A matter of time? Gender equality in the teaching profession through a cross-national comparative lens

ABSTRACT

This article draws primarily on a dataset of 60 semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers working in English and French state-funded secondary schools. Informed by feminist sociological theories of work and education and a cross-national comparative perspective, it explores the mechanisms leading to the production of gender inequalities in a profession which is often thought of as egalitarian or even favourable to women: teaching. A multi-level approach is adopted, which considers how the macro-social, meso-social and micro-social dimensions of the social world interact with each other and lead to the production of context-specific gender patterns, with specific attention to the effects of the spatio-temporal regimes of teaching which prevail in each country.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-national comparison
• gender
• secondary school teachers
• France
• England

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments; Prof. Nicky Le Feuvre, Prof. Merryn Hutchings and Prof. Lyn Thomas for their support when I conducted the original study which informs this article; and Prof. Debbie Epstein who kindly commented on a earlier version of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the editorial team of Gender and Education, in particular its editorial manager, Helen Rowlands, for her usual efficiency.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marie-Pierre Moreau is Professor in Education and Education Research Lead in the School of Education and Social Care, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Notes

1 For readability purpose, ‘French’ and ‘English’ refer to the country of residence rather than to the nationality.

2 Elite post-baccalauréat sections hosted in some lycées, which prepare students to Grandes Ecoles’ entry exams.

3 Pseudonyms are in use throughout the article.

4 Contrarily to what was observed in the French sample, among which only women worked part-time, some English male participants were working part-time. However, this was never for ‘conciliation’ purposes and, instead, seemed to be made possible precisely by the lack of caring responsibilities.