Your use of the phrase "special position" is an interesting one as it can be used to describe education during the colonial era when it was male-dominated and then during the rise of the common school during the 1800's in North America but for very different reasons. That link does a pretty solid job getting into the history, but some highlights to stress.

For most of the 1700's, formal education in the colonies generally served two purposes - to supplement the education parents provided at home and to prepare the colonies' boys and men for the career of their (or their parents') choice. School was much less of a formal thing that it would become and the few academies were generally had one teacher, typically called a "tutor." In many cases, this tutor had an almost celebrity-level reputation. So, in effect, they did have a special position as parents in Boston, New York, and large towns would be willing to pay the tutor's asking price for their son to learn from him and prepare for the college entrance exams. (This describes what a boy in Boston preparing for college would have experienced.)

In the 1800's, the American population began to expand. Due to lobbying efforts by men like Thomas Jefferson, the idea of education for all as a way to encourage good citizenship was catching on. (All, of course, didn't mean all. Teaching enslaved people was illegal in several Southern states, northern schools for Black children were often vandalized, and residential schools for indigenous children had different goals.) Schools were being built at a rapid pace and they needed bodies. So, a literal PR campaign began. Horace Mann partnered with Catherine Beecher and other high-profile women to advocate teaching as women's work. Women were born to teach, you see, due to the baby making and all, and could step in front of a classroom with little training and handle children in a way male teachers simply couldn't. Although teaching wouldn't become female-dominated until the 1860's, the men in the profession typically took teaching positions for the Winter term while they were in-between other higher-paying jobs. The school year was lengthening, which meant the costs for teachers was going up.

Presenting women teachers as possessing innate teaching abilities served several goals. First, it made the position more respectable. Women (mostly white) could leave their parents' homes, make their classroom their new space, and teach until they got married. Second, by treating the job as a "special position", Mann and Beecher could tap into the idea of teaching as a form of service. This sentiment had a clear financial impact - women teachers cost less than men. Towns worried about how to pay for a school for their growing younger population could save money by hiring a young woman, paying her 1/2 or sometimes 1/4 as much as a male teacher and boarding her with a local family. Most towns required teachers leave upon getting married and she would be replaced. By the end of the 1800's, more women in Massachusetts had worked as teachers than hadn't.

As cities expanded and high schools became increasingly common, men returned to the profession. And again, they were paid more. The rationale was typically that men had children of their own to support (ignoring that married female teachers with children was becoming increasingly the norm) and their work typically involved other children, which was seen as harder work than teaching younger children. It would take a massive push by the unions in the 1900's to get pay equalized across a school district, from Kindergarten to high school. There is still a not-uncommon sentiment that a high school physics teacher (who is more likely to be a male educator) should be paid more than a female Kindergarten teacher (who is more likely to be female).