Most Teachers Are Women — And Men Are Overrepresented in Administration
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the gender imbalance in education leadership, where the majority-female teaching workforce is led by a disproportionately male administrative corps.
Key Takeaways
- The gender gap in leadership is real - Women make up the vast majority of teachers but are underrepresented in principalships and superintendent roles
- This matters - The people making decisions about the profession should reflect the people doing the work
- Address the barriers - Understanding why women are underrepresented in admin — and removing those barriers — would strengthen the profession
Transcript
I think this is a really good point when it comes to thinking about student violence, that it's often female teachers who are on the receiving end of that, or it might be multiple female teachers.
And often the administrators involved are male, although there are more and more female administrators than ever before, so that varies.
But I think we do really have to think about this dynamic because it means that the suffering and the consequences are not, equally understood or distributed among everyone in the profession, that there really is a gap in awareness of this issue, in the impact of this issue.
And I think that's something we really have to just take a serious look at.
So that's why I've been using kind of the domestic violence angle to talk about this, because I think that's something that I know that that was kind of invisible to me.
It was just not part of my way of thinking about it.
It was only just from hearing other people talk about how it affects their thinking to have had these experiences in their personal life and then have this happen in their classroom with their students.
I just think we have to take that much more seriously to the point that districts are willing to write a check.
Often the reason this is happening is because the district doesn't want to spend money on an appropriate placement or risk a lawsuit from a litigious parent.
We need school districts to fight on educators behalf on the behalf of other students to keep them safe and when we have persistently unsafe behaviors and people are actually getting injured I saw probably my fifth comment just now from somebody who said I had to have surgery because a student injured me this is like the second or third knee injury that I've come across in the comments and we've really just got to not let this continue and I think when it comes to men Often men will just physically intimidate their students and say, you better not come at me.
I know I had coworkers when I was a middle school teacher who would physically not hurt their students, but warn them, you better not come at me.
And they meant it, and their students knew they meant it.
And obviously, we don't ever want to be in a situation where we're getting into a fistfight with a student, even if we're confident we'll win.
I'm not recommending that at all.
But I am saying the deterrent factor there is very real for students, especially middle school students who might you know, be tempted to try their luck otherwise.
And that's just not an option for lots of people, you know, like lots of teachers have students who are bigger than them, stronger than them.
And that's going to be the reality, especially if you teach middle school or high school.
So let me know what you think about this.
I think we've got to address the gender issue, the, you know, just the over-representation of women in these injuries and perhaps under-representation of women in administration.
Let me know what you think.