ABSTRACT
This chapter explores and describes some of the problems, contradictions and pressures of being a feminist teacher in Britain today. Frances Widdowson points out that although by 1908 women elementary teachers outnumbered men by three to one, the ratio of women to men in the lowest teaching grades as Uncertified Assistants and Supplementary Teachers was ten to one. All the teachers commented on the huge discrepancy between their contact time with boys and with girls, and try to compensate with time for girls. Girls are unlikely to be given that opportunity and encouragement in classes where staff hold stereotyped views about the supposed ‘natural’ interests and abilities of boys and girls. All the teachers were asked to comment on their relationships with other people at work, whether teaching staff, ancillary workers, parents or students. Conflict is inevitable when the workplace is patriarchal, capitalist, racist, sexist and saturated with hierarchies, and the worker is a feminist.
