NEW YORK — The field of Jewish education is not known for stellar salaries, especially for female teachers, according to a report released in the latest issue of Jewish Education News.
The report, based on a study of Jewish educators in Atlanta, Baltimore and Milwaukee by Council for Initiatives in Jewish Education, finds that even when differences in hours worked and years of formal training are accounted for, female teachers earn significantly less money and receive fewer benefits than their male colleagues.
For example, among full-time teachers, 76 percent of men earn more than $30,000, the highest bracket cited in the study, while only 9 percent of women fall in that category.
The study, which appeared in the quarterly publication of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, comes as Jewish education becomes more central to the Jewish agenda and institutions are struggling to find ways to recruit educators.
Some 84 percent of Jewish educators are women, although in Orthodox day schools women comprise only 55 percent of the faculty.
Salary differences are more pronounced in day schools than in afterschool religious programs, the report found.
While male educators generally have stronger backgrounds in Judaic studies than women, almost 60 percent of female educators have formal training in education. Slightly more than one-fourth have formal training in Jewish studies. For male educators, the numbers are roughly reversed.
The wage gap is aggravated by the fact that women dominate the lower-paid levels of Jewish education, such as early childhood, whereas men cluster in the more lucrative secondary schools.
Adam Gamoran, a professor of sociology and educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin and one of the authors of the study, attributed the wage differences less to overt sexism and more to subtle forms of discrimination.
“It’s not that the given principal of a given school is sexist, but we live in a society where circumstances are more favorable to men,” he said during a phone interview. “In a lot of circumstances, it’s assumed that when men are working they’re the family breadwinners and with women that they’re bringing in a second income.”
The study also found several other key differences between the genders.
Women are more likely than men to work part time, and are less likely to describe their work as a “career.” Women and men also report different reasons for entering the field.
“Men tended to view their decision as one that would provide them with the opportunity to learn continually and teach about Judaism,” the study says. “In contrast, women viewed their choice of entering into Jewish education as an opportunity to teach children.”
But once in the field, both men and women stay in Jewish education “for a considerable length of time” and “overwhelmingly plan to stay.”
Although male educators are far more likely than their female colleagues to be Orthodox, there are few other differences in demographic makeup. The mean age of both male and female educators is 38, and the overwhelming majority are American-born.
The report concludes that “Jewish education is not immune to the conditions permitting gender discrimination in the secular world.”
The study was co-authored by Council for Initiatives staff researcher Bill Robinson and Vanderbilt University education professor Ellen Goldring.