ABSTRACT
TEACHERS Although it is one of the few professions closely associated with women, the fi eld of education has a history of discrimination against its majority. Nor were women always the majority: in early America, the “schoolmaster” was axiomatically male, and the “schoolmarm” caught up with him only because the opening of a vast frontier meant that no “real man” would stay in the classroom. The one-room schoolhouse became a feminine domain, with male school boards choosing a new and probably young woman to teach for a few years prior to her true calling, marriage and motherhood. Although western states began electing women to their top education positions after 1892, most of the nation did not follow the example. Teaching was poorly paid, and compensation often was in the form of room and board: teachers lived in the homes of students, rotating between homes every few weeks. Especially in the Midwest, this was routine through World War I.
