Digest Of The Common School System Of The State Of New York

Author : Joel Perlmann
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226660419
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Download or read book Women's Work? written by Joel Perlmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-04-18 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American schoolteaching is one of few occupations to have undergone a thorough gender shift yet previous explanations have neglected a key feature of the transition: its regional character. By the early 1800s, far higher proportions of women were teaching in the Northeast than in the South, and this regional difference was reproduced as settlers moved West before the Civil War. What explains the creation of these divergent regional arrangements in the East, their recreation in the West, and their eventual disappearance by the next century? In Women's Work the authors blend newly available quantitative evidence with historical narrative to show that distinctive regional school structures and related cultural patterns account for the initial regional difference, while a growing recognition that women could handle the work after they temporarily replaced men during the Civil War helps explain this widespread shift to female teachers later in the century. Yet despite this shift, a significant gender gap in pay and positions remained. This book offers an original and thought-provoking account of a remarkable historical transition.