Giving Tree Teachers: Women and the National Board Certification Process.

The article focuses on the role of women teachers. Great strides have been made to disrupt the assumptions underlying the sex/gender system that naturalizes the feminization of caring and service professions like teaching. However, even though laws are in place to prevent gender discrimination, equality and equal opportunity remain de jure and not de facto concepts for many women. The de jure/de facto disconnect is particularly apparent in a gendered comparison of teachers' earnings. In other words, women teachers who have the same level of education and experience and who teach in comparable school districts and levels as their mate colleagues still earn salaries that are 5-6 percent less than their male counterparts. For private schools, the difference is greater, 8-9 percent. The appearance of equal pay and opportunity created by gender-neutral salary scales in the teaching profession masks the reality that women are more likely to sacrifice their careers for their families, a mask that has its historical base in how women came to preponderate the teaching profession in the first place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.