• Women consider themselves to be somewhat less effective than men in administering schools and disciplining students.
• Although there has been improvement since 1976, women continue to receive less encouragement to apply for promotion and remain less likely to apply for promotion.

By far the greatest advantage men teachers have over women is that women continue to have major responsibility for home and child care tasks. In consequence, women have more concerns about the negative effect promotions can have on their ability to perform these essential and largely unshared responsibilities. It appears that some of the capable young women respondents will hesitate to consider advancement unless and until administrative jobs are restructured to allow for both a successful career responsible parenting.

In addition, the necessity of taking maternity and child care leave to fulfill parenting ob- ligations has a negative effect both on women's career advancement and on their eligibility for pensions in their later years. This brings into question the values of the education system, the Federation and, indeed, society: a system where children have value as students but not as offspring.

OSSTF may wish to take a leadership role in exploring and lobbying for measures that eliminate the penalties imposed on women for being responsible parents. These measures could include:

• workplace day care, to ensure that all teachers have access to quality day care;
• time off to care for sick children;
• paid maternity leave;
• no loss of seniority or pension for maternity leave.

Another important finding is that, although women's opinions about their promotability have improved markedly since 1976 and the assessments by male administrators of women's promotability have also improved, the perceptions of these decision-makers have not kept pace with women's present attitudes, level of qualifications and degree of career commitment. Until male administrators are able to view women and men teachers as equally capable and promotable, women's low representation in positions of added responsibility will continue.

Women in 1985 are undertaking those aspects of the promotion process which are under their control. Their demonstrated career commitment must now be met by a reciprocal willingness on the part of their superiors to encourage them to qualify for and apply for senior positions, and to appoint them to these positions in proportion to their representation in the Federation.

It is important to note that, although attitudes of both administrators and women themselves toward women's advancement are comparable across the province, real progress for women has occurred in those areas where Affirmative Action policies and procedures have been in place for some time.

Furthermore, Affirmative Action implementation in some Boards has progressed beyond documentation of women's employment status to the setting of achievable, measurable and realistic goals and timetables. OSSTF may wish, as part of its lobbying activities on behalf of women, to urge Boards to take this step.