Women In Educational Administration The Glass Ceiling

Women In Educational Administration: The Glass Ceiling Is Still There Essay, Research Paper

WOMEN IN EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION

THE GLASS CEILING IS STILL THERE

Several people at the conference dealt with the problems women encounter in getting into administrative positions in schools and colleges and when they do, the obstacles they encounter in making their jobs successful. Their discussions brought home to me the reality of my own mother’s experience. As children we witnessed our mother struggling, summer after summer and during many school years in the evenings, with those courses required for an administrative license. The state gave her that license some twelve years ago, but she is still teaching mathematics in high school. We used to tease her when we were growing up calling her “principal mom” and “assistant principal mom” and the like and pretending that she called us into her office for punishment. We do not do that any more because we know it won’t be fun and games any more but it will be a cruel joke if we did that. What made her disillusioned about the career of an administrator in her school system in which she served nearly a quarter of a century.

It has to do with what is known as a glass ceiling. Administrative positions are open to all qualified persons. They are up there within everyone’s view. All you have to do is qualify yourself with the appropriate education and skills. The law of the land makes every person eligible for them. All employers proclaim in their policy statements that they are “equal opportunity employers.” But when women reach for them, the invisible ceiling stops them. A cruel tease indeed!

My mother said she would not talk to me about her own reluctance to pursue an administrative career, despite all the efforts she put in to qualify for it. She said I should talk with teachers or other personnel in the school systems who had no personal involvement in order to get objective observations. So I interviewed more than 25 people from Superintendents and Principals through Vice Principals, Department Heads, Counselors, Teachers and Teachers’ Assistants to Security, Cafeteria and Maintenance Personnel, in two different school systems. My findings were quite revealing of the invisible glass ceiling.

Let me start with the lowest level positions in the school systems—maintenance workers, security personnel and cafeteria workers. Strictly speaking, they cannot be called part of the education system. Their jobs do not have anything to do with the educational system, they could be in any other place than the school, but the way the heads of their departments are chosen will show how endemic gender discrimination is to the entire school systems, from bottom to top. In fact, it is ingrained in the culture of the school systems as it is in the culture of many other organizations in the public life.

My innocent ears were offended hearing the tale of a woman security officer describe what was going on in the South Bend School Corporation at her level of employment. She has much more seniority than most of the chiefs of security in the school system, but the chief’s position along with all the benefits go to the men who, in her judgement, were less qualified, experienced and conscientious. She pointed out to her own chief, a pot-bellied man who sat by a closet and snacked all day, according to reports, which could not be far from the truth judging from his appearance. “Only men can handle the tough situations; he does all that sitting in that chair while I do the simple things like breaking up fights, confiscating guns and knives and searching out drug pushers,” she stated.

Among maintenance workers there were only very few women. The chief janitor in one school, a fair man who has a couple of women in his staff, a rarity, said that women are intimidated by furnaces and electrical systems, so they don’t sign up for janitorial jobs. But he also added that “not that they are welcome either; I don’t mind them, but the guys in other schools will hire a women only if they can not even find a dead body.” I asked, “can a woman ever become the chief janitor.” The answer was a plain and clear “never.”

The cafeteria was a completely different story. Practically all the workers in the cafeterias of all schools are women. I asked the head of the food service department in one high school, who I thought was a fair-minded lady, why it was that all cafeteria workers are women. She said men do not generally apply; cooking and serving food is a women’s job, they think. She also added, “ We don’t want them anyway, you can hardly find one who is not sloppy and dirty.” But I observed, and she agreed, that there is no injustice involved. There is no built-in obstacle for men to be hired or promoted in food service.

Leaving the support staff level and getting to the heart of the educational enterprise, we come to the teaching staff. Instantly, one notices that the elementary schools are mostly staffed by women teachers. However, the administrators by and large are men. The South Bend School Corporation, for example, has approximately 25 elementary schools. Of these, twenty of them have men principals while nearly 70% of teachers are women. I asked one of the male principals why there is such a disparity between male/female ratios of teachers and administrators in elementary schools. He said that