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WOMEN'S ISSUES IN EDUCATION

Qualified Women Shun Teaching Profession

During the 1980s the teaching profession suffered as many qualified women entered other fields formerly closed to them. Women who in prior decades might have become teachers deserted the field for business, medicine, and law. The other professions' gain was education's loss, said Carol Gilligan, a prominent feminist researcher in women's development at Harvard University. According to Gilligan's research, women respond more readily to people than to principle; they are guided not so much by broad perceptions of right and wrong as by the moral logic of care. It is impossible, she said, for most women to consider an action or moral dilemma without considering its effects on the people involved. Therefore, women have special gifts for teaching, and she and others expressed concern that teaching may become a "nesting ground for those who can't do anything else."

Women in Administration

By middecade 70 percent of elementary and secondary teachers were women whose median age was thirty-six. When the education journal Phi Delta Kappan commissioned a survey of the attitudes of these teachers toward their careers, two-thirds of the women reported a career crisis of sorts, defined by fatigue, anger, anxiety, and depression. Most cited frustration about the fact that a teaching career reaches a plateau, with no opportunity for advancement except going into administration. Administration was still clearly the province of males. Only 1.8 percent of the superintendents' jobs and only 16 percent of the principalships were held by women. Twenty-three percent of elementary principals were women while only 7 percent of secondary schools were headed by women. By 1987, however, significantly more women had entered administration.

Research on Women in Administration

Researchers who studied the effects of this influx of women into leadership positions found that staffs and faculties rated women leaders higher than male colleagues and reported better morale. Women administrators were given high marks for encouraging innovation in teaching. Women's greater knowledge of teaching techniques and methods was suggested as the reason for their sharpened, and therefore more successful, focus on teaching and learning. Several studies also showed that women appeared to be more successful at building community. From their speech patterns to their more inclusive decision-making styles, women administrators operated more democratically than men. Chester Finn, a noted reform expert, remarked on the necessity of reform being instigated from the inside out, or as he put it, from a "homegrown ethos, a team spirit that cannot be mandated from out-side." It appeared from these studies that many of the new influx of women administrators were successfully building the climate for participatory reform.