How Outdated Gender Bias Depresses Teacher Pay and Devalues Essential Skills: OPINION

Teachers have long suffered the indignity of woefully inadequate compensation for their vital work shaping young minds. This injustice stems not just from the chronic underfunding of education but has its roots in entrenched gender bias that has depressively undervalued skills and vocations traditionally associated with women.

Teaching was not always a female-dominated profession. In the 19th century, the majority of American teachers were men, drawn from what was considered a respectable, if not lucrative, career for educated young men before they moved on to supposedly more prestigious professions like law or ministry. However, as public education expanded through the 1800s, local school boards sought ways to cut costs. One "solution" was to hire more female teachers, who could be paid significantly less than their male counterparts due to prevailing attitudes that women didn't require equal pay because they were financially dependent on fathers or husbands.

By 1900, women comprised nearly 70% of all teachers in the U.S. School boards justified paying women roughly one third less than men, claiming feminine virtues like nurturing made them naturally suited to teaching the young. This cynical combine of benevolent sexism and ruthless frugality created a pink-collar ghetto that teaching has never escaped.

Defenders of the status quo will argue that whatever its origins, the gender gap in teaching pay has narrowed considerably, with male and female teacher salaries reaching near parity in recent decades. However, average pay for all teachers remains woefully low, with nearly a third relying on second jobs just to make ends meet. And teaching remains a predominantly female profession, with over 75% of teachers today being women. The roots of its second-class economic status lie clearly in the past practice of paying women less for the same work.

More insidiously, the perception lingers that teaching is more noble calling than career, best suited to nurturing, motherly types content with marginal pay because they're not the primary breadwinners. This bias elevates and idealizes feminine virtues like caretaking and empathy while simultaneously devaluing them in the marketplace. Women's work in the classroom is sentimentalized as almost spiritual yet not worth competitive pay.

Make no mistake, teaching today demands intellectually rigorous academic credentials on par with other high-level professions. But teachers are paid on average 20% less than similarly educated professionals, amounting to over $350 less per week. This can only be explained by the lingering notion that teachers don't deserve higher salaries because they are following a "higher" calling or vocation fueled by caring rather than earning potential. This is simply sexism wearing the disguise of praise.

Paying teachers properly for their essential contributions to society will require fundamentally changing how we value the so-called "human/soft skills" like nurturing, communication, creativity and empathy. Study after study shows these strengths disproportionately associated with women are increasingly vital to innovation and growth in our evolving economy. Yet they continue to be dismissed as “women’s work” less deserving of reward than traditionally masculine strengths like competition and authority wielded by those who sit atop corporate and government hierarchies.

There are signs of progress. Elite professions like law, medicine and business that once shut out women now approach gender parity, drawn by higher pay and hard-won anti-discrimination protections. But thequiet discrimination persists in subtle biases that underpay nurses compared to doctors and primary school teachers compared to university tenured professors.

Until we confront the lingering sexism rooted in seeing vital caretaking work as somehow inferior, we will continue to lose talented teachers to more lucrative fields. This hurts disadvantaged students most of all, perpetuating inequality by depriving the have-nots.

Teaching is the work that seeds all other work, enriching humanity across all endeavors. But we have stacked the deck against teachers by clinging to outdated gender biases that paint their skills as feminine and thus less valuable in a world still dominated by masculine norms of success. This prejudice doesn’t just hurt teachers. It diminishes us all.

Christopher Hitchens was right that irony and skepticism are powerful tools against zealotry and groupthink. But for lasting change, they aren't enough. We must add empathy, that power which teaches us to see our shared struggles and dignity. Teachers nurture empathy in the young. The real irony is that we still fail to fully value in them what they impart to others. By elevating and properly rewarding the guardians of knowledge, empathy and wisdom, we take a step closer to the enlightened, progressive society Hitchens envisioned in his work. The future begins in the classroom.