Because they are still the primary caregivers in families, women may be more attracted to the profession than men in part because they can work the same schedules as their children. Teachers can take a few years out of work to stay at home with babies or toddlers and return to the profession easily (although if they do, their salaries may lag behind those who don’t take time off). And although the recession caused many school districts to hand out pink slips, teachers generally have lower levels of unemployment than other college-educated Americans.

With so few men currently in teaching, other men may be less inclined to view it as a desirable option. “It will be less and less in their head that this is an occupation for males,” said Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who has analyzed education department data on the demographics of teaching. “There’s a snowball effect.”

Of course there are other reasons teaching may be devalued beyond the fact that so many women do it. After all, in countries like Finland and Singapore — where students tend to perform better on academic tests than students in the United States — teachers are more highly regarded despite the fact that the gender imbalance looks similar at the front of the classroom. In the United States, where 42 percent of high school teachers are men, high school educators do not enjoy a higher status than those in elementary school.

Teachers unions argue that the swift adoption of new academic standards, the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers’ job performance and efforts to overhaul tenure all make teaching a less attractive career for anyone.

“The reality of teaching right now is that it’s always been a hard job,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union. It’s “harder now than ever before, with less and less respect,” she said.

Deans of education departments lament the lack of men, but are not sure what to do about it. Susan H. Fuhrman, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, said she was puzzled by the persistent absence of men in elementary education programs, where women outnumber them nine to one. “I do think it’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “Women went into it without other options and it was a low-status profession that was associated with women, and the fact that it’s now dominated by women inhibits the status from increasing.”

Simply recruiting more men into the profession is not likely to raise the quality of the teaching force.