By Celia Burgess-Macey
Part 1. Respect, pay and conditions-how I took the struggle for women’s liberation into my educational work.
My own growing awareness on the changing political climate during the 1970s and 80s, affected my working life in several ways. Firstly, it affected the conditions of my work, and secondly it affected the content of my work and the struggles I was involved in as a teacher. There are a number of related stories which exemplify the kind of issues that we were facing as women during that time.
The first story concerns the issue of what was considered appropriate clothing for women teachers.
In 1972 I was working as a reception class teacher in Baden Powell primary school in Hackney. I was in my probationary year and therefore under particular scrutiny by the extremely authoritarian headteacher, Mr Walters, who insisted that all his female teachers wore skirts or dresses, and that all the boys up to the age of 11 wore short trousers. (Sometimes he would cane these boys in front of the whole school.) Myself and Gaby Weiner decided we would come to school in trousers (not jeans). I later collaborated with Gaby when she was at the Schools Council working on the Counteracting Sex Differentiation in the Classroom project).
Mr Walters was furious and demanded that the deputy head go to his office immediately. He refused to speak to myself and Gaby face-to-face, but through the deputy, demanded that we go home and change into more respectable clothing. When we refused, the local schools inspector was called in. He observed me working in my class, perhaps hoping that since I was in my probationary year, he could fail me, but his solution was to suggest that I should go and work in a secondary school, where I might feel more at home! I indignantly turned down this offer and was subsequently removed from the school and placed as Division 4 staff in Princess May Infants in Dalston. I continued to wear trousers which was practical clothing for working with young children and shortly afterwards the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), under pressure from ILTA (the London branch of the National Union of Teachers) declared that it was acceptable for women teachers to wear smart trousers.
The photo was taken after the trouser ban was lifted
My second story relates to the issue of maternity leave and childcare which were hot campaigning issues at the time not just in London, but all over the country.
In 1978 I was still teaching at Princess May when I finally became pregnant. The ILEA had what at the time was considered a generous maternity leave provision of one year which included the weeks taken before giving birth. The first part of this was on full pay the second part on half pay and the rest leave without pay. I can’t remember the exact proportions, but effectively when my daughter was nine months old, I was required to go back to full time teaching or live on air! This was a terrible dilemma for me, as I had no intention of being financially dependent on my daughter’s father, given that the relationship was so unstable. Consequently, I began to look for childcare options. This was a desperate search involving lists of childminders and community creches.
Despite the demands from the teaching unions, the ILEA had only one creche for the whole of North London, which of course was completely impossible to get into. This indicated the sexist expectation that women would give up work until their children could attend school.
There were active campaigns for more creche and nursery provision in the borough of Hackney mainly led by women and I attended meetings at our local community creche, Rainbow Nursery, and went on demonstrations to the council, but for me the problem with the community creches was that since they relied on some input of voluntary labour, parents were required to spend a certain number of hours helping out at the creche. This was completely impossible for me.
In the end, I was lucky because my daughter’s father worked at North London Polytechnic, where students and staff had recently successfully campaigned to establish a creche in the basement of a large Victorian property with a big garden in Islington, and Tanya was awarded a place. It cost us £100 a month and we paid half each.
The Issue of sex discrimination dogged me all my working life, because as an early years’ teacher I was always considered to be less important and less intelligent and more invisible than my colleagues who worked in secondary schools. The fact that the early years of education (nursery and infant schoolteachers as we used to be called working with 3-8year olds) was and still is mainly staffed by women (both teaching and even more so support staff who are not teachers) continued to be an issue in the profession and with politicians and the public. So, the early years of childhood and those who worked with young children, experienced blatant discrimination and patronising sexist attitudes. Yet we were dealing with children at the crucial stages of their life and I would argue our job as their carers and educators was more important and should command higher status and equal opportunities to progress, professionally and financially.
In fact, women teachers in general in the profession were on lower grades and salaries than men, and had difficulty being promoted to senior positions. The percentage of women on the lowest scales, one and two of the salary scale, was 78% in 1976 and 75% in 1980, the percentage of men on scale, one and two was 49% in 1976 and 45% in 1980. The percentage of women on scale three and four and senior teachers scale was 11% in 1976 and 14% in 1980. The comparative figures for men were 33% and 37%. The situation as regards deputy heads and heads was even more discriminatory. Headteachers of the smaller schools were equally likely to be male or female, but the headteacher of a large secondary school, 12% were women and 88% were men.
The problem was so pronounced that when I was working as an advisor in Lambeth in the early 1990’s myself and two female colleagues ran a course called ‘Women into Management’, specifically to coach teachers wishing to progress and to give them a supportive network, which would continue after they had been appointed. The course was very successful in achieving its objectives.
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