Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920American schoolteaching is one of few occupations to have undergone a thorough gender shift yet previous explanations have neglected a key feature of the transition: its regional character. By the early 1800s, far higher proportions of women were teaching in the Northeast than in the South, and this regional difference was reproduced as settlers moved West before the Civil War. What explains the creation of these divergent regional arrangements in the East, their recreation in the West, and their eventual disappearance by the next century? In Women's Work the authors blend newly available quantitative evidence with historical narrative to show that distinctive regional school structures and related cultural patterns account for the initial regional difference, while a growing recognition that women could handle the work after they temporarily replaced men during the Civil War helps explain this widespread shift to female teachers later in the century. Yet despite this shift, a significant gender gap in pay and positions remained. This book offers an original and thought-provoking account of a remarkable historical transition. |
Contents
1 | |
The First Two Centuries | 11 |
two South versus North | 34 |
three Migrations | 71 |
four Explaining Feminization | 86 |
Other editions - View all
Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920 Joel Perlmann,Robert A. Margo No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
administrative positions agricultural analysis antebellum average census chapter characteristics cities coefficient colonial county-level dame school decades district early economic England England towns evidence experience explain factors farm female teachers female-to-male wage ratio feminization FRMTOFAM gap in salaries gender differences gender gap girls graded schools Grand Rapids hiring women historians Illinois included institutional Iowa IPUMS Latin Lawrence Cremin less literacy male teachers Massachusetts measures Midwest nineteenth century norms North Carolina Northeast northern tier Parameter Standard patterns percent percentage of female percentage of women percentage points population prevalence of female proportion of female RATIODAY reform regional differences regression regression analysis relative rural areas school boards school personnel school reports school systems schoolteaching settlers social South standard deviation Strober summer sessions teaching force tenure tier of counties tier of schools tion towns Tyack UGLENGTH ungraded schools variable winter sessions women among teachers women teachers York