ABSTRACT
Claims that teaching is ‘feminised’ have been prominent in recent history, including in the UK and in some other parts of the global North and global South. References to the feminisation of teaching often imply that women numerically dominate the teaching profession. Discourses of the feminisation of teaching are informed by a view of the profession as ‘feminine’, in the sense that teaching is thought to require some of the ‘qualities’ and skills culturally linked with femininity. Blaming the numerical and cultural feminisation of schools for boys’ underachievement has taken place against a broader context of ‘backlash’ politics against women and feminism, which claim that the traditional gender order is crumbling before our eyes and that men are under threat. The boys’ underachievement debate is one of the many expressions of how the feminisation of the teaching profession has been constructed as a problem.
