Career Choice of Female Junior High School Teachers and Potential Administrators in Tainan City: Gender and Authority

Author: Hui-Ju Lee(Da-Wan High School)、Wen-hui Anna Tang(Institute of Economic, National Cheng-Kung University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 49, No.1
Date：April 2004
Pages：29-52
DOI：10.6210/JNTNULL.2004.49(1).02

Abstract：

In 2002, sixty-four percent of all junior high school teachers in Taiwan were female, and it is expected that this trend toward "feminization" of junior high faculties will continue to increase. There is no significant difference in the "rank" of male and female teachers. However, at all levels of junior high school administration males outnumber females, and female administrators tend to hold lower-level, traditionally female posts such as Director of Special Education, Director of the Office of Data and Records, and Director of the Office of Student Counseling. Thus while a woman entering the profession of junior high school teaching in Taiwan enjoys a certain "positive horizontal gender discrimination," one attempting to enter the administrative level of a junior high school suffers from negative vertical gender discrimination.
In this research project, female teachers and female administrators at junior high schools in Tainan were our subjects. Through the study of records, questionnaires and in-depth interviews, we analyzed the reasons these women chose "junior high school teacher" as their career, as well as the reasons they either did not choose or were not allowed to serve in administrative posts in junior high schools. The results of this investigation are as follows:
The personal reasons for female teachers' career choice of junior high school teaching is largely a function of society's expectations of females. Furthermore, due to structural limitations-that is, the difficulty of attaining higher-level positions-female teachers have relatively little desire to seek administrative posts in junior high schools. The female teachers also tend to have a notion of their professional teaching career which differs from that of males, and which has to do with their affirmation of the intrinsic meaning and value of teaching rather than primarily with considerations of money, status and power.

Keywords：Horizontal and vertical gender discrimination, positive and negative gender discrimination, gender stereotypes, sexual division of labor

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