much of his career teaching in elementary school settings. I taught kindergarten for the first eight or nine years of my career, then spent another nine or 10 years teaching first and second grades. At first I was the only male classroom teacher in the lower school (this was a small independent school, pre-K through 12th grade), though there was an occasional specialist teacher who was male—One year, for example, the kids had a man as a music teacher. When I moved on to first grade, the school replaced me at the kindergarten with another man, and a couple years later they hired a man to teach pre-kindergarten as well. Three men obviously wasn’t a tremendous total, but three men at the very lowest grades in a fairly small school was, I think, pretty good. Why aren’t there more? I think there are a bunch of reasons, but the one I’d highlight is cultural, what I sometimes call the “tyranny of expectations.” By this I mean that many people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that a man might teach elementary grades, especially pre-kindergarten and primary school. I often felt like a curiosity, especially in the first 10 or 15 years. And while few people were openly negative about my career choice, I certainly got a number of comments that seemed designed to deflect me into some other profession entirely, or at the very least into a different grade level… Perhaps one more fitting for a man. My mother the staunch feminist, for example, knew that I liked working with children and knew that I was very good with children, but she was strongly against the idea that I might actually go into teaching. My sister did not exhibit any particular interest in teaching, but it is hard for me to imagine that my mother would’ve responded the same way if my sister had decided to go teach kindergarten. Another example: my first boss, the elementary school principal, always said that she thought I did very good work with the kids, but kept suggesting that perhaps I ought to go and teach history to the older students in the middle and high school. To some degree I believe this was meant as a compliment; she didn’t think much of the teaching abilities of some of the people who taught classes at those levels. But I couldn’t help feeling that she was trying to push me into something else, something that I really didn’t have much interest in, and since she didn’t seem to be doing this to any of my female colleagues, it was a little hard to escape the notion that she wasn’t quite comfortable with a man teaching five-year-olds.In her world, men didn’t do that sort of thing, and it was a little difficult for her to make sense of a man who did, and seemed happy with that choice. I don’t mean to imply that nobody was supportive; many people were. But we carry images around in our heads, and act according to the images more often than we would like, and let’s face it, few people visualize a six foot three inch man when they hear the words “kindergarten teacher.” Cognitive dissonance can be uncomfortable, and one way to get rid of it is to send the teacher in question to some profession more up his alley. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/29 "2018-10-04T06:08:29Z")
> [@Kimera757](#): > > I’m a guy, and I don’t like kids. I thought about being a teacher, but would only have want to teach high school students. I don’t know if that’s a guy thing, though. I’ve heard the same from all sorts of people, including many who like me enjoy children in small amounts but want to murder any herd of children with more than 12 heads to it. There’s also many people who are happy to teach small class sizes or one-on-one and who go into consulting, corporate training or later university courses (definitely not those first-year classes with 300 seats and people listening from the hallway!). ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/30 "2018-10-04T13:21:33Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > …let’s face it, few people visualize a six foot three inch man when they hear the words “kindergarten teacher.” . That is such a strange situation, they should make a movie about that. I am sure it will help assuage the mental associations you work against. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/31 "2018-10-04T13:36:50Z")
I thought that movie was just a rumor. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/32 "2018-10-04T13:49:10Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > In the Spanish public system the pay is the same between 1st and 12th grades (getting there for preschool as well). Private schools tend to pay less, but they’re also less difficult to get a job in. Private schools get their teachers in the same way as any general business (interviews, recommendations, etc.); public schools get their temps from _Rotas_ or lists held by the corresponding regional governments, long-term teachers from civil servant exams where one of the things that “gives points” in the final grading is how much time of temping you already have. Oh, no… I wasn’t clear in my post. I meant lower pay relative to most other professional careers, not elementary vs. high school pay. And **echoreply** , I’m sure at some point the causation started working both ways- pay is low because it’s perceived as a woman’s career (that status thing I was talking about), and men avoid it because it’s low pay, further reinforcing that status. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/33 "2018-10-04T14:48:34Z")
> [@Hermitian](#): > > That is such a strange situation, they should make a movie about that. I am sure it will help assuage the mental associations you work against. That kind of plot would only work if the guy was an undercover cop. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/34 "2018-10-04T15:10:31Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > That kind of plot would only work if the guy was an undercover cop. Because why else would a man be an elementary school teacher? ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/35 "2018-10-04T15:53:25Z")
> [@Hermitian](#): > > Because why else would a man be an elementary school teacher? He’ll be back shortly. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/36 "2018-10-04T16:14:57Z")
it was not that long ago that women had 3 main career choices: nursing teaching clerical/secretary/admin assistant seeing men in any of those fields was rare ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/37 "2018-10-04T16:17:24Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > I thought that movie was just a rumor. It’s NOT a rumor! At all! ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/38 "2018-10-04T16:36:00Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > This doesn’t hold true. Business leaders primarily deal with people. The people that they lead and the people in other businesses that they negotiate with. By far, the majority of business leaders are male. Business people deal with people, money, and goods. It is one of the fields that has the highest gender equality in interest. Women receive 47% of undergrad business degress vs 80% of education degrees. The leaders in business are predominantly male do to other differences. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/39 "2018-10-04T17:16:22Z")
I have a hard time believing women are ending up in lower paying jobs by their own choice. It seems pretty obvious to me that women would prefer to take higher paying jobs if they had the opportunities. Much as some people want to deny reality, I think there is strong evidence of sexism at work. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366/40 "2018-10-04T18:12:22Z")
In my elementary school, I can only remember two male teachers–they taught the two GATE classes. One was my teacher in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, and I loved him. He was a crusty old (well, seemed old to me–he was probably in his forties (ETA: I just found him online–he was 55, and died in 1998)) Armenian ex-military guy, no nonsense, didn’t put up with crap but loved his students. He was one of my favorite teachers in my whole school career. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-divide-in-elementary-education-child-care/822366.md?page=3)