Abstract
This chapter investigates the institutional and subjective processes of the feminization of teaching in Argentina. That is, the ways in which “the feminine” and “the masculine” of hegemonic sex-gender relations have intervened in the process of training Argentine women teachers and men teachers. At the same time, in a dialectic fashion, we will investigate how teachers, both women and men, have acted and/or act on themselves or on others (especially with respect to what I will later call the “school mother”) by virtue of their unique appropriation of those relations. In summary, we will examine the processes through which women have become “schoolteachers” within the framework of sex-gender regulations that characterized Argentine society at the time the teaching field was socially constructed. The working hypothesis that will unfold in this chapter is that within the different environments where training occurs, teaching has tended—and still tends— to maintain the devices of feminization of modernity.
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Andrea Alliaud, Los maestros y su historia: los orígenes del magisterio argentine (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina 1993);
Silvia Yannoulas, Ensenñar ¿una profesién de mujeres? La feminización del normalismo y la docencia 1870–1930 (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1996);
Graciela Morgade, Mujeres en la educacién. Género y docencia en la Argentina 1870–1930 (Buenos Aires: IICE-UBA/Mino y Davila Eds., 1997).
The bibliography on this topic is very wide. Among the works of my Argentine colleagues are Alejandra Birgin, El trabajo de ensenar. Entre una vocacién y el mercado: las nuevas reglas del juego (Buenos Aires: Troquel 1999);
Gabriela Diker and Flavio Zulma Terigi, La formacién de maestros y profesores: hoja de ruta (Buenos Aires: Paidôs, 1995);
Maria Cristina Davini, La formacién docente en cuestién: politica y sociologia (Buenos Aires: Paidôs, 1995);
Gloria Edelstein and Alicia Coria, Imcigenes e imaginacién. Iniciacién a la docencia (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1995).
Based on the reconstruction of the subjective processes of transformation that make an individual feel and conceive of himself or herself as a teacher, from recent investigations by Luiz Oliveira, “Trabahlo docente e subjetividade: embate teorico e novas perspectivas,” Revista da Faculdade de Educatioo, São Paulo: USP, 12 (1998): 50–59. It is also possible to debate whether self-definition is necessarily produced at the moment professional accreditation is received.
Michel Foucault, Tecnologias del yo (Barcelona: Paidôs, 1996, primera ediciôn 1990).
Julia Varela, Nacimiento de la mujer burguesa (Madrid: La Piqueta, 1997).
Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Luther H. Martin, Hugh Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (eds.), Technologies of the Self A seminar with Michel Foucaut (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), p. 18.
Pierre Bourdieu, “Espiritus de Estado,” Sociedad, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires: Facultad de Ciencias Sociales-UBA, 3 (1996), pp. 16–21.
Meyer, Ramirez, Langton Walker, and O’Connor, in their now classic study on “The State and the Institutionalization of the Relations between Women and Children,” in Sanford Dornbusch and Myra H. Strober (ed.), Feminism, Children and the New Families, (London; New York: The Guilford Press, 1988), pp. 137–158, nevertheless trace some variations of this general principle, in fundamental accordance with the dominant political and cultural system. In this way, they find three forms of modernization: in the more “liberal” countries (e.g. the United States) the visibility of family conflicts and thus the rate of state intervention is high; while those countries with a strong communitarian government (as in Scandanavian countries) generate intermediate levels of public discussion; and the systems which are denominated “organic corporations” (Latin American countries, for example, with a strong incidence of Catholic tradition and “natural” rights) tend to admit low levels of public perception of intra-familiar life and conflicts, and in this sense, the legitimacy of state action tends to be constructed more slowly.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, in Héctor Recalde, El primer congreso pedagôgico (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1987, p. 87).
Marcela Nan, “La educacibn de la mujer,” Revista Mora del Instituto Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género, Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofia y Letras-UBA, 1 (1995): 35–41.
Juan Carlos Tedesco, Educaciôn y sociedad en la Argentina, 1880–1900 (Buenos Aires: Ed. Solar, 1988).
Charol Shakeshaft, Women in Educational Administration (Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1991);
Kerreen Reiger, “The Gender Dynamics of Organizations: A Historical Account,” in Blackmore, Jill and Jane Kenway (eds.), Gender Matters in Educational Administration and Policy: A Feminist Introduction (London; Washington, DC: Falmer Press, 1993);
Jill Blackmore, Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership, and Educational Change (Buckingham; Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 1999); among others.
Madeleine Grumet, Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press: 1988);
Sandra Acker, Teachers, Gender, and Careers (New York: Falmer Press, 1989) and Gendered Education: Sociological Reflections on Women, Teaching, and Education (Buckingham; Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 1994);
Alison Prentice and Marjorie R. Theobald, (eds.), Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1991);
Michael Apple, Maestros y texto. Una economia politica de las relaciones de clase y sexo en educaciôn (Barcelona: Paidbs, 1995).
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© 2006 Regina Cortina and Sonsoles San Román
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Morgade, G. (2006). State, Gender, and Class in the Social Construction of Argentine Women Teachers. In: Women and Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984371_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984371_4
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