Women Teachers Talk About Their Changing Work

Abstract

This paper advances a Marxist critique to consider the way the position of women teachers in the state sector is being reproduced under the pressure of reform. lt analyses interviews with women teachers in the early childhood sector to evaluate their responses to questions over the impact of government reform in education on the nature of their work and their own activity in their unions to resist the reforms, against other evidence and opinion on the effects of state restructuring in education. The paper investigates whether women teachers see their struggles against the reforms as a struggle to overcome their own vulnerability as workers -particularly against traditional perceptions that their reaching was merely an extension of their domestic labour.