Gender, Oppression, and Care Labor in the Professional Lives of Teachers

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Illuminating Truth of Gender and Race in the Current Era (Table 20)

Abstract

This study investigated the impacts of care labor on the professional lives of teachers. Results of this study indicate that gender identity has a significant impact on the way teachers take up care and their understanding of care duties, with teachers who identify as men feeling both less obligation to provide educational care. This study probed teachers' beliefs about their work and the relationship between teacher’s ethical enactment of care, the reproduction of motherhood in teachers’ work, and the ways care expectations have contributed to the intensification of teachers’ labor, particularly teachers who identify as women. This research suggests structural changes in teachers' labor conditions are necessary to allow for the enactment of ethical care within non-oppressive work contexts.

Author

• Janel Anderson, Gonzaga University