The figure of the teacher is significant for the catholics because it resumes many important problems for the Catholic Church in the end of the XIX Century and the first decades of the next: the laicism in public education, the remunerated work of women out of the house and the secondary education of women. In particular, the objective of this article is to identify the arguments the catholics used to evaluate the teaching profession. The sources used are the press publications that are printed in Bahia Blanca and are disseminated in a wide area of influence that covers the southwest of the Provincia de Buenos Aires, the federal territory of La Pampa and the north of Patagonia, during the first three decades of the XX Century. Looking at the press discourse from a genre point of view, it will be shown that although there is a laicism process, the catholic formulations contribute in the profile construction of the teaching profession as a feminine mission with roots in the maternal nature. Also, even when these ideas are not meant to subvert the genre relations, they support some mutations in the feminine condition because in some cases they legitimate the access to higher education, the work and the right to associate. In the first place, the particular situation of the teaching as a job for women in the southwest of Provincia de Buenos Aires is reconstructed. In the second place, the point of view about the teaching profession transmitted by the catholic press is analyzed.

Women; work; education; teachers; press