I don't think it's inherently terrible to have fields that are dominated by one gender or another but I do think that in the case of school teachers men are being pushed away by social forces and it's detrimental to all children to be taught only by women.
I, for one, didn't become a teacher because the pay is terrible, I make more annually my first year out of school (programmer) than most highschool teachers make anually.
It had nothing to do with gender, more to do with money.
Also, my mom is a highly advanced math teacher (teaches AP courses, grades AP tests etc), so I think she provides a good rolemodel for women and men who want to be good at math.
(Of course, one of the reasons that I didn’t go on to a career in teaching is that the pay sucked. I believe that one of the reasons teachers’ pay sucks is that it’s a traditionally female occupation, and schools can recruit women who do not depend on their teaching salary for the majority of the family income.)
I never really considered that. I always assumed the pay sucked because tons of people who don't have actual career passions decide to just be a teacher instead. It's like never having to leave school and get a real job! Boy, that's going to get me some flak, but I've seen it first hand plenty of times.
For evidence, my state (Connecticut) has one of the strictest set of teacher certification requirements in the country (being a teacher here basically makes you an automatic hire in most of the rest of the country). Yet, whenever there's a teacher job opening, it gets hundreds of applicants.
The teaching profession is definitely a buyers market, and I'd bet without unions teacher salaries could be halved and still never have vacancies. No, I'm not actually saying that would be a good thing. Education provided by the lowest bidder is an awful idea.
And I bet that other teachers appreciate there being a man around, just as I have found that a workplace that includes women engineers is a much nicer place to work than one that doesn't.
We only really develop a proper understanding of gender around the age of 7, but influences before then set up the mindstates to come, and help to drill everyone (including parents and teachers) in appropriate gender roles.
Kids see male doctors and female nurses. They have female teachers at school. When shopping for toys, the girls get pink kitchen sets and dolls, and the boys are offered machines and cars.
From a young age, our society teaches us that women are not engineers, and men are not teachers. We need to solve them both.
If doctors didn't make so much $, I am convinced that women would make up the majority of doctors.
However, there are more females in medical school now than males, it's just a matter of time as the older generation retires.
Personally, I think there would be more doctors if it didn't cost $200k+ and 4 years to get a medical degree (compare the opportunity cost vs working as a software engineer for 4 years with only a bachelors).
