Teaching as a woman’s job: the impact of the admission of women to elementary teaching in England and France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

This paper proposes to examine the causes and impact of the admission of women to the teaching profession, by comparing the professional situation of women elementary teachers in England and France. An examination of the avowed or implicit reasons for allowing women into the profession in the two countries, looking in particular at recruitment, training and employment conditions, will contribute to the debate on what Albisetti calls ‘the remarkable consensus’ about the factors behind the feminisation of the teaching profession in various countries. In both countries, feminisation was accompanied by shifts in age pyramids, social origins and qualifications. These developments in turn brought about a change in perceptions of the elementary teacher in general. However, rooted in specific political differences, the modifications wrought by feminisation in elementary teaching in France and England show variations in degree and timing that underscore the parallel developments and put the place of women within the elementary teaching corps into perspective.