On International Women’s Day, a Taranaki teacher aide argues the conditions she and her largely female colleagues work in perpetuate the myth that women are natural caregivers, who do their jobs out of love.

The choice is toilet paper or us. That’s what we teacher aides joke about. Except it’s not very funny. Our wages come out of the same grant as school utilities, and some principals literally have to choose between us and toilet paper.

It means that every time our contracts come up for renewal, we face reductions in our working hours – it’s always a reduction and never an increase, even though new children come into the school with needs that require support.

I support children with learning difficulties, who need help with toileting, who have undiagnosed ADHD, and children who have difficulty regulating their behaviors because of the perfect storm of poverty, ongoing Covid-related issues, and situational and generational trauma.

I end up working unpaid hours. Most high-performing teacher aides, striving to give a child a sense of security and safety at school, do the same. This is a profession held up by women’s unpaid labour. Yes, we’re almost all women.

That’s why the inevitable virtue signaling by politicians in support of International Women’s Day today – a day which celebrates women’s progress and a call to commit to gender equality together – irks me. 

They virtue signal, while here at my primary school in South Taranaki, there are five teacher aides who together do around 10 hours a week of unpaid work. That’s 400 hours over the four school terms at our school alone. And this is just one school out of 2000+ in the country where many teacher aides do the same thing.

It’s not any of those schools’ fault. It’s certainly not the children’s fault. It’s the funding model. Some of those politicians talking about International Women’s Day might do well to look at it. 

 I have a 12-month contract for 15 hours’ work a week – for 40 weeks of the year. That’s not a lot of hours or security yet I feel lucky because in my job, a 12-month contract is considered “long term”. At one stage my weekly hours were reduced from 15 to 10.5, while one colleague had their hours reduced from 21 hours to 11.5 hours and another lost their job completely.

I would love to have a permanent job and work 25 hours a week, but I know that will never happen because the funding simply isn’t available to all schools.

Job insecurity means that my predominantly female colleagues and I find ourselves in competition with each other for paid employment, so work can feel like survival of the fittest. It feels impossible to feel there’s any gender equality when working in these conditions and it’s all come to feel demeaning and dehumanising. 

As time passes, the conditions squash us. Competing for hours means we are grateful for scraps, and less likely to complain. We’re dissuaded from overestimating our worth and are desperate for the bare minimum.

Feminist theory has encouraged me to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women’s social roles and lived experiences. My lived experience is that political decisions exacerbate gender inequality. Does the government know about the unpaid hours we work? The conditions we work in tacitly endorse the ever-persistent myth that women are natural caregivers who do jobs out of love. 

I love my job. I know, personally, how important it is.  A teacher aide helped my son, who has autism and anxiety. A teacher aide also helped my daughter, before she passed away at 15 from epilepsy. It showed me how important the role was in helping kids thrive and feel supported in their learning journey. 

If I had a permanent role and was paid for the hours I work, it would mean much more than extra cash in my pocket. I would have equality in my marriage. I am fortunate I have a husband in a decent job who is supportive of my role and is too nice to ask me to leave it, but I want to be an equal contributor to our family finances, and stop living paycheck-to-paycheck in a cost-of-living crisis. 

So, here’s to International Women’s Day. In the spirit of reflecting on progress made, calling for change and to celebrating acts of courage and determination by ordinary women, I’m raising my glass to teacher aides.