The Iowa Stater
September1996
Society suspicious of
female school administrators
hile women traditionally have dominated the teaching field, few have served
as school superintendents. Assistant professor of education Jackie Blount's
investigation into this aspect of her profession offers a look at how womens
roles in teaching and school administration have been buffeted by social
change.
Blount dug deep into American social mores to find out why the
percentage of women superintendents dropped from 10 percent in the first
half of the century to 5 percent in the latter.
In the early 1900s, most women in education, both teachers and administrators, were single. Society didn't like two-income households, especially during the Depression, and women were viewed as incapable of serving two masters -- family and school, Blount explains.
That began to change in the 40s when married women were welcomed into teaching for several reasons. Single women were finding more job opportunities outside education. In addition, some Americans had begun to blame independent, single women for declining birth and soaring divorce rates. A more damaging perception, heightened by Alfred Kinseys 1950s studies of sexual behavior, was that single women teachers carried the threat of lesbianism into public schools. The fear of a homosexual label led many women to pursue teaching rather than the "more masculine" administrative positions.
Blount advocates a greater acceptance of all people -- married and single, male and female, straight and gay -- in the field of education.
"Short of the family, the role modeling that young people see in schools is going to provide the example about how society should be structured," Blount said. "As long as schools are structured in a sex-segregated, hierarchical system, it is going to be a tacit and powerful lesson for young people about their expectations for men and women."
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