In schools, it's not uncommon to look around any given staff meeting and find a plurality of women.

Education is one of the largest occupational fields in the country, with over 5.5 million Americans working as kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) teachers. Far-flung from the overwhelmingly male industries of software development, finance, and engineering, K-12 education in the United States is, by many metrics, increasingly dominated by women.

As of data from 2018, 76% of teachers are female, up from 66.9% in 1981. Looking beyond the classroom, over half of school principals are women, while only 30 years ago, nearly two-thirds of public schools — at the elementary-, middle-, and high-school level — were headed by men.

But in spite of their large numbers and increased leadership opportunities, some women, particularly those teaching in middle and high schools, sense an intangible bias toward men during the hiring process and in their workplace dynamics.

Chelsea Warner, a public high-school assistant principal in Monterey, California, suspects that school districts were looking to appoint positive male role models to administrative positions as she was seeking a promotion. "Obviously, none of that's ever said," Warner said. During her hiring process, she said, she had to fight for the interview, "while my male counterparts were being asked to interview."

Lena Peck, a middle-school teacher in a Maryland charter school, noticed early in her career that her male principal had stronger and more personal relationships with male teachers. It seemed to her as though those men were being groomed for promotion and leadership opportunities that she was never considered for.

"As a teacher, the bulk of the work that you do is behind the closed door of a classroom," she told Insider. "You've got to have that relationship, you've got to make yourself known and make small talk in the teacher's lounge, or you're not going to get tracked for those opportunities."

Read the full article about gender bias in education by Katherine Hekker at Business Insider.