Lessons from the past: the experience of women teachers in Quebec and Ontario

Contemporary debates on the role of women in schools and the social characteristics of teachers have a long history. Their roots can be traced not only to the early days of teacher organizing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but to the earlier nineteenth century origins of mass public education when some school promoters called irito question the very presence of women in non-domestic schools. To understand the sources and evolution of debates about women teachers is to begin to understand some of the ambiguities and contradictions which affect the role of women in the schools today.