In the aftermath of World Teachers' Day promoted by UNESCO, we invite you to take stock of the place that women occupy in a profession dedicated to the future of our children.

How many (women) teachers ?

Globally, there are 85 million teachers. 64% are women.

The figures vary slightly from region to region : 74% of teachers in Europe and North America, 68% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 63% in Asia, 45% in sub-Saharan Africa.

What does not vary, however, is the decrease in the rate of women as one moves up the course of study. Almost everywhere in the world, women represent more than 90% of teachers in preschool/pre-primary schools (except in sub-Saharan Africa where they are " only " 80%). The average drops to 67% at the elementary education level. We are 52% in secondary school... And 39% in higher education.

In France, women represent 67.8% of the teaching staff. In primary school, it is 82% ; in secondary school 58% and in higher education 37%.

This breakdown by level of education overlaps with gendered statistics on the obtaining of diplomas giving access to the profession : 68% of CAPESians and 53% of agrégations are women.

In terms of the disciplines taught, 83% of women are in modern foreign languages, 67% in literature and humanities, 63% in economic and social sciences, 47% in science, 46% in physical education and sports and 28% in technology.

The feminization of the teaching profession, a historical fact

Teacher has not always been " a woman's job". The teacher is a creation of the French Revolution in its desire to secularize the school. But we are not unaware that this same Revolution also enshrined political inequality between women and men.

Also from the end of the eighteenth century until the 1830s, the schoolmaster was by default a man. But there are already female teachers, who are more of a strong-minded woman. The profession is indeed a privileged path for those who aspire to autonomy and have an intellectual soul and why not a militant spirit. It is indeed among the teachers that we find many pioneers of feminism.

It was not until 1838 that " teacher training colleges " were created for the training of female teachers. Women enter the career. They made a big breakthrough as " interims " during the First World War. Due to demographic tensions in the 1920s, they were encouraged to stay in the profession. They became more and more numerous until they became the majority in primary education and reached parity in secondary education during the 1950s.

The massive feminization of the teaching profession took place in the 1960s and 1970s, in a movement that has since only experienced a slight attenuation in the early 1980s and then started to rise again.

Correlations or causalities ?

Feminization of the teaching profession and girls' academic success

The feminization of the teaching profession can be observed at the same time as gaps between girls and boys in terms of academic success are emerging. Indeed, for more than 30 years, girls have been performing better in school and more likely to pursue higher education.

Some voices wonder about discrimination affecting boys and about its possible explanations to be found on the side of the lack of diversity among teachers. This question is all the stronger as boys seem to be less disadvantaged in the subjects that have the most male teachers (science, PE, etc.). The hypothesis is nurtured in the ranks of masculinism and therefore treated with caution by research.

But the question of the impact of the teacher's gender on the student's learning path remains interesting to ask. Psychosociology has long been interested in the educational relationship and the weight of the teacher's intrinsic characteristics on the student's relationship to the subject, to school, to learning. Unquestionably, projection effects play a role in school conation. However, it is less a question of a dynamic of "model role" (the student's ambition does not stem from an identification with the teacher) than of a dynamic of "pseudo-parental relationship" in which parent/child relationships are replayed, as theorized by the pedagogue Jean Repusseau with the Möbius complex/good student complex.

In other words, the problem of the impact of the feminization of the teaching profession on the educational destiny of students is not that of a supposed gender favoritism privileging girls but that of a reproduction of family patterns (with all their stereotypes and biases), in the field of school.

Feminization of the teaching staff and deterioration of the socio-economic condition of teachers

Another correlation that has been written about is the one that associates the feminization of the teaching profession with the deterioration of the socio-economic condition of teachers. Where an angry question arises: does a profession lose social value when it becomes a " woman's job" ?

To answer this, let's objectify the facts with the economist Nicolas Chancel who establishes that between 1980 and 2020, the salary of a beginner teacher has increased from 2.2 times the minimum wage to 1.1 times the minimum wage. With this dizzying drop in salaries, the social prestige of the profession has also suffered a serious decline. According to sociologist Gérald Bronner, it is above all on this side that we must look for explanations for the crisis of vocations. He hypothesizes that the regression in collective esteem for teachers is more generally the result of a collapse of republican values.

Some drive the point home by accusing the school of having lost authority, legitimacy, ability to influence society... And the same people point out that this is not unrelated to the feminization of the profession. Among those who make the association between feminization and the degradation of the value of the profession, there are some of the most essentialist commentators (or even outright masculinists) who believe that school is infused with qualities that are reputed to be feminine at the antipodes of the skills required to exercise authority.

But at the other end of the spectrum, there is a more methodological way of thinking that analyzes the way in which a profession changes gender, depending on whether it is valued or devalued in a given society. Thus, as true as the film industry, initially run by a majority of women, became the playground of men when it shuffled money and prestige, the teaching professions have become more feminized as their social value has deteriorated.

Thus , for the historian Antoine Prost, one of the first to have studied the feminization of the teaching profession, the feminization of the teaching profession is due more to a desertion of men (attracted by better-paid and more prestigious professions) than to a flood of women in the profession. In other words, if we want to achieve balance in a profession that is at the heart of the training of the new generations, we will have to go through its revaluation.