Girls Becoming Teachers: An Historical Analysis of Western Austra ...

My conclusion revisits the starting point of my inquiry. How, for these women, did the process of becoming and being a teacher contribute to the possibilities of having choice and direction in one’s life? Knowledge of their lives and of the ways in which the women in this study both complied with and resisted the dominant discourses of patriarchy and bureaucracy in order to lead a meaningful life has been ‘subjugated’ knowledge and has been ignored in the canonical histories of Western Australian education. This subjugated knowledge shakes the masculinist paradigms of professionalism in teaching, as well as questions stereotypes of the woman teacher of the period.

The narratives of those women who continued to teach until the last quarter of the twentieth century reveal engagement in educational policy initiatives and innovations, as well as the rich experiences of travel, the arts, and community service. For those who left teaching to raise families, there are stories of new life ventures such as historical and botanical research, farming, and community service. When some of this group returned to teaching, largely during the post–World War II period when there was an acute teacher shortage, they had to juggle family and work while dealing with the Education Department’s intransigence about granting married women permanency. These lives are testimony to the fact that though they were lived within a world of gender segregation and patriarchal privilege, the women who lived them were not passive victims.