ABSTRACT
In this chapter we provide an account of the teaching profession, from 1948 to the present day. We have structured the chapter around two sets of issues. First, we summarize the experiences of women in teaching from 1948 to 1968, the era of what we term the feminine mystique. This provides us with the opportunity to foreshadow the contemporary profession. Second, we augment this account with a critique of the sociological writing that has described teaching in general, and women’s place within it, during and since those years. This academic writing, which aspired to be scientific and dispassionate, was actually deeply sexist and treated the ideological tenets of the feminine mystique as if they were permanent truths.
