--- Pádraig Linskey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hello Jill,
> On Thursday, November 21, 2002 at 06:55:31 , you wrote:
> > Most low-paying, low-status professions are inhabited primarily by
> > women, from nursing to teaching to museum work.
>
> Low pay, I agree. Low status, I disagree.
It's one of those "catch-22" status things. While society recognizes that
professions such as nursing and teaching are esential, the people who are in
those professions are ultimately treated with less respect than in other areas.
While I'm not a social anthropologist, I think it might have to do with how
these professions came about. I've done a bit of research into the history of
teaching and nursing here in the US. It's only been a bit over 100 years since
the founding of any formal training for nurses. Until about the 1880s, there
was no formal training for nurses and a lot of it was done by nuns as part of
their charity work. Women were really only brought it to nursing during war
time when men were needed to fight. So again, you have a situation where women
are only really working when necessary and have no formal training. Once
nursing schools got established and there was a push for nurse training, then
nurses finally got some sort of paraprofessional status.
Teachers were the same way. Teaching was mainly done by unmarried women and
teacher's colleges didn't get started until the mid-1800s (again, here in the
US). Women's colleges were mainly finishing schools for the ellite and thus not
on the same level as "academic" universities mainly attended by men.
Both of these professions have just recently developed true degree programs
instead of just training programs. In my mother's generation, most nurses went
through a 3-year nursing school. Now most nurses go through a BSN program which
can take 5 years. Same with teachers. I'm not sure when teachers started
earning 4-year degrees but when I was in college 10 years ago, the teaching
major was beefed up so that a BA/BS in teaching took about 5 years to complete.
Now compare the history of teaching and nursing to "men's" professions such as
doctors and lawyers. Academic training for those professions goes back a couple
thousand years. Even with medicine was mainly bleeding people and snake oil,
men went to university to study such things. Thus they have a long history of
being "professions" for which one needed an academic education instead of
"jobs" where one needed to be trained. Subtile difference but a big distinction
to society. Even today, those without degrees are looked down upon by people
who have them. Thus I think it will take a long time before society finally
realizes that teachers and nurses are just as highly trained as doctors and
lawyers, even though we get paid a fraction of what they do.
Granted I could be completely wrong in my above theories and the whole
situation could just be a male plot to dominate women. ;)
Deb
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