Reproductive Labor in Schools

Part one of this chapter looks at the impact of capitalist logics regarding gender and work in schools. The chapter begins with an overview of how teaching became a female-dominated and feminized profession once it became less lucrative for white men compared to other work. Next, the chapter discusses the history and place of reproductive work in schools. Part two reviews the four frameworks used in the book to analyze how productive labor is prioritized over reproductive labor and the impacts this has on lactating teachers. The first framework, social reproduction theory, is a pragmatic argument for factoring reproductive labor into the economy as a means to point out the productive value of carework. The second framework, misfits, positions inequality in material, embodied experiences. Misfitting looks at the concrete outerworkings of institutions to show how they do and don’t fit a diversity of bodies. The third concept is “outlaw emotions”. Outlaw emotions are those experienced by folks outside the norm of the white, straight cis-male body and reveal structural, institutionalized ways the status quo is inequitable. The fourth framework, pleasure activism, focuses on the role of pleasure for prioritizing design that values human flourishing.