Gender and school (un)success: perspectives of primary school teachers on possible consequences of the feminization of teaching

Abstract

The growing presence of girls in schools registered in recent years, coupled with their greater school performance compared to their male peers, has led to the resurgence of some social anxiety. The overrepresentation of women in the teaching staff has been pointed out as one reason driving the poorer performance of male students due to the lack of masculine role models. From a gender perspective, this article presents a reflection supported by some results of a study that involved individual, semi-structured interviews with 18 male and female elementary school teachers between 31 and 61 years old, who understand that the «feminization of teaching» does not affect the provision of quality education, and identifies several factors that may contribute to explain the phenomenon of «school non/success» of male and female students, such as the lack of gender awareness.