Why We “Profess” Rather than Teach:
Implications of the Gendered Construction
of Work for Academic Unions 

Lois Weiner

1.1. Although connections between the gendered construction of work and institutional
arrangements in higher education are seldom explored by researchers, the assumption
that teaching is “women’s work” is a key to understanding the social stratification of
higher education in the U.S.—and to organizing higher education faculty. I sketch the
implications of my analysis for faculty unions after describing the international context
in which faculty organizing in the U.S. should be understood, in particular neoliberalism’s
project to make education a commodity and dismantle public education as “public good.”

International Trade in Education

2.1. Unfortunately, organizations representing teachers and professors in the U.S. lag behind
unions elsewhere in the Anglophone world in alerting and organizing their members about
the profound impact international trade agreements are having on schooling. Global treaties
are transforming the very definition of education, in particular the General Agreement on
Trade in Services (GATS). As two British researchers explain, GATS

...is about trade across all sectors of education; primary, secondary, higher, adult and
other. All forms of education provision are regarded as potential areas for trade, in the
same way that we might trade in coffee or banana production. In other words, the
mandate for education is transformed from a 'service to the economy and trade' to
'trading a service in the global economy'. (Robertson and Dale, 2002, p. 16) 

2.2. Within the U.S. the drive to privatize delivery of educational services is well-
documented. But what may not be apparent to faculty in higher education is that
privatization and decentralization in K-12 schooling is part of neoliberalism’s global
strategy for education at all levels. Both powering and sailing on the powerful ideological
winds of neoliberalism, transnational corporations eagerly seek the education market, the
last domain of public service provision that is only marginally privatized (Weiner, 2005).
In this paper I adopt Roberto Unger’s definition of neoliberalism, cited by Robertson and
Dale (2002, p. 7):

In its most abstract and universal form, neoliberalism is the program (and it is crucial to
recognize that neoliberalism constitutes a new programme rather than merely a new set
of policies) committed to orthodox macroeconomic stabilization, especially through fiscal
balance, achieved more by containment of public spending than by increases in the
tax take; to liberalization in the form of increasing integration into the world trading
system and its established rules; to privatization, understood both more narrowly as the
withdrawal of government from production and more generally as the adoption of
standard Western private law; and to the deployment of compensatory social policies
(“social safety nets”) designed to counteract the unequalizing effects of the other planks
in the program. (Roberto Unger, 1998, p.53)

2.3. In order for education to be traded, it must be turned into a commodity like steel or
bananas, something that can be sold and bought in the market, a process that erases the
distinction between “education” and “training.” In Digital Diploma Mills, Noble (2002) analyzes
how learning and teaching are reduced to commodities in the fast-growing sector of for-profit
online higher education. While training requires acquisition of “a set of skills or a body of
information designed to be put to use, to become operational only in a context determined by
someone other than the trained person...Education is the exact opposite of training in that it
entails...integration of knowledge and the self, in a word, self-knowledge” (Noble, 2002, p. 2).

2.4. To commodify education, the relational interaction between students and teachers has to be
eliminated. The totality of the educational experience has to be fragmented, broken into discrete
elements: syllabi, lectures, and tests, taken together become the course “content.” In the absence
of copyright protections, course “content” is taken from the instructors who created it and sold
on the market. In this way “the buying and selling of commodities takes on the appearance of
education. But it is, in reality, only a shadow of education, an assemblage of pieces without the
whole" (Noble, 2002, p. 3).  The linchpin of Noble’s argument about  the transformation of
education into a commodity is that quality teaching is, inescapably, labor-intensive, in other
words, a transactional process between student and teacher. Note that in his discussion, Noble
does not differentiate between teaching in higher education and teaching in primary schools.

2.5. The role of the U.S. government in subsidizing the growth of online education in the U.S.,
primarily through federal student aid and military training (Noble, 2002), emerges from
neoliberalism’s strategy to decentralize and privatize educational systems globally, so that
education on all levels will be both tradeable and profitable. So far, of the four categories in
which education is divided, neoliberal economists and governments have been able to include
in the treaties only one, vocational training, termed “adult education,” (Robertson and Dale,
2002), but advocates of “free trade” are pressing hard to include all sectors of education,
from preschool through university, in treaties under negotiation.

2.6. Two aspects of the treaties are especially dangerous to higher education’s construction as
a “public good.” When  a nation has signed a trade treaty through one of the arms of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), it agrees that WTO tribunals, held in secret, can overturn decisions
arrived at democratically in member countries, about any areas that are included the pact. In
addition, the pacts do not permit a government to withdraw from one particular area of trade
after the treaty has been signed (Kuehn, 2001). In a working paper for the Hawkes Institute,
Australian researcher Marjorie Cohen (2000) warns that if higher education is included in new
treaties as a tradeable commodity, local regulations that limit the acceptance of these degrees
could be challenged as privileging one provider, the public institutions, and therefore
inhibiting free trade. For instance government regulations about degrees needed for
certification purposes, for nurses, lawyers, doctors,  or teachers, would be interfering with
free trade. The University of Phoenix could demand the right if higher education is included
as a tradeable service in the next round of treaties to have its graduates receive the  same
treatment as graduates of public universities. Cohen suggests that a key to preventing this
scenario is for public research universities to shed for-profit ventures, so as to strengthen the
case that they are not, in fact, the same as the commercial universities and therefore should
not be considered competitors of commercial operations.

2.7. Another immediate threat to public institutions of higher education and faculty is
neoliberalism’s global drive to curtail public expenditures on social services. The World
Bank enforces this policy in its loans, forcing recipients to curtail public services and to shift
money spent on higher education to primary schooling. Using evidence that spending on
higher education goes disproportionately to the middle classes, World Bank policy
documents argue that “equity” demands that public expenditures in education be
diverted from higher education to primary schooling (World Bank, 2003). Although
the argument about diverting funds in the name of “equity” has not yet appeared in the
U.S., we should anticipate that it will, especially in light of bipartisan support for greatly
increased military spending.

2.8. When money for higher education is diverted to primary schooling, the reality
sharply contradicts the World Bank’s claim that the policy promotes “equity.” Puiggros
(1996) describes how the rhetorical promotion of “equity” contradicts the reality of
economic restructuring in Latin America. Although Puiggros’ study was published
several years ago, she critiques policies that are still very much in effect, promoted
in the most recent report on providing services to poor people. The World Bank
demands reduced public expenditures on all services, especially those that do not
supply direct income or cannot be recouped right away, like public education. In this
zero-sum game, education can be allocated only a small amount of money, and so
resources for higher education are considered unwise. The historical experiences of
Peru, Argentina, and Nicaragua with school reform forced by the World Bank clearly
demonstrate that while colleges and universities lose funding, the money is not
diverted to primary schooling. Control over primary education is decentralized and
privatized, generating a few model school projects that yield considerable publicity.
However, these successful projects contradict the more general reality of deteriorated
schools, of teachers’ salaries cut, and fees imposed for students’ use of books, even
lower grades, and of reduced enrollments and achievement.

2.9. Throughout Latin America, the World Bank has not only cut the amount of money
to higher education but has also insisted on changes in the nature of faculty work. In
Mexico, researchers must interrupt work in progress to pursue topics that generate
immediately applicable results that give universities additional income because half
of their salary is paid according to efficiency indexes. Teaching is given less point
value than research, and merit pay raises provide far more income than the base
salary of university professors (Puiggros, 1996).

Resistance of Teacher Organizations 

3.1. Globally, teachers and their unions have been a primary target of the assault on
public education as well as the leaders of resistance. To dismantle systems of public
education, many developed a century ago as part of nation-building, governments
carrying out World Bank demands for restructuring confront teachers and their
organizations. As a World Bank report (1998) notes, “In almost every developing
country teachers are the largest group of workers in the civil or public service and
the largest item in the education budget” (Gaynor, 1998, p. 1). As public education has
been assaulted, teachers unions in many countries have fought back, as in the Global
Campaign for Education, a broad alliance of about 150 non-governmental organizations,
teacher organizations, and child-rights activists (Jellerna, 2002).

 3.2. The remark by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige that the NEA (National
Education Association) is a “terrorist organization” (Goldstein, 2004) was widely
criticized by the media. The remark takes on a different significance when viewed
in light of  teachers unions’ struggles against neoliberal reforms internationally.
Although Paige was swiftly criticized by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
and the National Education Association (NEA), neither organization related Paige’s
remark to ongoing confrontations between governments implementing neoliberal
reforms and teachers and teacher organizations. In fact, Gayle Fallon, President of
the Houston AFT local, defended Paige, speculating that he had made a joke that
was misunderstood. Fallon used Paige’s remark as an opportunity to criticize the
NEA, remarking to a reporter that "The NEA isn't militant enough to be a terrorist
group...They're barely militant enough to be a labor union" (Goldstein, 2004, p. 19). In
private correspondence with me (4 July 2004), Fallon explains that Paige’s remark was
no different from the sort he had made to her over the years, in exchanges of insults
understood as friendly. But the context of Paige’s remark contradicts Fallon’s
explanation: Paige was briefing members of Congress from both parties about the
Bush administration’s educational policy, describing his frustration with the
NEA’s opposition.

3.3. Neither Fallon nor Paige’s critics made the connection between his remark and
World Bank documents that assail teachers and their unions for impeding global
prosperity (Devarajan and Reinikka, 2002). The World Bank working paper about
how to make services work for poor people attacks teachers unions as hampering
delivery of quality social services in poor countries. The authors contend teachers
and teachers unions perpetuate poverty by not doing their jobs well, for instance
not showing up to work, and because "the lion’s share [of public money for social
services] goes to wages and salaries. With their political power, teachers and doctors
are able to protect their incomes when there is pressure for budget cuts.” (Devarajan
and Reinikka, 2002, p. 6). The report explores the benefits of replacing the existing
workforce with far less qualified applicants and contracting out educational services,
noting that in Benin this has been done. 

3.4. The EI (Education International) is an international federation of teacher unions with
311 affiliates and 25 million members (American Federation of Teachers, 2003). 
Responding to the World Bank working paper, Linda Asper (2003), EI Deputy General
Secretary, defends the role of teacher unions in developing countries. Asper notes
teachers are themselves among the poor, paid months late, and often below the poverty
line, working second jobs to support themselves. I explore the role of the AFT and
the NEA in the EI elsewhere (Weiner, 2005), but a brief discussion is important to
understand two contradictory processes in the EI’s operation. One is the EI’s clear
defense of the right of teachers to organize unions. It  has consistently come to the rescue
of teacher unionists imprisoned for their activity and mounts international campaigns
drawing attention to their plight. On the other hand, EI’s more temperate opposition to
neoliberal restructuring more closely mirrors the ideological stance of the leadership of
the AFL-CIO than it does of teacher unionists in the developing world. In addition,
questions remain about the extent to which the AFT, through its involvement in AFL-CIO
international operations, is involved in subverting popular resistance to neoliberal
reforms (Scipes, 2002). 

Class and Gender in Higher Education in the U.S.

4.1. The gendered construction of work may seem unrelated to dangers to higher education
posed by education’s inclusion in WTO treaties, but in fact, both phenomena emerge from
neoliberalism’s presumption of capitalist social relations, social relations that cannot be
understood without reference to gender oppression. Because neoliberalism’s agenda is
not (yet) actualized as fully in this country as it is in developing nations, teachers elsewhere
in the world are likely to see in a way we do not in the U.S. how World Bank demands to
cut funds to public education, and the arrest and assassination of teacher union leaders, are
related to one another and to capitalist social relations and neoliberalism’s ideological
assumptions.

4.2. Wood (1995) argues that capitalism can and does use gender oppression, but criticizes
the focus on “extraeconomic goods—gender emancipation, racial equality, peace, ecological
health, democratic citizenship” noting that “the socialist project of class emancipation always
has been, or should have been, a means to the larger end of human emancipation” (p. 264).
She contends that identity politics obfuscates the structural primacy of the working class and
the centrality of class politics, observing that “Capitalism could survive the eradication of all
oppressions specific to women as women while it would not, by definition, survive the
eradication of class exploitation” (p. 270).            

4.3. Briefly put, my theoretical argument against this reasoning is that Wood (and others who
make this case) ignore a dynamic defended elsewhere in her argument about the salience of 
class: the necessity of understanding capitalist social relations, as a system, in a specific
historic context. One can even grant her assumption, unsupported by evidence, that capitalism
could theoretically exist as a social system without gender and race oppression and still
maintain that “extra-economic” forms of oppression are so deeply embedded in existing
capitalist social relations that it is impossible to understand the institutional arrangements
and formation of class identity without reference to these extra-economic considerations. For
example, it is theoretically possible that capitalism could have developed with forms of social
organization that were not gendered. However, it did not. There is now both theoretical and
empirical work “showing the connection between power and organizations...suggesting a 
close empirical link between the modern organizations found in Western societies and 
particular forms of gender inequality” (Savage and Blackwell, 1992, p. 9). The emergence of
the bureaucratic career depended on the presence of women who would complete menial
tasks, freeing men to advance more quickly to more responsible jobs in the bureaucracy. It also
assumed a “female 'servicer', his wife, who would be expected to carry out a range of duties
for her husband, so allowing him to devote more time to the organization's affairs” (Savage and
Blackwell, 1992, p.11). So it is possible that capitalism might have developed without work
being constructed as men’s responsibility, and women’s sphere of influence being the home. But
it did not develop in this way, and we see the results of gendered institutional relations quite
clearly in education at all levels.

4.4. Teaching in most Western societies is considered an extension of the female responsibility
for caring for children. Real work occurs outside of the home; work inside the home, caring for
children and maintaining the family, is constructed as dichotomous to paid labor. However,
teaching, when it occurs as paid labor outside the home but entails the sort of work that is
unpaid in the home, defies categorization in this traditional framework. It carries the stigma
of being “women’s work” and hence has low status and little respect from the society at large
(Biklen, 1995), although historically certain groups, for instance African Americans, have looked
upon teaching as a service to the community and have given the occupation considerable
respect. Teaching, like mothering, is assumed to require little intellectual ability, to come
naturally. This construction of teaching extends to colleges and universities, “notorious for
their lack of attention to teaching and academic advising, especially the schools that are striving
for or have achieved a level of prestige within the competitive work of academia” (Freedman,
1990, p. 254). In reality, “caregiving” aspects of teaching are often as important as intellectual
labor and ideally cannot be separated. Although Noble does not refer to the gendered
construction of work and teaching in his analysis of how education is turned into a commodity,
his argument depends on the same assumption: quality teaching on any level requires the hard
work of personal interaction between teacher and student.

4.5. The gendered assumptions about teaching that underlie its social devaluation also underlie
the neoliberal program for education globally. Mexico’s neoliberal restructuring of higher
education with its allocation of more points for research than for teaching translates the
ideological assumption into a formula. The World Bank identifies schooling as one service,
extending from primary years through the university, but in the U.S., teaching at the university
level and in lower schooling are considered different occupations (Grant and Murray, 1999).
The devaluation of teaching so prevalent in most Western societies is not universal and does
not hold throughout the U.S. In many immigrant groups and historically in the
African-American community teaching is a highly-respected occupation. However, Gordon
(2000) suggests that so powerful is the dominant perception of teaching in the U.S. that as
minorities come in contact with white, middle class culture, they tend to adopt the attitude
that teaching is not valuable work.

4.6. Although several authors have examined the class stratification of higher education in the
U.S. (Aronowitz, 2000a; Linkon, 1999; Shepard et al., 1998), including its vocationalization
(Aronowitz, 2000b), they have missed the gendered nature of the stratification and the
vocations students select. Working class and lower middle class women who attend four
year colleges are likely to be in school so that they can be teachers (Christopher, 1995). In
fact, teacher education was the engine for the growth of public higher education in the U.S.,
as normal schools grew to state teachers colleges and then to teaching universities, or
masters-level institutions (Herbst, 1989). Teacher education still drives enrollments in higher
education, especially at the graduate level. Teacher education is “big business” in a nation
that has over three million teachers (Holmes Group, 1995, p. 1). Schools of education
contribute to about 25% of all master’s degrees awarded in the U.S. and 20% of all doctoral
degrees (Holmes Group, 1995). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data on
Master’s degrees conferred by discipline and by the number and kind of degree-granting
institutions show that in 2001, a total of 468,476 Master’s degrees were awarded in the U.S. 
Of those, 129,066 were in education; 11,645 in business; and 43,617 in health professions and
related sciences (NCES, Higher Education General Information Survey, table 253). In master’s
institutions, (defined as those offering a full range of BA programs and awarding at least 40
master’s degrees per year, across 3 or more disciplines), liberal arts faculty who teach graduate
courses are probably teaching prospective or current teachers.

 4.7. The high proportion of students attending graduate school for degrees in business and
education makes master’s institutions especially vulnerable to competition by for-profits,
which make money by tailoring programs to demands of employers who pay for their
employees’ schooling. The practice of having businesses control course content is
commonplace in programs of business administration. For instance, University of Phoenix
allows 15% of coursework to be directly controlled by an employer (Cox, 2003). There are
indications that teacher education is undergoing this same process. If teacher performance is 
gauged by student performance on standardized tests, as the neoliberal project insists it
should be, the sensible choice to provide professional development to teachers is the test
developer. Increasingly, for-profits like the Princeton Review and the Educational Testing
Service provide “professional development” for public school teachers. Stanley Kaplan has
developed online master’s degrees for teachers. In the near future the for-profits may offer
graduate degrees for teachers, linked as is the course work in business administration, to
what school districts want teachers to learn—how to make their students get high scores
on standardized tests.

 4.8. Teacher education is a “cash cow” for most institutions of higher education, including
research universities. It is much more lucrative than liberal arts training because of the way
“field experiences” are organized. Teacher education students generally complete a
semester-long, full-day, internship in a public school classroom, for which they pay full
tuition but receive no pay. The university’s only expense is salary of the college instructor
paid to supervise the student on a few visits. Often the instructor is a graduate student or
adjunct. The intern is taught by a host classroom teacher, who receives little or no
compensation, usually no more than a voucher from the university for an education course. 
Rarely do programs of teacher education receive back from the university resources that
are equivalent to the monetary contribution the programs make to the institution’s budget
(Holmes Group, 1995). Faculty who do the work of teacher education typically have
heavier teaching loads and lower salaries than faculty in other areas, heavier even than
colleagues within schools, colleges, and departments of education (Zeichner, 1999). The
disparity is gendered: One study found that female faculty in education have heavier
advising, supervising, and teaching loads than do male faculty (Ducharme, 1993).

Implications for Strengthening Academic Unions

5.1. Analyzing strategies and problems in organizing higher education faculty using the
lens of gender generates both new problems and solutions. An account of graduate student
organizing in research universities (Johnson, Kavanagh, and Mattson, 2003) observes that
senior faculty often oppose unionization (of anyone) because of their insulation from the
effects of corporatization of higher education. Tenured status and the closer relations with
administration that senior faculty enjoy give them greater institutional power—and less
proclivity to use it to defend wider interests of the academy. Although the chapter notes
a contradiction between the expressed political sentiments of left-leaning faculty and their
reluctance to join faculty unions, the analysis ends with a conclusion that appeals to faculty
should be “not to their self-interest but to the larger social goals of education” (Johnson,
Kavanagh, and Mattson, 2003, p. 37).

 5.2. A telling omission in this analysis is the internal stratification of the research university,
one that results from the gendered construction of work and with it the devaluation of
teaching. I suggest that a more promising organizing strategy is targeting the faculty
whose self-interests would be advanced through the creation or revitalization of a faculty
organization that addressed inequalities that arise from the devaluation of “women’s
work.” To conclude, as the authors do, that all appeals to faculty self-interest are futile
ignores those full-time faculty who are most likely to teach in departments that are
under-financed, especially in relation to their program’s significant contribution to the
university coffers; faculty who have higher teaching loads; faculty who have often worked
previously in one of the few workplaces in the U.S. that remains highly unionized—public
schools or hospitals; and faculty likely to experience the devaluation of their labor. I
describe, of course, faculty in schools of education and nursing, and in particular,
female faculty.

5.3. Or take Johnson’s argument (2003) that the extent of casual or contingent labor is
drastically underestimated in the NCES data because it fails to consider the employment
of graduate students who teach discussion sections of large lecture courses. Johnson is
correct that faculty who rely most on these institutional arrangements are those at research
universities with large doctoral programs who use Ph.D. candidates to teach entry-level lab
and discussion sections of courses. The article assumes that senior faculty will avoid teaching
these classes whenever possible but doesn’t question why this is the case. What explains the
inverted reward structure that has the hardest teaching, to first and second year
undergraduates taking required courses in which they are likely to have little interest, done
by faculty who have the least institutional support and least experience as college
instructors? Were teaching really valued, as all institutions of higher education claim it is, 
the practice would be reversed, and faculty with the most expertise as instructors would
teach the courses most pedagogically challenging.

5.4. To even pose the issue of respecting the skilled, labor-intensive nature of teaching
illuminates how its devaluation is assumed in higher education—and in discussions of
organizing higher education faculty. Seldom are the unequal rewards for teaching and
research critiqued, yet the assumptions underlying this reward system legitimize the
widespread hiring of adjunct and graduate students to teach entry level courses and
the failure to offer them adequate support. Organizing instructors at all levels of
higher education requires a new grammar and vocabulary for describing faculty work
that rejects the gendered devaluation of teaching. The authors who analyze the failed
organizing effort of graduate students at University of Minnesota grasp for this vocabulary
to explain how their membership’s concerns conflicted with the organizing strategy and
structure of the AFT (Brown, et al. 2003). They mention conflicts with the AFT about how
to conduct an organizing campaign and conclude that “We lost by emphasizing numbers
rather than the nature of our membership. Most important, we failed to sustain a spirit of
purpose that could inspire commitment to our union” (Brown, et al. 2003, p. 185). Although
they do not define the “spirit of purpose” that was lost, except in organizational terms of
creating a non-hierarchical structure that functioned less bureaucratically than a typical
union, I suggest this “spirit of purpose” was a(n unnamed) desire to be rewarded and
respected for the work of teaching. If I am correct, then key demands for bargaining
emerge from valuing the work that graduate students and adjunct faculty do as teachers,
supporting their personal interactions with students, for example by paying adjuncts and
graduate students for office hours and course development, providing resources for their
teaching, like office space, clerical support, and if they wish, advice about teaching the
difficult courses to which they are assigned.

 5.5. Gender is clearly a factor in the widespread use of contingent labor in higher education.
A 1997 report from the Office of Higher Education of the NEA notes that the proportion of
non-tenure track (NTT) faculty has gone from 18.6 percent to 27.3 percent, with most of the
increase due to female faculty; that NTT women now make up more than half of the faculty
at 2-year and masters-level institutions; and that women faculty who are NTT are likely to
be employed in traditionally female fields and to make less money (Chronister et al., 1997).
Although the study does not identify the “female fields” in which women NTT are employed,
one area is most certainly education and another nursing. This suggests that faculty unions,
especially  in community colleges and masters-level institutions, ought to encourage
independent commissions or caucuses of nursing and education faculty to identify areas
of inequality or special concern.

 5.6 In many K-12 teachers unions, activists are considering how to address classroom concerns
that are important to teachers but that fall outside the purview of collective bargaining
agreements (almost always because legislation granting collective bargaining also sharply
limits the scope of bargaining). The debate is germane for higher education as well, and
research on how K-12 unions deal with this problem has valuable insights for activists in
higher education. Studying teachers unions in three different school systems in the U.S.,
Bascia (1995) found that teachers expected their union to protect against excessive interference
in their teaching, to provide a voice for them in decision making, to obtain resources, and to
work for recognition and respect for realities of teaching. She concludes that “Union leaders
or others who discount as 'unprofessional' teachers' calls for union intervention with respect
to traditional protection and representation issues are likely to alienate rather than inspire
teachers” (p. 85). Bascia’s conclusions apply equally to academic unions, which have nothing
to gain from masking their intent to defend faculty salaries and working conditions, vigorously.

5.7 Bascia (1998) also studied how male and female union activists viewed their
participation. Both linked union activity to concerns about the quality and nature of
support for teaching. However, women also viewed union involvement as a way to develop
and explore their abilities, in contrast to the attitude of male activists, who saw themselves
taking their turn at serving in office or solving practical problems. The presidential position
and its authority were considered masculine, though women dominated in other levels. 
Although I have read no studies about the representation of women in positions of leadership
in higher education unions, I suspect that Bascia’s findings about female leadership in  K-12
teachers unions hold for academic unions. For the same reasons that affirmative action is
important in hiring in the university and society, it is important for academic unions to
encourage and support women to assume titular leadership. This may mean creating new
modes of exercising formal leadership within the union, for instance allowing authority to
be shared by co-presidents.

5.8 Grumet (1995) argues against the “false dichotomy” of home and classroom that has historically driven attempts to raise teaching’s status by transforming it into an occupation like the archetypal professions, law and medicine. Extending her argument, I suggest that the failure to understand teaching in the university as the same sort of work as teaching in the lower grades is a false dichotomy that obscures the real dangers to higher education and academic unions in neoliberalism’s powerful assault on education. To counter corporatization of higher education, Johnson et al. (2003) propose a vision of higher education rooted in education's role in a democratic society. I concur, wholeheartedly. But insofar as we ignore the gendered construction of work that leads to devaluation of teaching and sustains inequality in the academy, we miss the chance to expand our vision of democratic possibilities, and higher education’s role in that process.


References

American Federation of Teachers. "Education International Celebrates Ten Years." American
Teacher. March 2003 (3 March 2003). http://www.aft.org/pubs_reports/american_teacher/
mar03/roundup.html (24 July 2004).

Anton, Anatole, Milton Fisk, and Nancy Holmstrom. "Introduction." Not for Sale: In Defense
of Public Goods. Ed. Anatole Anton, Milton Fisk and Nancy Holmstrom. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 2000. XV_XX.

Aronowitz, Stanley. "Higher Education as a Public Good." Not for Sale: In Defense of Public
Goods. Ed. Anatole Anton, Milton Fisk and Nancy Holmstrom. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 2000. 369-81.

___. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher
Education. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.

Asper, Linda. http://www.ei_ie.org/main/english/index.html. 11 June 2003.
http://www.ei_ie.org/action/english/ Statement/20030611_ilo_geneva_e.pdf (15
June 2004).

Bascia, Nina. Unions in Teachers' Professional Lives: Social, Intellectual, and
Practical Concerns. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

___. "Women Teachers, Union Affiliation, and the Future of North American
Teacher Unionism." Teaching and Teacher Education 14.5 (1998): 551-63.

Biklen, Sari Knopp. School Work:Gender and the Cultural Construction of Teaching.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

 Brown, Michael, Ronda Copher, and Katy Gray Brown. "Democracy is an
Endless Organizing Drive." Steal This University. New York: Routledge,
2003. 171-87.

Christopher, Renny. "Teaching Working Class Literature to Mixed Audiences."
Teaching Working Class. Ed. Sherry Lee Linkon. Amherst: Univ. of Mass.
Press, 1999. 203-22.

Chronister, Jay L., et al. Full-Time Non-Tenure-Track Faculty:Gender. Washington,
D.C.: Office of Higher Education, National Education Association, 1997.

Cohen, Marjorie. "The World Trade Organisation and Post-Secondary Education:
Implications for the Public System." British Columbia Teachers' Federation. 2000.
http://bctf.ca/social/globalization/CohenPaper.html (24 June 2004).

Cox, Ana Marie. "The Rise of the Corporate University." Steal This University. Ed.
Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh and Kevin Mattson. New York: Routledge,
2003. 11-14.

 Devarajan, Shantayanan, and Ritva Reinikka. "2004 WDR—Initial Ideas About
Motivation and Framework from the Director & Co-Director of the WDR."
http://econ.worldbank.org/view.php?type=5&id=17976. 21 August 2002.
http://econ.worldbank.org/files/17976_ReinikkaShantaInitialFramework.pdf
(21 June 2004).

 Ducharme, Edward R. The Lives of Teacher Educators. New York: Teachers
College Press, 1993.

Fallon, Gayle <Gayle2415@aol.com>. "Clarification?" 4 July 2004.  

Freedman, Sara. "Weeding Woman Out of 'Woman's True Profession': The Effects
of the Reforms on Teaching and Teachers." Changing Education: Women as
Radicals and Conservators. Ed. Joyce Antler and Sari Knopp Biklen. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1990. 239-56.

Gaynor, Cathy. "Decentralization of Education. Teacher Management." Directions in
Development. World Bank. February 1998. http://www.wds.worldbank.org/
servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1998/02/01/000009265_3980429110720/
Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf (24 June 2004).

Goldstein, Amy. "Paige Calls NEA a 'Terrorist' Group; Teachers Union and
Democrats Are Irate." Washington Post [Washington] 24 February 2004, Final:
A: 19.

Gordon, June A. The Color of Teaching. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2000.

Grant, Gerald, and Christine Murray, E. Teaching in America: The Slow Revolution.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Grumet, Madeleine R. "At Home and in the Classroom: The False Comfort of
False Distinctions." The Politics of Educators' Work and Lives. New York:
Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995. Vol. 915 of Studies in Education/Politics.
Ed. Mark B. Ginsburg. Garland Reference Library of Social Science. 55-71.

Jellerna, Anne. "GCE Response to World Development Report 2004 Outline."
18 December 2002. http://econ.worldbank.org/files/
23475_GCE_response_to_WDR.pdf. (21 June 2004).

 Johnson, Benjamin. "The Drain-o of Higher Education." Steal This University.
Ed. Benjamin Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh and Kevin Mattson. New York:
Routledge, 2003. 61-86.

 Johnson, Benjamin, Patrick Kavanagh, and Kevin Mattson. "The Future of
Higher Education and Academic Labor." Steal This University. Ed. Benjamin
Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh and Kevin Mattson. New York: Routledge, 2003.
231-40.

Kuehn, Larry. "Keep Public Education Out of Trade Agreements." 2001. http://bctf.ca/social/globalization/TradeAgreements.html (15 June 2004).

Linkon, Sherry Lee, Editor. Teaching Working Class. Amherst: Univ. of Mass.
Press, 1999.

Noble, David F. Digital Diploma Mills. The Automation of Higher Education.
New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002.

Puiggros, Adriana. "World Bank Education Policy: Market Liberalism
Meets Ideological Conservatism." Indymedia Cambridge. repost, 28.02.2004. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2004/02/286118.html.

Robertson, Susan, and Roger Dale. "Changing Geographies of Power in
Education: The Politics of Rescaling and Its Contradictions." Globalisation and
Europeanisation Network in Education. 12 June 2003. http://www.genie_tn.net/
roger002.pdf (24 July 2004).

 

Savage, Mike, and Anne Witz Blackwell. "The Gender of Organizations." Gender
and Bureaucracy. Ed. Mike Savage and Anne Witz Blackwell. Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 3-62.

Scipes, Kim. "AFL-CIO and Venezuela: Return of Labor Imperialism, or
a Mistaken Reaction?" 2 May 2002. http://www.zmag.org/content/Labor/
sipesaflven.cfm (24 June 2004).

 

Shepard, Alan, John McMillan, and Gary Tate. "Coming to Class. Pedagogy and
the Social Class of Teachers." Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of
Teachers. Ed. Alan Shepard, John McMillan and Gary Tate. Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1998.

 

The Holmes Group. Tomorrow's Schools of Education. East Lansing: The Holmes
Group, 1995.

Weiner, Lois. “Neoliberalism’s Domestic Agenda: No Child Left Behind.”
New Politics 38 (Winter 2005).  http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Democracy Against Capitalism. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.

 

World Bank. World Bank. September 2003. http://econ.worldbank.org/
wdr/wdr2004/text_30023/ (25 June 2004).

 

Zeichner, Ken. "The New Scholarship in Teacher Education." Educational
Researcher 28.9 (December 1999): 4-15.