As schools across the country expanded rapidly in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, they needed a reservoir of cheap, plentiful, and obedient instructors. Middle-class women in need of employment and with few respectable economic alternatives flocked into teaching. This occupation was all the more attractive as it could easily be reconciled with the traditional faith in the overriding maternal nature of the female. The work with children, however, did not reconcile every teacher to salaries lower than their male counterparts.
In 1871, in both urban and provincial settings, approximately 60 percent of the teachers working in public schools were female; yet despite their numbers the salaries offered them remained between one third to one half less than that of men. In Halifax in 1870, for example, a male principal would be paid between $600.00 and $800.00 a year, while a woman would receive only $400.00 to $500.00 for doing the same job. Similarly, a second class male teacher would make between $360.00 and $400.00, while a female teacher would make only $160.00 to $300.00. Such discrepancies resulted in frequent confrontations between the women and the male trustees of schoolboards. Women united in an effort to rectify the situation. Organizations like the Women Teachers' Association were eager supporters of a suffrage campaign which sought to bring about some improvement in their wages.
