Exploring the Gender Imbalance in Teaching Staff in China: How to Break Gender Stereotypes in Education Industry

Abstract

In China, with the increasing proportion of female teachers especially in primary and secondary schools, the gender imbalance in the number of employees in the education industry has attracted increasing attention, as many people believe that the continued increase in the proportion of female teachers will bring some negative effects. The teacher occupation has been “sex-labeled” for a long time. It is traditionally regarded as a “women’s job”, because many of the qualities a teacher should possess are considered feminine in popular perception. Therefore, more and more women tend to become teachers, while men are reluctant, which further exacerbates the gender imbalance in the education industry. On the basis of existing research, this article discusses the reasons for this phenomenon and the limitations of the current solutions, and explore how to better break the stereotypes in the education industry to solve the gender imbalance problem in a proper way, contributing to the promotion of gender equality effectively. Instead of simply improving the treatment towards male teachers, it is revealed that the fundamental way to solve the problem of gender imbalance is to let the public establish the concept of gender equality.