the purpose of the analysis will be to identify commonalities and divergences where possible within the available comparative data as already noted in the introductory chapter the commonwealth membership has a limited number of countries in the global south where the feminisation of the teaching profession is widespread of those that do have indicators that warrant investigation there are some clear similarities between them this study has sought to maintain a crossregional approach and within the limitation of countries available for study has tried to offer varied experiences however it is noteworthy that three of the countries are small island states within the commonwealth samoa dominica and sri lanka making the study representative of the majority of commonwealth countries where high female teacher percentages are a distinct characteristic of their education systems see chapter