D'alumna a mestra : l'accés de les dones al magisteri oficial = From pupil to teacher : the entry of women teachers into the state school system in Catalonia

Abstract

The aim of this lecture is to analyse the entry of female schoolteachers into the state school system in Catalonia during the second half of the 19th century. By the middle of the century, almost all of the teachers were male. They taught in boys schools, rural mixed schools and nursery schools. Women could only teach in the scant girls schools. Nevertheless, the ideology of separate spheres made schoolmistresses indispensable in order to create a necessary schoolgirls network. The analogies between teaching and maternity were not decisive during the first decades of this process. Despite the urgent need for female schoolteachers, the entry of women teachers into state schools was not a bed of roses. Their training, professional prestige, pay and other working conditions were much worse than those of their male colleagues. On the other hand, schoolmasters tried to retain their positions. Most of them disagreed with the feminization policy initiated by the Spanish state during the last decades of the century. They insistently defended a teachers paradigm based on the father figure. The analogies between teaching and maternity arose in order to overcome these resistances to the professional expansion of women teachers. Schoolmistresses didnt accept these inequalities or restrictions and tried to define their own professional model. They developed abilities to negotiate and individual strategies of resistance that should be understood as a form of apprenticeship oriented towards the gestation of a strong professional identity. Their activism and the capacity to generate supportive networks among them were evident in the struggle for equal pay. This achievement was decisive to these women who encroached on a historically male preserve.