Paper Summary:

This paper presents a literature review to study what factors contributed to the historical pattern in Canada of female teachers being subordinated to male teachers, who were advanced to the positions of administrative authority, and what factors may have contributed to the possible changes in this situation. Next, the author summarizes these studies that indicate that the professional development of women as teachers historically was stifled in Canada and in other countries because of socially constructed, patriarchal ideologies that put men into positions of power over women. The paper concludes that, as women were integrated into the workforce, the structure of the school system and the definition of the teaching profession also changed in Canada and throughout the world. Several quotations are included in the study.

Table of Contents:
Introduction to the Study
Research Questions
Methodology
Review of the Literature
Under Representation of Women (Feminization of the Profession of Teaching)
Professions of Women - Genteel Calling and Extension of Traditional Role
The History of Women Teachers is Little Recorded
Blame Placed on Teachers for Passive Acceptance of Hidden Curriculum
Two School Systems in Montreal
Outside Authority and School Structure
Academic Attainment of Teachers Becomes an Important Issue
The IODE and the Schools in Canada from 1900 to 1945
Report of a Survey/Questionnaire of Experiences of Women Teachers
Summary and Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The work of Prentice and Theobald (1991) entitled: "Women Who Taught: Perspectives on Women, History and Teaching" states that the phrase 'woman teacher' is one that "still have evocative power." Prentice and Theobald explains that just as other feminist scholars that as they "began to look for the history of women teachers "discovered that women who taught in the past had suffered the same fate as most women in history. The schoolmistress was largely absent from mainstream historical work on education. To the extent that traditional histories of schooling considered teachers at all, tended to focus on the quest for professionalism in the occupation and their concern was chiefly the male educator." Learned was that historical writing was itself perpetuating teacher stereotyping. According to Prentice and Theobald it was discovered by historians that "leading promoters of school reform accepted the doctrines idealizing the schoolmistress very reluctantly, and only when the numerical dominance of women teachers in the state elementary schools was already a reality."
"Stated as a second complexity was the "...tendency to equate rhetoric with experience." Specifically all too often women teachers were far too accepting of the idea which portrayed them as natural teachers of children and another view placed blame on teachers for the "watered-down, anti-intellectual schooling believed to be characteristic of the twentieth century on the image and reality of the nurturing 'motherteacher'." "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bird, Amanda (2007) The Under Representation of Women in a "Feminized Profession": gender stereotyping, management politics, and the dissemination of information Dalhousie Journal of Information and Management, volume 3, number 1 (Winter 2007)
• Giguere, Denys (1999) Gender Gap Widening Among Ontario Teachers. Professionally Speaking. June 1999. Online available at: http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/june_1999/gap.htm
• Kinnear, Mary (1995) "In subordination: Professional Women 1870-1970" McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1995.
• Prentice, Allison and Theobald, Marjorie R. (1991) Women who Taught, Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching"
• Sheehan, Nancy M. (1991) Philosophy, Pedagogy and Practice: The IODE and the Schools in Canada, 1900-1945. HSE/RHE 2,2 (1990): 307-321.

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