Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage

Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage?
A Report on Research on Schools

Author(s): Myra H. Strober and David Tyack
Source: Signs, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 494-503
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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REVISIONS/REPORTS
Why Do Women Teach and Men

Manage? A Report on Research on
Schools
Myra H. Stroberand David Tyack
We are turninga familiarfactinto a historicalpuzzle. How and whydid

schoolteachingtip from a predominantlymale to a female occupation,
and why did top managerial positionsremain male even when 85 per-
cent of public schoolteacherswere women? This briefreport discusses
the developing conceptualization of our work and comments on the
process of interdisciplinaryresearch. Although the inclusive dates for
the study are, roughly, 1840-1970, we shall focus here on the period
1840-1900.
ConceptualFramework
As W. H. Carr has observed, historianscustomarilysearch formul-
tiple causation of complex events.1Often historicalnarratives,however,
have theories of causation that are more implicitthan explicit, and
"causes" are simplylisted rather than confirmedor disconfirmedby a
varietyof evidence. Economiststend to preferhighlyparsimoniousex-
planations, content if they account for a small part of any variance
througha simple but elegant model. We preferneitherlistingnor par-
We gratefullyacknowledge a grant fromthe National Instituteof Education, which
enables us to pursue this research. The Institute,of course, is not responsible for the
analysiswe make here.
1. W. H. Carr, WhatIs History?(Middlesex: Pelican Books, 1964), pp. 87-108.
[Signs:Journalof Womenin Cultureand Society1980, vol. 5, no. 3]

? 1980 by The Universityof Chicago. 0097-9740/80/0503-0014$00.88
494

Signs Spring1980 495
simony,but hope that it will be possible to think of explanations as

"nesting" (as with Chinese cups), some representinggeneral socioeco-
nomic "preconditions" for change and some as intermediate "pre-
cipitants"of change (using Lawrence Stone's terminology).2
The concept
of segmented labor markets, in particular, is central to our con-
ceptualizationof the feminizationof teaching. The nineteenth-century
labor market for teaching was divided into two quite distincttypes:
urban and rural. To explain the process of feminization,it is criticalto
look at these labor marketsseparately.
Preconditions
Both economic and ideological factors were important in the
nineteenthcenturyas preconditionsforthe predominance of women in
elementaryschoolteaching. On the demand side, the feminizationof
teaching was facilitatedby an increase in the demand for teachers,
stemming,in turn, from both population growthand increased com-
mitmentto universaleducation. The United Stateswas among the lead-
ing nations in the world at that time in the percentage of school-age
children enrolled. Moreover, the high turnover of teachers (median
teacher tenure was estimatedat only about two or three years)3made it
possible for the feminizationof teachingto occur quite rapidly.
On the supply side, two underlyingforceswere influentialin mov-
ing women into teaching. First,young women were increasinglybeing
educated, and, second, their domestic services were less and less fre-
quentlyneeded by theirparents as production moved out of the home.
Thus, young educated women representeda growingpool of prospec-
tiveteachers.4Anothersupply factorin the feminizationof teachingwas
women's exclusion fromalternativeoccupations. While educated young
men began to move toward alternativejob opportunities outside of
teaching, most middle-classwomen found these alternativesunattain-
2. For an elaboration of Stone's argumentas applied to education, see David Tyack,
"Ways of Seeing: An Essay on the Historyof CompulsorySchooling,"HarvardEducational
Review46 (August 1976): 355-89.
3. For estimatessee the decennial census reportsand the annual or biennial Officeof
Education statisticalsurveys.There are also a number of useful specialized studies-e.g.,
see James Blodgett,Reporton Educationin the UnitedStatesat theEleventhCensus: 1890
(Washington,D.C.: GovernmentPrintingOffice,1893).
4. Kathryn Sklar, CatharineBeecher:A Studyin AmericanDomesticity (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1973), chap. 12. Joan Burstyn,in a letterto David Tyack,
November 3, 1977, pointed out that the large reserve pool of educated women made it
possible to expand teaching rapidlywithouta clear-cutproletarizationof the profession.
Valerie Oppenheimer also examines the availabilityof educated women as a factorin the
feminizationof teaching (Valerie K. Oppenheimer, The FemaleLabor Force in theUnited
States:DemographicFactorsGoverning Growth and ChangingComposition[Berkeley:Instituteof
International Studies, Universityof California, 1970], and "The Sex-Labeling of Jobs,"
IndustrialRelations3 [May 1968]: 224-28).

496 Stroberand Tyack WhyDo WomenTeach?
able. Gatekeepers in commerce and the professionsexcluded women,

and women themselveswere often socialized to abjure these occupa-
tions.5As a result of this combinationof factors,the supply of women
available forteaching increased and theirsupply price for teachingwas
lower than thatof men.
However, simplyto have a reservelabor pool of women available for
teaching at lower wage rates than those required by men did not mean
thatwomen would necessarilybe employed to teach. For mostof Ameri-
can historywomen have been "available" and qualified to enter diverse
occupations (oftenat wages lower than those paid to men) and yethave
not been hired. It is thus essential to examine Victorian ideas about
"women's sphere" to see how the advocates of women as teachers con-
vinced both youngwomen and theirpotentialemployersthattheirentry
into the classroom was desirable and justified.
The proponentsof the feminizationof teachingdid not contestthe
"cult of domesticity"so prevalentin VictorianAmerica,but instead em-
braced it wholeheartedly,claiming that teaching was an ideal prepara-
tion for motherhood.6The verycharacteristicsthat made women good
mothers-their nurturance, patience, and understanding of
children-made thembetterteachersthan men, theyargued. Advocates
of women as teachers,such as Catharine Beecher, Mary Lyon, Zilpah
Grant, Horace Mann, and Henry Barnard, worked hard to create pri-
vate and public normal schools to trainyoung women fortheirdivinely
designated profession,therebypublicizingtheir virtuesas well as their
cheapness; yettheydid not intendwomen to remain in teachingforlife.
It was to be a procession into marriage,not a career.7
Thus, Victorianideology about women's place made positiveuse of
sex-typingto encourage women to enter teachingas an occupation and
appealed to employersnot wantingto underminethe familybut wishing
cheap and efficientteachers. Since the presumed goal of most women
was marriage and child raising,teaching offered importantstatus re-
sources to women fromfamiliesof modest but respectablebackground,
for it was a middle-classoccupation thatwas presumed to make women
more eligible as wives and mothers.To women fromfamiliesof higher
status,teaching was one of the few occupations widelydistributedgeo-
graphicallyand acceptable forrespectableyoungwomen. At worst,itdid
not implythe potentialloss of standinginherentin factoryworkin most
5. W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee, Womenin theAmericanEconomy:A

Documentary History(New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1976), pp. 1-39.
6. For a reviewof the literatureon women's sphere and the cult of domesticity,see
Ann Douglas, The Feminizationof AmericanCulture(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
1977).
7. For a discussionof the advocacy of women teachers,see Thomas Woody,A History
of Women'sEducationin theUnitedStates(New York: Octagon Books, 1974).

places or, almost everywhere,in domestic service (the other two prime
job alternativesfor women).8
Kanter has observed that most scholarly writinghas incorrectly
treated family and work as separate domains.9 Nowhere is it more
essential to seek links between familyand work than in examining the
paid employmentof women. Here marketfactorsof supplyand demand
were inextricablyintertwinedwith an ideology of women's place. The
convictionthatteachingwas appropriateto woman's sphere and compat-
ible withmarriage was one of the powerfulpreconditionsthatled to the
increasingemploymentof women as teachers.
The ideological and the economic preconditions which we have
been discussing did not proceed evenly across rural and urban labor
markets. The ideology of feminizationwas probably weaker in rural
areas than in cities, in part because one of the counterargumentsto
feminization,that men were better disciplinarians than women, re-
mained a significantissue forsome timein most rural schools. In urban
educational systems,however,thiscounterargumentwas successfullyde-
fused fromthe start.The reason: school boards hired men as managers.
More important,feminizationtended to be weaker in rural areas than in
cities since, in general, daughters' domestic services were more highly
valued byrural than byurban familiesand fewerlucrativealternativejob
opportunitieswere available to men in the countryside.Thus, as com-
pared to urban labor markets,in rural areas the ratio of men to women
available for teaching was higher and the wages of the two sexes were
more equal.10
OrganizationalPrecipitants
Organizational precipitantsof feminizationwere also differentin
rural and urban labor markets,although in both areas theywere part of
a formalizationand bureaucratizationof education. Two major organi-
zational types of public education in the nineteenthcenturywere the
one-room rural school and the graded urban school. Of course, many
8. Willard Ellsbree,TheAmericanTeacher:Evolutionofa Profession in a Democracy

(New
York: American Book Co., 1939).
9. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Workand Familyin theUnitedStates:A CriticalReviewand
Agendafor Researchand Policy(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1977), pp. 8-9.
10. For example, see San Francisco,Superintendentof Public Schools, Twenty-seventh
Reportof theSuperintendent ofPublic Schoolsof San Francisco(San Francisco: W.M. Hinton
Co., 1880), p. 41, concerningthe difficultyin obtainingmen forteachingin an urban area.
For some evidence on the lower female/malesalary ratio in urban areas as compared to
rural areas and an analysis of the causes of the inequalityof salaries between men and
women in an urban school district,see Myra H. Stroberand Laura Best,"The Female/Male
Salary Differentialin Public Schools: Some Lessons fromSan Francisco, 1879," Economic
Inquiry17 (April 1979): 218-36.

communitiesfellbetweenthe two modes, but we contrastthem here for

sharpness of focus. The differencebetween urban and rural hiringof
teachers becomes apparent when one sees that in 1870 in Washington,
D.C., only 8 percent of teachers were male, while in neighboringVir-
ginia men constituted65 percentof public schoolteachers.New England
led the nation in the feminizationof teaching,whilethe South lagged far
behind. Whatever the timingof development, however, rural schools
generallybegan witha substantialpercentageof male teachers,whereas
from the beginning the urban graded elementary school employed
almost entirelywomen.
Rural education districts,typicallymade up of one-room schools,
stemmedfromprefactoryoriginsand had the hallmarksof a competitive
labor market.The local school trusteeswere freeto hire whomeverthey
pleased, and each teacher bargained about his or her individual salary.
In its early stages, the one-room school depended littleon state direc-
tion,bureaucraticformalization,or professionalnorms.
Typically,women teachers found their way into rural classrooms
during the summer session, when the younger children attended and
males were needed on the farm. For the winterterm, trusteesoften
preferred men as instructors,since they were presumed to be more
capable of discipliningthe older children who attended then. School
termswere short-often only two or threemonths-and costswere very
low. Teachers were young men and women who regarded schoolkeep-
ing not as a full-timejob, but as a temporaryway to make moneywhen
theywere not attendingcollege or workingon the farmor helping out
withhousekeeping.
At mid-centuryin New England, and in other regions later in the
century,however, there is evidence that as state regulation and stan-
dardizationintensified,the feminizationof teachingbegan to take place
in rural as well as urban schools. As Morain has documented for Iowa,
the number of male teachersdeclined when the required school session
grew longer and as professionalrequirementssuch as compulsorysum-
mer teachers' instituteswere established.11Such gradual formalization,
harbinger of twentieth-century bureaucratizationof rural education,
made men unwillingto pay the opportunitycosts of teaching because
theycould no longer teach school for short periods in the off-season.
When teachingbecame a primaryjob ratherthan a briefsecondjob,
the low wages in comparison withopportunitieselsewhere made teach-
ing less attractiveto men than to women in rural areas. Unmarried
women were usually expected to remain with their families,whereas
men could migrateto cities where new opportunitieswere opening in
commerce, the professions, and manufacturing.The necessityof a
11. Thomas Morain, "The Entryof Women into the School Teaching Professionin
Nineteenth-CenturyIowa" (unpublished paper, Iowa State University,1978).

commitmentto teach for a long school term and to attend summer

teacherinstitutesalso cut into short-termwinteremploymentopportuni-
ties rural communitiesand made more difficultfor male college
in it
studentsto teach while on leave fromschool.12
As rural schoolteachingbecame more formalized,especiallyat the
turnof the century,it turnedintowhat Morain calls a "para-profession."
Stateslengthenedthe school year,created regulationsgoverningthe sort
of "standard school" eligible for state aid (complete even to the di-
mensionsof approved school pictures),countysupervisionbecame more
"professional"and intrusive,a uniformcourse of studywas enacted into
law, and certificationregulationswere enforcedat a level higherthan the
local community.
We suspect that it was not only economic factorsbut also this in-
creasing administrativedirection that made rural schoolteaching less
attractiveto men, and that feminizationof teaching in rural areas will
correlatehighlywithmeasures of formalizationsuch as theones we have
mentioned. "By degrees there is being built in our state a machine
among the 'aristocratic'element of our profession,"wrote one Oregon
male teacher,"that... willmake teachersserfs,to be moved about at the
will of a state superintendentof public instructionthroughhis lieuten-
ants, county superintendents."13Formalization of teaching restricted
easy entryforshortperiods withoutsubstantially increasingpay or status
rewards.Thus, it differedfromprofessionalizationin medicine and sev-
eral other occupations.
Urban school districts,on the other hand, were consolidated labor
marketsand relativelybureaucratized fromthe start,with hiring,pro-
motion, and salary schedules routinized. The curriculum was stan-
dardized, the school term was relativelylong, and children,along with
their teachers,were divided into grades. Moreover, the managerial as-
pect of education was removed fromthe-job of teaching and the new,
solely managerial positions of principal and superintendent were
created. From the beginning,sex segregationwas part of the design of
the urban graded school. Women's supposed comparativeadvantage in
nurturance,patience, and understandingof children led the architects
of the urban school system,such as Henry Barnard, to slot women into
primaryschoolteaching.Concerns about their potentialinabilityto dis-
cipline older children were overcome quite ingeniously: the ultimate
disciplinaryfunctionwas located in the male superintendent.Principals
also were typicallymale, although some citieshired women as principals
as well.
Hiring male managers also assisted urban school boards in the
maintenanceof bureaucraticcontrol.By structuring jobs to take advan-
12. For a favorableview of formalizationin rural education, see Ellwood P. Cubber-
ley,Rural Lifeand Education(Boston: Houghton MifflinCo., 1914).
13. See Morain.

tage of sex-role stereotypesabout women's responsivenessto rules and

male authority,and men's presumed abilityto manage women, urban
school boards were able to enhance theirabilityto controlthe curricula,
students,and personnel. Male managers in nineteenth-century urban
schools regulated the core activitiesof instructionthroughstandardized
promotionalexaminationson the contentof the prescribedcurriculum
and strictsupervisionto ensure thatteachers were followingmandated
techniques. Rules were highlyprescriptive.Normal classes in the high
schools of the citiesprepared young women to teach in a specifiedman-
ner; picturesof the normal studentsin Washington,D.C., forexample,
show women students performing precisely the same activities pre-
scribed for their futurepupils, even to the mid-morning"yawningand
stretching"session. Given this purpose of tightcontrol,women were
ideal employees. With few alternativeoccupations and accustomed to
patriarchalauthority,theymostlydid whattheirmale superiorsordered.
Differenceof gender provided an importantformof social control.'4
Another reason men made it to the top was that they had advan-
tages over women in linkingschools to surroundingcommunities-an
importantfunctionin a public bureaucracydependent on local support.
In the twentiethcentury,in particular,a superintendent'scontactswith
the power structureof the districtwere all-male groups like the Kiwanis
or Lions clubs or male-dominated activitieslike varsitysports. To the
degree thatthe goals or output of the schools were ambiguous, the overt
statuscharacteristicsof the leader-the superintendent-were probably
all the more important,and thus it is not surprisingthat the manager
was typicallymale, middle aged, tall,white,and usually a member of a
dominant church. So in external as well as internalrelations,maleness
was probablya major asset. In this respect,schools did not differfrom
most other major institutionsin American societyin which the work
force was primarilyfemale. Male leaders were importantto the social
credit ratingof the organization.15
In developing theirtheoryof labor marketsegmentation,Piore and
Doeringer have tended to stressthe factthatlabor marketsegmentation
is a response to technologicalchange.'6 If one accepts theirpremise,one
14. Pictures of normal classes by Frances Johnston,in Libraryof Congress Photo-

graphic Division; classroom photographs are an untapped mine of informationon class-
room behavior. For a general discussion of the bureaucratizationof teaching,see David
Tyack, The One Best System(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1974). For a
discussion of the relationshipbetween bureaucratizationand feminization,see Alison
Prentice,"The Feminizationof Teaching in BritishNorth America and Canada, 1845-
1875," HistoireSociale 9 (May 1975): 50-70; Michael Katz, TheIronyofEarlySchoolReform:
EducationalInnovationin Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
UniversityPress, 1968), pp. 56-58.
15. David Tyack, "Pilgrim's Progress: Toward a Social Historyof the Superinten-
dency,"HistoryofEducationQuarterly 32 (Fall 1976): 263-67.
16. Peter B. Doeringer and Michael J. Piore, InternalLabor Marketsand Manpower
Analysis(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath & Co., 1971).

must conclude that in the case of teaching,organizationaltechnological

change (as opposed to the inventionof production machineryor tech-
niques) seems to have been the importantmotivatorof labor market
segmentation.That is, as a consequence of the organizationalchanges
we have been discussing,urban school boards thoughttheycould pro-
duce their educational services most efficientlyby subdividing the
numerous functionsof the one-room schoolteacher.
Technological factorsalone, however, cannot explain why it was
thata sexual divisionof labor developed in teaching,withwomen hired
largelyfor primaryschoolteachingand men for secondaryschoolteach-
ing and management.An understandingof both the prevailingsex-role
ideology and the organizational requirementsis criticalfor explaining
why,despite the factthatwomen were cheaper to employ,urban school
boards hired men to fillcertain positions.17
Research
Interdisciplinary
Our discussion thus far should be viewed as a cognitivemap. We
expect to subject our theoriesto a wide varietyof quantitativeand qual-
itativeevidence. Statisticalpublications of state and local educational
systemswill permitus to use both cross-sectionaland longitudinalmul-
tivariatestatisticalanalysis,while the writingsof educators, biographies
and autobiographies of teachers, and reports by foreignobservers on
American schooling will provide a wealth of descriptivematerial. We
hope that our concept of nesting explanations will allow us to merge
macro-level data with case studies, quantitativeeconomics with more
humanistichistoricalapproaches.
We have come to recognizethatinterdisciplinary workinvolvesseri-
ous difficulties.Published reportsof researchtend to obscure the actual
messiness of healthyinvestigation.Interdisciplinaryresearch in social
science can easilybecome an institutionalBermuda Triangle. In theory,
most people will admit that social realitydoes not bend itselfto fitthe
boundaries of the disciplines,and thatusing several research strategies
to understandthe workingof society,economy,and culture(themselves
artifactsof the academic mind) could be beneficial.But academic rep-
utations typicallydepend on assessment by fellow specialists,and de-
partmentszealously guard the boundaries of theirdisciplines.Historians
17. For more general discussionsof the circumstancesthatproduce changes in the sex
assignmentof jobs, see Jean Lipman-Blumen, "Role De-Differentiationas a SystemRe-
sponse to Crisis: Occupational and PoliticalRoles forWomen,"SociologicalInquiry43, no. 2
(1973): 105-29; and Myra H. Strober,"Toward Dimorphics:A SummaryStatementto the
Conference on Occupational Segregation,"Signs:JournalofWomenin Cultureand Society1,
no. 3, pt. 2 (Spring 1976): 293-302, also reprintedin Martha Blaxall and Barbara Reagan,
eds., Womenand theWorkplace:TheImplications ofOccupationalSegregation (Chicago: Univer-
sityof Chicago Press, 1976).

seek to defend the good ship history from sociological pirates;

economistsand sociologistsengage in genteel scurrilitythat resembles
the battlesof the old Chinese warlords,who summoned theirtroops to
an imaginaryline,hurled insultsat each other,and then departed, leav-
ing the terrainuntouched but tempersriled. We have found that even
where goodwill obtains, we often have trouble understanding each
others'jargon, deciding what paradigms are basic, agreeing on stan-
dards of verification,and choosing relevantaudiences for our work.
Yet, we believe that interdisciplinarywork, or balance, has been
extremelybeneficial.Our comparativeignoranceof the other'sfieldhas
been a psychologicaladvantage, forexample, because we have been able
to ask naive questions, typicallythe kind most subversiveof received
wisdom. Our research team of student colleagues in historyof educa-
tion, sociology,and economics includes people withspecial competence
in women's history,black history,organizational theory,and statistics.
We meeteveryotherweek. The mixtureof disciplinesand pointsof view
has proved to be confusingoccasionally,but heuristic.Those of us with
an economics or sociologybackground have questioned the representa-
tiveness of qualitative evidence-diaries, autobiographies, rhetoric of
justification-frequentlyused by historians.By contrast,historians,ac-
customed to the rich textureand complexityof motivationportrayedin
such sources, have found the assumptions underlyingthe neoclassical
model of decision makingbald and unconvincing.Organizationaltheory
has oftenprovided a middle ground on which to meet, although it,too,
has its own jargon and blinders.
Our interdisciplinary mixturehas helped to pose questions of race
as well as sex. Our specialist in black historyhas pointed out that on
grounds of salary and social prestigeone would expect black males to
have flockedto getjobs as urban teachersin the South; but theydid not.
Despite the lack of alternativewhite-collarjobs for black males, there
were many more black women than black men teachers in southern
cities,suggestingthat the whiteemployingofficialsprobablypreferred
black women (more tractableunder the caste system?)and/orthatblack
males were stronglysocialized to avoid " women's work."
Conclusion
Again, we underline the factthatour conceptual frameworkis still

speculative and subject to empirical testing.A great pleasure of our
interdisciplinaryapproach has been our communicationwitha network
of scholars interestedin investigatingissues of gender. What unites the
members of this robust networkis a common belief that research on
gender illuminatesreality-in labor economics, in history,in poetry,in
childhood socialization,and in organizationallife,to mentiona few.It is

our hope that this research note will bring additional comments and
suggestionson our conceptualizationof feminizationand the process of
interdisciplinaryresearch.
We hope, too, thatilluminationof sexual asymmetryin educational
employment will contribute to understanding sexual segregation in
other occupations, to analysisof sexual dimensions in systemsof social
control in organizations,and to perceivinglinks between organizations
and thecommunitiesthatsustainthem.And ifitdoes shed lighton these
issues, we trust that the knowledge derived will assist in formulating
policies to correctinstitutionalsexism.
for Researchon Women

SchoolofEducationand Center
(Strober)
StanfordUniversity
SchoolofEducationand Department
ofHistory
StanfordUniversity
(Tyack)


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A Report on Research on Schools

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.31 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 10:41:58 AM