Teaching was one of the few professions open to Australian women in the 19th century.

By 1866, women made up 48 per cent of the teaching profession in Victoria. Under the National School Board (1848–62) and Board of Education (1862–72), married women could teach, and female teachers held high positions in schools. They were paid accordingly, although often at lower rates than their male counterparts. Women teachers were valued and were often sought after as a good influence on the moral development of children, particularly young girls.

During the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, the situation for women teachers began to change dramatically. Under successive Acts of Parliament they were increasingly marginalised and discriminated against. Women teachers were paid salaries at four-fifths the male rate and were officially excluded from senior positions. It was decreed that ‘every vacancy in the head teachership of a school at which the average attendance exceeds fifty pupils … shall be filled by the appointment of a male head teacher’.

The economic depression of the 1890s led to huge cuts to education funding, affecting female teachers in particular. Female teachers aged over 50, and all married women, were retrenched without any right to a pension. In 1889 the Public Service Act was passed; this barred all married women from working in the public service, including teachers. Married teachers were forced to retire immediately, regardless of their personal or financial situation.

This letter from the Education Department informed married teacher Grace Neven that she had been dismissed from her job.

While technically barred from teaching, married women continued to be employed by the Education Department on a temporary basis, in schools for which it could not find male staff, or during staffing shortages. Not until 1956 were married women again able to teach on a permanent basis.

In 1885, the discrimination experienced by female teachers led to the formation of the Victorian Lady Teachers’ Association (VLTA). One of the first female trade unions in Australia, the VLTA was part of the wider political movement for women’s rights that began in the 1880s.

Many VLTA members were part of the women’s suffrage movement, campaigning for women’s right to vote and to receive equal pay in all professions. The VLTA’s platform was steadfast: women teachers held the same qualifications as men and performed the same work; as such they should be treated equally, both in pay and conditions.

Throughout the 20th century the VLTA, subsequent unions and women teachers continued to fight a hard battle against discrimination, eventually winning many industrial rights we take for granted today, such as equal pay, and access to pensions, superannuation and maternity leave.