“Institutional, systemic misogyny” that is causing many women to leave teaching must be tackled as an “urgent priority”, EIS president Allan Crosbie told his union’s annual general meeting this afternoon.
Mr Crosbie addressed fears about the incursion of far-right ideology into classrooms by misogynistic social media personalities, but stressed that this was far from the only issue making the profession less attractive to women.
He said: “When an industry or profession whose workforce is overwhelmingly female casualises and exploits the labour of women at one end of their career, and then drives them to want to quit early at the other, and when so many women in both situations do actually quit, in what have become record numbers, with severe impacts on their incomes and their pensions, then there’s a word to describe that industry or profession.
“And that word is ‘misogynistic’.”
‘Jaw-dropping’ statistic
He cited a “jaw-dropping” statistic from the 2023-24 teacher census showing that only 12.8 per cent of primary probationers obtained a permanent post, and stressed that other new teachers a few more years into their careers “are still trapped, with no hope of a permanent job in sight”.
With 89 per cent of Scotland’s primary teachers being women, “the vast majority [of teachers] imprisoned in that precarity are young women. They can’t get mortgages, they can’t afford to start families and they feel, as one sister put it to me, completely ‘devalued and disposable’.”
He added that such feelings also applied to “countless women...at the opposite end of their careers, as they go through the menopause and struggle against a culture of eye-rolling and dismissiveness”.
One teacher told Mr Crosbie: “It’s never said outright, but it feels at work like I’m being told all the time, ‘This is the job; if you can’t handle it, you need to get out.’ And I do want to get out, as soon as I possibly can.”
She also told him she felt like crying with relief when she read updated EIS guidance on menopause and menstrual health, because “I know I’m not alone and I know I’m not mad”.
Mr Crosbie said: “The Scottish government and [local authorities body] Cosla need to acknowledge that misogyny isn’t just something ‘out there’ invading schools, peddled by the far-right or secreted into boys’ heads by creeps on social media. It’s also something that has baked in a structural violence at the heart of our workplaces.”
He added: “Quite simply, if the government and our employers want to be taken seriously in any way when they try to talk about Fair Work ambitions, then ending that institutional, systemic misogyny has to be their urgent priority.”
This week, the EIS - Scotland’s biggest teaching union - revealed details of a survey of nearly 11,000 members showing the drastic impact of excessive workload. Tomorrow, the EIS will open a ballot on workload.
Today, Mr Crosbie said that failure to address workload would mean a largely female workforce continuing to face “structural violence at the heart of our workplaces”.
Violence against women in schools
He also addressed concerns that violence against women and girls in the UK had “reached epidemic proportions” and was a “national emergency”.
He said: “I do believe the Scottish government and Cosla have recognised that misogyny is a deeply troubling aspect of the violence and aggression against women working in our schools.
“But they need to do more about it. Those women are living a daily reality of being threatened and assaulted, and they need to be able to keep themselves safe and to teach their pupils about consequences.”
Mr Crosbie added: “And those consequences need to be properly funded in the form of different types of alternative - but supportive and inclusive - provision for violent and aggressive pupils, so that everyone in classrooms can feel safe.
“Those women also need time, CPD and materials to help them inoculate their pupils against the virus of hatred poisoning children online.”
Mr Crosbie, a teacher of English from Edinburgh, also said: “This coming year, the office bearers of the EIS will all be men and all secondary teachers. But I want to say to every EIS member, in all our sectors and in all our networks, that we will be the humblest listeners we can be, the warmest allies we can be, and the strongest advocates we can be.”
You can now get the UK’s most trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on Android. The iOS version is coming soon
