Women in the Educational System

"TO UNCLE SAM: YOU can free us from the legal disabilities and the unjust discrimination which hamper women teachers throughout the United States."

The Woman’s Party also sought to secure equal rights for all women in academia. The unstable job market for white collar jobs that emerged after World War I encouraged men to seek employment within the educational system—as administrators, as supervisors, as superintendents, and as principals. School boards across the country took advantage of this. From 1920 to 1925, enactments against women—especially married women—increased. Nearly all executive positions were filled by men. Openings in administrative almost always preferred men, regardless of their qualifications, experiences, or academic merits. Women teachers struggled against discriminatory laws based solely on gender. In some states, after a woman married, she was automatically dropped from the force and placed on the substitute list. While she still taught, she was exempt from tenure and subjected to a lower schedule of pay. At times, the salary differential to men in the same teaching positions ranged from two hundred to five hundred dollars.    

During the 1920’s, no national educational system in the United States existed. Each state used its own, in which many independent school systems operated. On a whole, discrimination against women remained glaring in the East. In the West, they tended to disappear. Conditions in the central states, such as Illinois, revealed the “average” situation.   

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In 1925, Ella Loon, Associate Professor of History at Goucher College, conducted a study that examined the discriminations women experienced on university faculties. The study included seventy universities; the basis of selection being approved by the Association of American Universities. All instructional educators and assistant instructors were included in the results, associates being counted only where they outranked instructor.   

“But 4% of the full professorships in coeducational institutions were held by women. This percentage dropped to 3% if home economics and physical education were excluded. Of the 104 universities and colleges noted, 26% had no women of any grade of professional rank in the arts department, while 47% had no women holding a full professorship.” (Equal Rights Magazine 1925) Reducing the study to its lowest dimensions revealed the following ratios:   

Number of individuals on all university faculties . . . . . . . . . . 7400  
Number of women on university faculties. . . . . . . . . . 677  

When considering the numbers of individuals in full professorial rank only, the disproportion between the genders increased. In strictly academic lines, only 28 women enjoy the full professorial rank as compared to 2110 men. Full title women professors work in only 18 of the universities studied. The largest number in any one institution with this rank is 5, an in only two cases these professorships combined with deanship. Likewise, the number of women increased as the position decreased:   

Number of full professorial women . . . . . . . . . . 28  
Number of assistant professorial women . . . . . . . . . . 129  
Number of women instructors (lowest pay) . . . . . . . . . . 488
(Equal Rights Magazine 1925)    

To reverse these discriminations, the Woman’s Party aimed to pass the following Proposed Teachers’ Bill in every state legislature to cover equal pay for equal work and provide equal opportunity for equal merit. In many states, this bill was defeated:    

“In the employment of teachers in any school, college, university, or other educational institution in this state, which is supported, in whole or in party by public funds, or which is exempted from taxation, discriminations based on sex are prohibited. This provision shall apply with reference to appointment, assignment, compensation, promotion, transfer, resignation, dismissal, and all other matters pertaining to the employment of teachers. Provided that where any such school, college, university, or other educational institution is open only to members of one sex, nothing contained herein shall be construed to prohibit the exclusive employment of teachers of that sex.” (Equal Rights Magazine 1924)