Yesterday was International Women’s Day. It received quite a bit of media coverage, as it should. In many areas in the country and in various ways, people participated in “A Day Without Women” to prove the important role women play in our daily lives – in business, in their communities, and at home.
Women make up an estimated 76% of pre-K through 12th grade teachers in the U.S. At Source4Teachers, 78% of our job openings last year were filled by women. There are roughly 3.6 million full-time teachers providing classroom instruction (and that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of substitutes). At 76%, that means nearly 2.8 million teachers are women. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly 50.4 million students attend public K-12 schools. An additional 5.2 million students attend private K-12 schools. That’s 55.6 million students across the U.S.
Without the women who lead these classrooms each day, there would be 42,256,000 students without a teacher. Let that sink in for a second.
Simply stated, without women educators, our education system would collapse. So thank you to the strong, courageous, thoughtful, dependable women out there who work tirelessly in the most noble of professions. Your impact cannot be overlooked. It deserves to be recognized and celebrated – not just on International Women’s Day, but every day.