Gender dynamics in elementary school teaching: The advantages of men

Maria Helena Santos,Lígia Amâncio

doi:10.1177/1350506818802468

Abstract

This article presents a study that identifies the gender dynamics prevailing in a specific context of tokenism – elementary school teaching – in which the members of an otherwise socially dominant group are proportionally scarce – men. The results contradict Kanter’s (1977) theory by showing that male elementary school teachers do not experience the tokenism dynamics. In line with Williams’ gender perspective and Amâncio’s gender symbolic asymmetry, the article finds that although men constitute a small minority in elementary education, they do not lose the social advantages they generally have: on the contrary, they seem rather to gain several privileges. Indeed, the results show strong links between the tokenism dynamics and gender asymmetry, putting the token men at an advantage. Thus, tokenism seems to be limited to maintaining the gender social order.

Highlights

In recent decades, gender equality has become a goal of Western societies, leading to transformations in countries around the world, including Portugal (Espírito-Santo, 2015)
Those interviewed do not perceive the situation as a problem, they think that a greater gender balance in the profession would be educationally beneficial, both for children in general and boys in particular, who need masculine role models, in keeping with the stereotypical gender roles of the traditional family model
The results clearly show how despite the gender imbalance in elementary education, where women are a majority, the tokenism dynamics are conditioned by gender asymmetries as demonstrated by previous research on other professions (Anonymous, 2015, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Gender equality has become a goal of Western societies, leading to transformations in countries around the world, including Portugal (Espírito-Santo, 2015). Gender imbalances remain in various professions (Shen-Miller and Smiler, 2015), as is the case in elementary school teaching. In Portugal, as in other countries (e.g., Australia, England and the USA, Bayley and Graves, 2016), elementary teaching emerged at the end of the 19th century. As Nóvoa (1987) notes, the percentage of women in teaching was 37.2% in 1899/1900, 52.2% in 1909/1910, 66.5% in 1925/26, 73.3% in 1940/41 and over 87% in the 1960s, a percentage that has remained approximately the same ever since (see Table 1)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion