W.Va. teachers show power of women
Strikers say men in power disrespected them
The teachers strike in West Virginia shows more than the power of collective organizing — it shows the power of women, political scientists and labor experts said.
For nearly two weeks, teachers refused to go to work. They held rallies at the Capitol almost daily, demanding higher pay and protesting rising health care costs. On the strike’s ninth day, Gov. Jim Justice announced a deal to give all state employees a 5% raise and halt an increase in health insurance premiums. Many teachers — exhausted, overjoyed and eager, they said, to get back to their students — wept.
More than three-quarters of public school teachers are female, the National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2017. Salaries for teachers in West Virginia rank 48th in the nation, according to the National Education Association, the country’s largest teacher’s union. Educators battled a state Legislature that ranked 48th in the nation in terms of women’s participation. They faced a governor who implied that they were “dumb bunnies.”
“Why did our governor and the Senate president think that it was OK to disrespect the teachers in West Virginia that way? It’s because we were women,” said Carrena Rouse, president of the Boone County chapter of the American Federation of Teachers who has taught at Scott High School in Madison, W.Va., for 28 years. “Because they’d been used to getting away with that. And for me it was one of those points of, ‘No no no no — we’re not backing down from this thing. You picked the wrong fight.’ ”
Jean Harris, a professor of political science and women’s studies at the University of Scranton, said the country is experiencing “a pattern of heightened participation by women of all ages, in all occupations and on all kinds of issues.”