Women and the Teaching Profession
Exploring the Feminisation Debate

Most of the research to date has concentrated on developed countries, such as the UK, Australia and Canada, where women have been a significant majority in the teaching workforce for decades. This study looks at how the teacher feminisation debate applies in developing countries. Drawing on the experiences of Dominica, Lesotho, Samoa, Sri Lanka and India, it provides a strong analytical understanding of the role of female teachers in the expansion of education systems, and the surrounding gender equality issues.
Co-published with UNESCO.
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Introduction and Background
Women and the ‘feminisation’ of the teaching profession has been debated for decades, in some places for over a century. The term ‘feminisation’ has tended to apply to countries where women are a significant majority in the teaching workforce. As a result, there has been a tendency for most explorations in this subject to come from countries in the North, such as the UK, Australia and Canada, or, more recently, from South America. The debates surrounding women, the teaching profession and feminisation have been wide-ranging and, in some cases, contentious. They have included reviewing the reasons why the teaching profession became genderimbalanced in favour of women in certain countries in the first place, and what the impacts might be on learning processes and the educational outcomes for students. Other explorations have sought to look more deeply at trends within feminisation itself, including variations between education sectors and management structures. Some discussions have attempted to address what the implications of a majorityfemale teaching profession has meant for gender equality and relations more broadly, including women’s overall empowerment within society and the economy.
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