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Unintended Consequences

Published November 16, 2010

November 16, 2010 By rutheverhart 2 Comments

Does this ever happen to you?

You take two things you know to be true from different arenas in your life, add one obvious comment, re-combine said facts, and the result is a new reality that feels explosive, but also glaringly obvious.

Here’s one from the other day: Since it used to be that there were very few professions open to women (secretary, nurse, teacher) there were droves of very bright women who became teachers. Hence they could be underpaid and school systems could still get the best of the best. In other words: the economic mess our schools are in is partly due to the fact that women were kept out of the workforce after WWII (the much-loved “family values” of so many conservative folk).

As a clergywoman, I have pushed against gender boundaries all my life.

As the daughter of two educators (mom was a 4th grade teacher, dad a Jr. High principal) and wife of an educator (hi Doug! he is a Tech Resource Teacher in an elementary school) and holding an education credential myself, I’ve known that educators are underpaid.

How did I fail to connect these dots before? I just find it ironic that “family values” contributed to a crisis in education.

The pink ghettos that women inhabit are crazy-making.

Egalitarianism "family values",  crisis in education,  pink ghetto,  secretary nurse teacher

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Wendy says

    November 16, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but you are absolutely right.

    The one that got me was when I realized part of the continued disparity in men’s and women’s wages comes from non-unified school districts (we’re mostly unified where I live, but that’s not the case many places.) More women than men still teach elementary school and elementary districts pay less than high school districts where men and women teachers are about even.

    Reply
    • rutheverhart says

      November 17, 2010 at 8:27 am

      Thanks for the comment Wendy! I was missing a sentence in the middle of that paragraph, so I’ll have to revisit this subject sometime to connect the dots. I’m just recognizing that the crisis in education is at least partly due to the fact that we haven’t paid enough for it over the years because women have taken up the economic slack. This is why I refused to be a mom who went in to make photocopies for teachers. Yep, I like to be helpful, but do you see any men doing that? We need to pay for what we value. Education costs big bucks, folks. That’s why we pay taxes and that’s why we’re called “citizens”.

      Reply

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