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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how a perception of schools-as-gender-equal functions to maintain normalcy in women-teachers’ experiences of realities of difference at work and at home. Findings from interviews with 12 women-teachers reveal multiple and contested notions of gender equality.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike many other industries and workplaces, schools are generally perceived by the Japanese public, and arguably even more so by teachers’ themselves, as a gender equal environment.

Scholars on the other hand often look to education to explain persisting gender inequalities in Japanese society. Several decades of gender research demonstrates and conceptualizes the educational system’s role in perpetuating inequalities. Educators particularly are held accountable for reproducing gendered roles and for failing to realize opportunities to promote gender equality. Yet, teachers’ perceptions and perspectives on the matter are often neglected. Further, the notion of gender equality itself often remains undefined and unquestioned.

In nowadays Japanese society, where various individuals, groups and platforms manage to break through and give voice to gender injustices, is the perception of schools-as-gender-equal still the norm?

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of women working as teachers in senior high schools. Based on interviews with 12 women in their late-20s-40s this paper aims to clarify and give voice to teachers’ multiple narratives about gender equality in upper-secondary schools.

Two conceptualizations of gender equality were utilized as a framework for analysis; educational studies' notions of formal versus substantive equality; and policy studies' notions of equality as gender-sameness, difference, or transformation.

This study found that on the surface women-teachers stressed gender equality as the normal state of schools, both as workplaces and as educational environments. However, the concept itself remained opaque, seldom debated or reflected on. Probing further, it was found that a discourse of gender equality played a role in women-teachers’ maintenance of normalcy. Participants utilized multiple and contested concepts of gender-equality in order to negotiate realities of difference they encountered among students, in their work and private-lives. Generally, participants adopted a notion of ‘formal equality as sameness,’ namely, they believed women are, or should be, treated the same as men, however they were also ambivalent towards the male-standards this notion masks, and the personal toll it takes. Narratives constantly moved between rejection and acceptance of inequality.