Male teachers ‘are victims of sexism by their female colleagues’
IT has long been viewed as a profession dominated by women.
And now a male primary school teacher has claimed men are being subjected to sexism from their female colleagues.
Adam Black said some women claim men are promoted based on their gender, and that female teachers criticise men’s clothing in a way that would be unacceptable if the situation were reversed.
Mr Black was reflecting on a decade in the profession for an article in a trade magazine.
Only one in ten primary teachers is male and it has been claimed that boys in primaries lack male role models as a result.
Mr Black said the life of a male primary teacher can be ‘lonely’. He wrote: ‘There are the odd occasions when either I or other men who I know have experienced what I suppose could be described as sexism or, at the very least, inappropriate.
‘If a man is promoted, as a university friend of mine recently was, the general feeling from his staff is that one of the factors in his promotion was that he was male.’
Mr Black, a teacher at Eastmuir Primary School in Glasgow’s East End, also told of men’s clothes being criticised.
He said: ‘An old colleague of mine was openly slaughtered for daring to wear shorts during hot weather: comments like “put those legs away!”.
‘Whether it was meant or not, objectifying this man made him feel uncomfortable and, funnily enough, he wore trousers the next day.’
The article, in the Times Educational Supplement, received a mixed reaction on social media.
Ruth Luzmore said: ‘Disparaging comments about appearance, clothing, suitability for promotion etc have no place in schools.’
But Louise Ford commented: ‘I’m sorry you’ve had these experiences, but you need to be a little more informed on sexism before claiming that no man would ever dare say certain things to a woman.’
Greg Dempster, General Secretary of the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland, said: ‘It’s not something that our members have been coming to us about.
‘Sexism is not acceptable – that is a given. If there were members coming forward, we would look to support them.’
‘Slaughtered for wearing shorts’