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Leadership and Gender
Leadership and Gender J Blackmore, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
It is well recognized that conceptualizing leadership is problematic, and that much of the leadership literature is Western centric (Sander, 1993). Gender has also become an ongoing issue in leadership studies as well as in educational policy and practice. Politically, the lack of women and dominance of men in formal leadership positions are troubling for policymakers: symbolically, in democratic societies that seek to be seen to be representative and fair, and, practically, in terms of recruiting and retaining effective leaders in a numerically feminized profession of education. Epistemologically, how the gender and leadership nexus is understood and explained is reliant, first, upon how the problem has been defined and, second, the theoretical and conceptual frames that are utilized to analyze the problem.
Framing the Woman Problem Two traditions exist within the research and policy literature on gender and leadership that frame research and policy – one in which gender is treated as a category of analysis or a factor to be considered within mainstream educational leadership studies and the second that is a critical strand of theory and research informed by feminist and, later, postcolonial theory that argues that leadership is shaped by wider cultural, social, and political belief systems, sociocultural practices, and discourses that are gendered, each with different policy trajectories (Marshall, 1997). Mainstream Studies To understand how gender and leadership has been constructed discursively within the field, as a research issue and a policy problem, it is necessary to understand the emergence of administration as a disciplinary field in education. Scholars and practitioners in educational administration in the early twentieth century sought legitimacy, initially by aligning with business theories of scientific management, and, subsequently, post-1945, with a narrow positivist tradition of science. Both perspectives assumed the Enlightenment binaries representing that which was rational, objective, and universal as masculine, and that which was subjective, emotional, and particular as feminine, further embedding legacies of early twentiethcentury psychological and biological theories essentializing women, depicting them deficient as leaders because of their lack of the necessary physical, mental, moral, and emotional attributes (Shakeshaft, 1987; Blackmore, 1989).
This naturalization of the male/female division of labor was reinforced by existing patriarchal social, political, and economic structures and norms delineating the public, work, and leadership as masculine domains and the private, family, and teaching as feminine domains. The structural functionalist sociology of the 1950s theory movement that dominated well into the 1960s institutionalized these binaries with epistemological claims that fact was separate from value and that the scientific method was objective and the nonscientific method subjective, while simultaneously claiming a universal gender-neutral subject and epistemology. Within this frame, gender was treated as a subcategory, a pattern emerging from large statistical analyses that identified sex differences in behaviors of leaders and outcomes of schooling, or as a variable to be controlled to measure the effects of other variables such as class (e.g., Jones, 1990). The theories of sex differentiation and socialization of this time relied on sociological and psychological studies of male leaders that largely ignored organizational and cultural contexts. Both the theories and the practices of educational administration were largely premised upon hierarchical organizational structures, whether bureaucratic or corporate, equating leadership with formal position and/ or individual attributes, thus constructing binaries between leadership and the management, and leaders and followers. Such perspectives treated leadership as a set of generic competencies acquired and required to manage organizational and educational change to produce more efficient and effective schools, including definitions of merit that favored the experiences of men over those of women. The mainstream tradition during the 1970s and 1980s increasingly drew on guru change management, human resource management, and psychological and economic literatures, but less so on sociological and political literatures or on the teachers’ work. Administration was being constructed as different from teaching. Leadership research within this paradigm continued to generalize from the experience of men to women, with the leadership norm being an idealized male type: rational, autonomous, unemotional, and with higher-level intellectual and moral attributes. Both theoretical and social norms justified, and were justified by, the naturalness of the gendered division of educational labor between leading and teaching. Mainstream research shifted its focus from the individual attributes of leaders to consider the role of context, culture, and community in managing organizational change during the 1980s, and, subsequently, on how to lead learning organizations in the context of emerging knowledge-based
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economies and increasing cultural diversity during the 1990s. Whereas historically, leadership featured as a subset of educational management and administration, it now came to subsume administration as the lexicon of reform. The effective schools literature equated the successful principal to the effective school and, in an era of school selfmanagement, the key solution to neoliberal educational reform. Within this context, and under pressure from equal opportunity legislation, policies, and programs, women were moving into middle management in schools. However, again, the dominant school effectiveness, school improvement, and learning organization paradigms ignored gender by either assuming the self-maximizing and autonomous gender-, race-, and class-neutral individual or by treating women as a unitary category who had specific needs, wants, and interests. Discourses produced from feminist research about women’s styles of leading were readily and unproblematically appropriated into the mainstream, producing incremental changes (e.g., Celikten, 2005). In the early twenty-first century, emerging research fields, such as internationalization, address cultural diversity as an issue, and either ignore gender or treat it as an issue for other cultures. Gender within mainstream educational administration has therefore become a factor to be addressed in policy, for example, teacher career paths restructured to attract more women. In general, the tendency is to position gender as particularist, largely irrelevant to the mainstream, often cordoned off in texts in sections categorized under alternative perspectives or equity, or largely ignored (as in the Second International Handbook of Leadership and Administration published in 2006). Mainstream leadership research on gender therefore falls into four categories: that which ignores gender by universalizing the expe-
rience of men; that which treats gender as a variable to be explained in
studies focusing on other issues (e.g., lack of aspirants for principalship); that which draws on feminist (and critical) theory without recognition of the politics of its origins, for example, collapse of emotional/rational binary and transformational leadership; and that which treats gender as a problem for/with women. All such approaches neglect wider structural and cultural factors as well as the gender order that is socially, politically, and economically constructed. Feminist Studies The mainstream social theory was challenged epistemologically and politically by the women’s, civil rights, and student social movements during the late 1960s. However, such disruption failed to penetrate mainstream educational
and administration literature until the 1980s (Weiler, 1993). While feminist theorists initially drew from the sex-role socialization theory, increasingly, gender and the production of knowledge came to be understood within the field of leadership (as in sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history) to be socially constructed and about relations of power. Leadership (as feminism) was therefore a political and personal issue – how one came to be, to know, and to act, and with what intent. Initially, feminist researchers identified, mapped, and sought to explain the historical patterns of women’s unequal representation in leadership (Shakeshaft (1987), Yeakey et al. (1986), Marshall and Ortiz (1988) for the USA; Gaskell and McLaren (1991) for Canada; Blackmore (1989) for Australia; Al-Khalifa (1989), Acker (1989), Grant (1989), Deem (1990) for the UK; and Nixon (1987) and Court (1998) for New Zealand). Researching women leader’s experiences provided a knowledge base and the missing empirical evidence tracking gender inequality. Working within the individualistic framework of liberal feminism (Schmuck, 1996; Adler et al., 1993) and the traditional notions of professionalism (Glazer, 1991; Strachan, 1993), the focus was on women’s continuing underrepresentation in leadership, nurturing women’s aspirations, skills, and confidence to take up leadership, and procedural and legalistic approaches to provide access for individual women into leadership through equal opportunity (in Australia and New Zealand) or affirmative action (in the USA) legislation. Interpretivist traditions of the new sociology of knowledge, and radical and cultural feminist theories that focused on women’s ways of doing, being, and thinking emerged during the 1980s. These shifted the focus from the individual to the collective, and from women’s lack to what women collectively could contribute to leadership in terms of particular moral positions, an ethics of care, a democratic disposition, and a focus on student learning, while collapsing the public/private binary (Noddings, 1992; Beck, 1994; Marshall and Anderson, 1995). As with the mainstream management theory, this focus on organizational culture explained not only collective resistance to educational reform, but also how women continued to be excluded from masculinist leadership cultures (Blackmore, 1993). While mainstream literature treated culture as homogenous and static (Hall, 1996), feminist literature (as critical theorists drawing on Habermas) viewed organizational culture as contested in terms of values, belief systems, and practices (du Billing and Alvesson, 1989). Cultural theories also shifted focus onto the social relations of gender and how different masculinities (bureaucratic and entrepreneurial) and femininities (caring and sharing) were constructed in relation to each within a wider gender order, explicating how hegemonic masculinities reinvented themselves over time to subordinate other masculinities (e.g., homosexual) and most femininities (Connell, 1987).
Leadership and Gender
Context and culture were thus seen to simultaneously frame societal expectations and perceptions of women leaders as the other (Ozga, 1993). Radical (cultural) feminism sat comfortably within the wider politics of recognition of the 1980s in which women, as other marginalized groups, sought both voice and recognition within pluralist Western societies by asserting the positive aspects of different cultures and value systems of specific social groups (Capper, 1993; Marshall, 1993; Dunlap and Schmuck, 1996). However, women leaders in education were repositioned ambiguously – either as outsiders – inside dominant organizational cultures and, therefore, as good change agents, or as complementing and softening the hard-nosed masculine attributes of reason and decision making through women’s styles of leadership. Both positionings reproduced the essentializing binaries of rationality/care and hierarchy/democracy. Neither stance challenged the mainstream theory or practice because such approaches were readily appropriated as a complementary add-on (Blackmore, 1999a; Marshall et al., 1996). The linguistic turn toward poststructuralism in the 1990s synchronized with black and postcolonial feminists contesting the dominance of white middle class feminist perspectives in theory and practice (Sleeter, 1993; TuhiwaSmith, 1993). Leadership identity formation now came to be understood in terms of multiple subjectivities discursively constituted, in a constant state of formation, being, and becoming (Mirza, 1993; Dillard, 1995). Women leaders were now seen to have agency and be positioned, but also positioning themselves, within a range of discursive constraints and possibilities as educational change was seen to be uneven, unpredictable, irrational, and emotionally charged (Blackmore, 1995; Boler, 1999). This perspective foregrounded, for women leaders, their feelings of contradiction and ambivalence; collapsed false binaries between reason and emotion; recognized how women leaders were positioned in contradictory ways as women and as leaders according to their gender, race, language, ethnicity, and sexuality (Chase, 1995; Blount, 1994; Skrla and Scheurich, 2000); and challenged the authenticity of mainstream theories and knowledge base in educational administration and leadership (Shakeshaft, 1995; Ikpa, 1995; Ortiz and Ortiz, 1995). Paradoxically, this poststructuralist focus on identity diverted attention from wider historical and materialist analyses at the time that relations between the individual and the state in education with neoliberal restructuring in both Anglophone and developing nation states were being fundamentally transformed (Blackmore, 1999b; Stromquist and Monkman, 2000). Women became the new source of, and resource for, leadership in the neoliberal restructuring of education in the 1990s as teaching became more feminized and casualized internationally (Goldring and Chen, 1994; Court, 1998). Research indicates how women leaders,
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particularly feminists, have been ambiguously situated by the new contractualism of marketized and managerialized school systems, producing significant ethical dilemmas as often, but not always, women’s preference due to their experience is for more democratic and collegial rather than contractual and entrepreneurial relationships (Chase, 1995; Blackmore, 1999a; Grogan, 1999; Reynolds, 2002; Young, 2003). The first decade of the twenty-first century now sees schools confronted with multiple demands: greater cultural and linguistic diversity; the changing social relations of gender and families as more women enter paid work; greater extremes of poverty and wealth; increased student mobility with flows of refugees, migrants, and third-culture kids; and the emerging effects of internationalization of schooling on local provision (Grogan, 2002; Blackmore and Sachs, 2004). In particular, the voices of indigenous feminists (Battiste, 2005; Fitzgerald, 2006; Ahnee-Benham, 2003) and marginalized women from religious and linguistic minorities in the Anglophone nation states (MendezMorse, 2003; Shah, 2006) are challenging white middle class women and men in leadership to consider the privilege and advantage that accompanies their whiteness. As black, Muslim, or indigenous women leaders, they are expected to not only negotiate the complexity of localized gender, race, and class politics within their cultural groups and communities, but also mediate between cultures transnationally and intranationally (Ngurruwutthun and Stewart, 1996). Their alternative histories, epistemologies, and experiences of, and in, educational leadership confront mainstream administrative theory and practice because many claims reach beyond (and before) the nation state, and dominant (recently reinvigorated) scientific paradigms, as well as outside schools and systems as organizations, drawing on community-based activism and social movements (Mendez-Morse, 2003). Feminist theorists now struggle with how globalization impacts women, educational management, and leadership at the macro level (Stromquist and Monkman, 2000; Blackmore, 1999b), while addressing the ways in which culture, race, gender, and class interplay within local community and organizational politics in terms of who leads, how women lead, and with what effect. Culture, nationhood, citizenship, and religion are being foregrounded within the feminist literature (e.g., Oplatka and Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2006). In this context, feminist research on leadership is best depicted now as a series of interconnected or transnational inquiries with a familial resemblance, articulated differently within particular cultural, historical, and material contexts in terms of the relationship between education, the individual, the state, other social movements, and equity discourses and strategies (Stromquist and Monkman, 2000; Grogan, 2002). The paradox is that as education becomes critical in terms of promoting human rights internationally
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along with social justice for girls and women, and for improving individual and collective life chances, there is significant evidence that the number of women in formal leadership in the Anglophone nation states is on the decline.
Reframing Gender and Leadership Many feminists have argued that the focus on leadership is itself the problem for research, policy, and practice around the issue of gender and leadership. Treating leadership as the solution and equating it to a formal position individualize what is a collective practice. Research evidence and theories of distributive leadership illustrate that effective organizational change in complex network societies and learning organizations requires multiple modes of leadership across multiple sites, in particular teacher leadership. However, regardless of the type of leadership, feminist theories foreground the purpose of leadership as social justice and equity (Grogan, 2002). Significantly, the issue of gender and leadership is still constructed as a woman’s problem. Focusing on women and leadership fails to recognize how educational organizations produce gender identities and are structured by the wider social relations of gender in culturally specific ways (Aailto and Mills, 2002; Oplatka and Hertz-Laraeowitz, 2006). There is little research that problematizes the ongoing dominance of men in educational leadership from the perspective of the new sociology of masculinity (Lingard and Limerick, 1995; Lingard and Douglas, 1999). A relational sociology of gender would question how different masculinities and femininities are produced in relation to each other from a range of subject positions inflected by class, race, and ethnicity, and question the enduring nature of white masculinism. Furthermore, class and race, as religion and culture, fragment, fracture, and shore up dominant social relations of gender. The critical organizational theory argues that organizational structures, processes, and cultures are socially constructed to advantage some and not others, and are not gender, race or class neutral. Gender, race, and ethnicity are not variables, problems, or issues, but integral in structuring effective leadership and organizations (Hearn and Parkin, 1992; Aailto and Mills, 2000). The gender and leadership question is symptomatic not only of the lack of diversity in leadership generally with regard to race, class, and culture, but also of the difference in terms of values and politics (Blackmore, 2006). Women gaining a critical mass in school leadership will not necessarily change values and practices. First, women as a group, similar to men, take different political and value stances (Weiner, 1995). Second, it is generally underestimated how context (confluence of political economy, governance, cultural practices, and organizational culture) shapes the conditions of possibility of,
and for, democratic/inclusionary/emancipatory leadership practices. Democratic nations have to consider leadership not only for social justice (Grogan, 1999), but also for diversifying images, practices, and theories of leadership and management. Western education systems currently face increased disengagement of teachers with the principalship not only because of the complexity and overwhelming nature of the job, but also because women, as have men in the past, no longer view teaching as a lifetime career option but more as an episode in their career portfolio with more lucrative and family-friendly career options available. Thus, diversity in leadership requires wider systemic shifts in governance and value systems (Blackmore, 2006). Yet, research and policy continue to focus on women’s underrepresentation in leadership, when they should be encouraging diversity in leadership to meet the challenges of democratic, globalized, cosmopolitan societies.
Bibliography Aailto, I. and Mills, A. (eds.) (2002). Gender, Identity and Culture in Organisations. London: Routledge. Acker, S. (1989). Teachers, Gender and Careers. Lewes: Falmer Press. Adler, S., Laney, J., and Packer, M. (1993). Managing Women. Feminism and Power in Educational Management. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. AhNee-Benham, M. (2003). ‘In our mothers’ voice: A native women’s knowing of leadership’. In Young, M. D. and Skrla, L. (eds.) Reconsidering: Feminist Research in Educational Leadership, pp 161–178. New York: SUNY Press. Al-Khalifa, E. (1989). Management by halves: Women teachers and school management. In De Lyons, H. (ed.) Women Teachers, pp 83– 96. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Battiste, M. (2005). Leadership and aboriginal education in contemporary education: Narratives of cognitive imperialism reconciling with decolonisation. In Collard, J. and Reynolds, C. (eds.) Leadership, Gender and Culture in Education, Male and Female Perspectives, pp 150–156. Buckingham: Open University Press. Beck, L. (1994). Reclaiming Educational Administration as a Caring Profession. New York: Teachers College Press. Blackmore, J. (1989). Educational leadership: A feminist critique and reconstruction. In Smyth, J. (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Educational Leadership. Lewes: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1993). ‘In the shadow of men’: Exclusionary theory and discriminatory practice in the historical construction of ‘masculinist’ administrative cultures. In Blackmore, J. and Kenway, J. (eds.) Gender Matters in the Theory and Practice of Educational Administration and Policy: A Feminist Introduction, pp 27–48. Sussex: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1995). Doing emotional labor in the educational market place: Stories from the field of women in management. Discourse 17 (3), 337–350. Blackmore, J. (1999a). Troubling Women. Feminism, Leadership and Educational Change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Blackmore, J. (1999b). Localization/globalization and the midwife state: Strategic dilemmas for state feminism in education? Journal of Education Policy 14(1), 33–54. Blackmore, J. (2006). Deconstructing diversity discourses in the field of educational management and leadership. Leadership, Educational Management and Administration 34(2), 188–199. Blackmore, J. and Sachs, J. (2007). Performing and Reforming Leaders. Gender, educational restructuring and organizational change. New York: SUNY Press. Blount, J. (1994). One postmodernist perspective on educational leadership. Ain’t I a leader? In Maxcy, S. (ed.) Postmodern School Leadership: Meeting the Crisis in Educational Administration, pp 47–60. London: Praegar.
Leadership and Gender Boler, M. (1999). Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. London: Routledge. Capper, C. (ed.) (1993). Educational Administration in a Pluralistic Society. New York: SUNY Press. Celikten, M. (2005). A perspective on women principals in Turkey. International Journal of Leadership in Education 8(3), 207–223. Chase, S. (1995). Ambiguous Empowerment: The Work Narratives of Women School Superintendents. Amherst, MA: Massachussetts University Press. Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and Power. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Court, M. (1998). Women challenging managerialism: Devolution dilemmas in the establishment of co-principalships in Aotearo/New Zealand. School Leadership and Management 18(1), 35–57. Deem, R. (1990). Governing by gender – the new school governing bodies. In Abbott, P. and Wallace, C. (eds.) Gender, Sexuality and Power, pp 135–156. London: Macmillan. Dillard, C. (1995). Leading with her life. An African American feminist for an urban school principals. Educational Administration Quarterly 31(4), 539–563. du Billing, Y. and Alvesson, M. (1989). Four ways of looking at women and leadership. Scandinavian Journal of Management 5(1), 63–80. Dunlap, D. and Schmuck, P. (eds.) (1996). Women Leading in Education. New York: SUNY Press. Fitzgerald, T. (2006). Walking between two worlds. Indigenous women and leadership. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership 34(2), 201–213. Gaskell, J. and McLaren, A. (1991). Women and Education: A Canadian Perspective. Calgary, AB: Detselig. Glazer, J. S. (1991). Feminism and professionalism in teaching and educational administration. Educational Administration Quarterly 27(3), 321–342. Goldring, E. and Chen, M. (1994). The feminisation of the principalship in Israel: The trade-off between political power and cooperative leadership. In Marshall, C. (ed.) The New Politics of Race and Gender, pp 175–182. London: Falmer Press. Grant, R. (1989). Heading for the top: Career experiences of women. Gender and Education 1(2), 113–125. Grogan, M. (1999). Equity/equality issues. Education Administration Quarterly 35(4), 518–536. Grogan, M. (2002). Special Issue: Social Justice and Leadership. Journal of School Leadership 12. Hall, V. (1996). Dancing on the Ceiling, a Study of Woman Managers in Britain. London: Paul Chapman. Hearn, J. and Parkin, W. (1992). Women, men, and leadership: A critical review of assumptions, practices and change in industrialised nations. In Adler, N. and Izraeli, D. (eds.) Women in Management World Wide, pp 17–40. New York: M. Saharpe. Ikpa, V. (1995). Gender, race, ethnicity and the quest for a knowledge base in educational administration. In Donmoyer, R., Imber, M., and Scheurich, J. (eds.) The Knowledge Base in Educational Administration. Multiple Perspectives, pp 174–181. New York: SUNY Press. Jones, B. K. (1990). The gender difference hypothesis: A synthesis of research findings. Educational Administration Quarterly 26, 5–37. Limerick, B. and Lingard, B. (eds.) (1995). Gender and Changing Educational Management. Sydney, NSW: Hodder and Stoughton. Lingard, B. and Douglas, P. (1999). Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-Feminism, Backlashes and Schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. Marshall, C. (ed.) (1993). The New Politics of Race and Gender. London: Falmer Press. Marshall, C. (ed.) (1997). Feminist Critical Policy Analysis, vols. 1 and 2. London: Falmer Press. Marshall, C. and Anderson, G. (1995). Rethinking the public and private spheres: Feminist and cultural studies perspectives on the politics of education. In Scribner, J. and Layton, D. (eds.) The Study of Educational Politics, pp 169–184. London: Falmer Press. Marshall, C. and Ortiz, F. (1988). Women in educational administration. In Boyan, N. (ed.) Handbook of Research in Educational Administration, pp 123–142. New York: Longman. Marshall, C., Patterson, J., Rogers, D., and Steele, J. (1996). Caring as career: An alternative perspective for educational administration. Educational Administration Quarterly 32(2), 271–294.
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Mendez-Morse, S. (2003). Chicana feminism and educational leadership. In Young, M. D. and Skrla, L. (eds.) Reconsidering: Feminist Research in Educational Leadership, pp 161–178. New York: SUNY Press. Mirza, H. (1993). The social construction of black womanhood in British educational research: Towards a new understanding. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice, pp 32–57. London: Falmer Press. Ngurruwutthun, N. and Stewart, M. P. A. (1996). Learning to walk behind; learning to walk in front. A case study of the mentor program at Yirrkala community education centre. Unicorn 22(4), 3–23. Nixon, M. (1987). Few women in school administration: Some explanations. Journal of Educational Thought 21(2), 63–70. Noddings, N. (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Oplatka, I. and Hertz-Lararowitz, R. (eds.) (2006). Women Principals in a Multicultural Society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Ortiz, F. and Ortiz, D. (1995). How gender and ethnicity interact in the practice of educational administration: The case of Hispanic female superintendents. In Donmoyer, R., Imber, M., and Scheurich, J. (eds.) The Knowledge Base in Educational Administration. Multiple Perspectives, pp 158–173. New York: SUNY Press. Ozga, J. (ed.) (1993). Women in Educational Management. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Reynolds, C. (ed.) (2002). Women and School Leadership: International Perspectives. New York: SUNY Press. Sander, B. (1993). Educational administration and developing countries. In Capper, C. (ed.) Educational Administration in a Pluralistic Society, pp 238–266. New York: SUNY Press. Schmuck, P. (1996). Women’s place in educational administration: Past, present and future. In Leithwood, K., Chapman, J., Corson, D., Hallinger, P., and Hart, A. (eds.) International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration, vol. 1, pp 337–368. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Shah, S. (2006). Leading multiethnic schools: A new understanding of Muslim youth identity. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership 34(2), 215–237. Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in Educational Administration. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Shakeshaft, C. (1995). A cup half full: A gender critique of the knowledge based in educational administration. In Donmoyer, R., Imber, M., and Scheurich, J. (eds.) The Knowledge Base in Educational Administration. Multiple Perspectives, pp 139–157. New York: SUNY Press. Skrla, L. and Scheurich, J. (2000). Sexisms, silence and solutions. Women superintendents speak up and speak out. Educational Administration Quarterly 36(1), 44–75. Sleeter, C. (1992). Power and privilege in white middle class feminist discussions of gender and education. In Biklen, S. and Pollard, D. (eds.) Gender and Education, pp 25–42. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Strachan, J. (1993). Including the personal and the professional: Researching women in educational leadership. Gender and Education 5(1), 71. Stromquist, N. and Monkman, K. (eds.) (2000). Globalisation and Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Tuhiwa-Smith, L. (1993). Getting our from under: Maori women, education and the struggles of Mana Wahine. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice in Education. International Perspectives, pp 58–78. London: Falmer Press. Weiler, K. (1993). Feminism and the struggle for democratic education. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice: International Perspectives, pp 210–225. London: Falmer Press. Weiner, G. (1995). A question of style or value? Contrasting perceptions of women as educational leaders. In Limerick, B. and Lingard, B. (eds.) Gender and Changing Educational Management, pp 23–33. Sydney: Hodder. Yeakey, C., Johnston, G., and Adkinson, J. (1986). In pursuit of equity: A review of research on minorities and women in
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educational administration. Educational Administration Quarterly 22(3), 110–149. Young, B., Staszenski, D., McIntyre, S., and Joly, L. (1999). Care and justice in educational leadership. Canadian Administrator 33(2), 38–51.
Further Reading Coleman, M. (ed.) (2005). Special Issue: Diversity and Leadership. Leadership, Educational Management and Administration 34(2). Grogan, M. (2000). Laying the groundwork for a re-conception of the superintendency from feminist postmodern perspectives. Education Administration Quarterly 36(1), 117–142.
Larson, C. and Murtadha, K. (2002). Leadership for social justice. In Murphy, J. (ed.) The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century, pp 134–161. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Murtadha-Watts, K. (1999). Spirited sisters. Spirituality and activism of African American women in educational leadership. In Fenwick, L. (ed.) School Leadership, pp 155–167. Lancaster: Technomic. Ortiz, F. (1982). Career Patterns in Education: Women, Men and Minorities in Public School Administration. New York: Praeger. Ozga, J. and Walker, L. (1999). In the company of men. In Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (eds.) Transforming Managers: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, pp 107–120. London: UCL Press. Young, B. (2002). The Alberta advantage: DeKleining prospects for women educators. In Reynolds, C. (ed.) Women and School Leadership: International Perspectives, pp 75–91. New York: SUNY Press.
It is well recognized that conceptualizing leadership is problematic, and that much of the leadership literature is Western centric (Sander, 1993). Gender has also become an ongoing issue in leadership studies as well as in educational policy and practice. Politically, the lack of women and dominance of men in formal leadership positions are troubling for policymakers: symbolically, in democratic societies that seek to be seen to be representative and fair, and, practically, in terms of recruiting and retaining effective leaders in a numerically feminized profession of education. Epistemologically, how the gender and leadership nexus is understood and explained is reliant, first, upon how the problem has been defined and, second, the theoretical and conceptual frames that are utilized to analyze the problem.
Framing the Woman Problem Two traditions exist within the research and policy literature on gender and leadership that frame research and policy – one in which gender is treated as a category of analysis or a factor to be considered within mainstream educational leadership studies and the second that is a critical strand of theory and research informed by feminist and, later, postcolonial theory that argues that leadership is shaped by wider cultural, social, and political belief systems, sociocultural practices, and discourses that are gendered, each with different policy trajectories (Marshall, 1997). Mainstream Studies To understand how gender and leadership has been constructed discursively within the field, as a research issue and a policy problem, it is necessary to understand the emergence of administration as a disciplinary field in education. Scholars and practitioners in educational administration in the early twentieth century sought legitimacy, initially by aligning with business theories of scientific management, and, subsequently, post-1945, with a narrow positivist tradition of science. Both perspectives assumed the Enlightenment binaries representing that which was rational, objective, and universal as masculine, and that which was subjective, emotional, and particular as feminine, further embedding legacies of early twentiethcentury psychological and biological theories essentializing women, depicting them deficient as leaders because of their lack of the necessary physical, mental, moral, and emotional attributes (Shakeshaft, 1987; Blackmore, 1989).
This naturalization of the male/female division of labor was reinforced by existing patriarchal social, political, and economic structures and norms delineating the public, work, and leadership as masculine domains and the private, family, and teaching as feminine domains. The structural functionalist sociology of the 1950s theory movement that dominated well into the 1960s institutionalized these binaries with epistemological claims that fact was separate from value and that the scientific method was objective and the nonscientific method subjective, while simultaneously claiming a universal gender-neutral subject and epistemology. Within this frame, gender was treated as a subcategory, a pattern emerging from large statistical analyses that identified sex differences in behaviors of leaders and outcomes of schooling, or as a variable to be controlled to measure the effects of other variables such as class (e.g., Jones, 1990). The theories of sex differentiation and socialization of this time relied on sociological and psychological studies of male leaders that largely ignored organizational and cultural contexts. Both the theories and the practices of educational administration were largely premised upon hierarchical organizational structures, whether bureaucratic or corporate, equating leadership with formal position and/ or individual attributes, thus constructing binaries between leadership and the management, and leaders and followers. Such perspectives treated leadership as a set of generic competencies acquired and required to manage organizational and educational change to produce more efficient and effective schools, including definitions of merit that favored the experiences of men over those of women. The mainstream tradition during the 1970s and 1980s increasingly drew on guru change management, human resource management, and psychological and economic literatures, but less so on sociological and political literatures or on the teachers’ work. Administration was being constructed as different from teaching. Leadership research within this paradigm continued to generalize from the experience of men to women, with the leadership norm being an idealized male type: rational, autonomous, unemotional, and with higher-level intellectual and moral attributes. Both theoretical and social norms justified, and were justified by, the naturalness of the gendered division of educational labor between leading and teaching. Mainstream research shifted its focus from the individual attributes of leaders to consider the role of context, culture, and community in managing organizational change during the 1980s, and, subsequently, on how to lead learning organizations in the context of emerging knowledge-based
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economies and increasing cultural diversity during the 1990s. Whereas historically, leadership featured as a subset of educational management and administration, it now came to subsume administration as the lexicon of reform. The effective schools literature equated the successful principal to the effective school and, in an era of school selfmanagement, the key solution to neoliberal educational reform. Within this context, and under pressure from equal opportunity legislation, policies, and programs, women were moving into middle management in schools. However, again, the dominant school effectiveness, school improvement, and learning organization paradigms ignored gender by either assuming the self-maximizing and autonomous gender-, race-, and class-neutral individual or by treating women as a unitary category who had specific needs, wants, and interests. Discourses produced from feminist research about women’s styles of leading were readily and unproblematically appropriated into the mainstream, producing incremental changes (e.g., Celikten, 2005). In the early twenty-first century, emerging research fields, such as internationalization, address cultural diversity as an issue, and either ignore gender or treat it as an issue for other cultures. Gender within mainstream educational administration has therefore become a factor to be addressed in policy, for example, teacher career paths restructured to attract more women. In general, the tendency is to position gender as particularist, largely irrelevant to the mainstream, often cordoned off in texts in sections categorized under alternative perspectives or equity, or largely ignored (as in the Second International Handbook of Leadership and Administration published in 2006). Mainstream leadership research on gender therefore falls into four categories: that which ignores gender by universalizing the expe-
rience of men; that which treats gender as a variable to be explained in
studies focusing on other issues (e.g., lack of aspirants for principalship); that which draws on feminist (and critical) theory without recognition of the politics of its origins, for example, collapse of emotional/rational binary and transformational leadership; and that which treats gender as a problem for/with women. All such approaches neglect wider structural and cultural factors as well as the gender order that is socially, politically, and economically constructed. Feminist Studies The mainstream social theory was challenged epistemologically and politically by the women’s, civil rights, and student social movements during the late 1960s. However, such disruption failed to penetrate mainstream educational
and administration literature until the 1980s (Weiler, 1993). While feminist theorists initially drew from the sex-role socialization theory, increasingly, gender and the production of knowledge came to be understood within the field of leadership (as in sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history) to be socially constructed and about relations of power. Leadership (as feminism) was therefore a political and personal issue – how one came to be, to know, and to act, and with what intent. Initially, feminist researchers identified, mapped, and sought to explain the historical patterns of women’s unequal representation in leadership (Shakeshaft (1987), Yeakey et al. (1986), Marshall and Ortiz (1988) for the USA; Gaskell and McLaren (1991) for Canada; Blackmore (1989) for Australia; Al-Khalifa (1989), Acker (1989), Grant (1989), Deem (1990) for the UK; and Nixon (1987) and Court (1998) for New Zealand). Researching women leader’s experiences provided a knowledge base and the missing empirical evidence tracking gender inequality. Working within the individualistic framework of liberal feminism (Schmuck, 1996; Adler et al., 1993) and the traditional notions of professionalism (Glazer, 1991; Strachan, 1993), the focus was on women’s continuing underrepresentation in leadership, nurturing women’s aspirations, skills, and confidence to take up leadership, and procedural and legalistic approaches to provide access for individual women into leadership through equal opportunity (in Australia and New Zealand) or affirmative action (in the USA) legislation. Interpretivist traditions of the new sociology of knowledge, and radical and cultural feminist theories that focused on women’s ways of doing, being, and thinking emerged during the 1980s. These shifted the focus from the individual to the collective, and from women’s lack to what women collectively could contribute to leadership in terms of particular moral positions, an ethics of care, a democratic disposition, and a focus on student learning, while collapsing the public/private binary (Noddings, 1992; Beck, 1994; Marshall and Anderson, 1995). As with the mainstream management theory, this focus on organizational culture explained not only collective resistance to educational reform, but also how women continued to be excluded from masculinist leadership cultures (Blackmore, 1993). While mainstream literature treated culture as homogenous and static (Hall, 1996), feminist literature (as critical theorists drawing on Habermas) viewed organizational culture as contested in terms of values, belief systems, and practices (du Billing and Alvesson, 1989). Cultural theories also shifted focus onto the social relations of gender and how different masculinities (bureaucratic and entrepreneurial) and femininities (caring and sharing) were constructed in relation to each within a wider gender order, explicating how hegemonic masculinities reinvented themselves over time to subordinate other masculinities (e.g., homosexual) and most femininities (Connell, 1987).
Leadership and Gender
Context and culture were thus seen to simultaneously frame societal expectations and perceptions of women leaders as the other (Ozga, 1993). Radical (cultural) feminism sat comfortably within the wider politics of recognition of the 1980s in which women, as other marginalized groups, sought both voice and recognition within pluralist Western societies by asserting the positive aspects of different cultures and value systems of specific social groups (Capper, 1993; Marshall, 1993; Dunlap and Schmuck, 1996). However, women leaders in education were repositioned ambiguously – either as outsiders – inside dominant organizational cultures and, therefore, as good change agents, or as complementing and softening the hard-nosed masculine attributes of reason and decision making through women’s styles of leadership. Both positionings reproduced the essentializing binaries of rationality/care and hierarchy/democracy. Neither stance challenged the mainstream theory or practice because such approaches were readily appropriated as a complementary add-on (Blackmore, 1999a; Marshall et al., 1996). The linguistic turn toward poststructuralism in the 1990s synchronized with black and postcolonial feminists contesting the dominance of white middle class feminist perspectives in theory and practice (Sleeter, 1993; TuhiwaSmith, 1993). Leadership identity formation now came to be understood in terms of multiple subjectivities discursively constituted, in a constant state of formation, being, and becoming (Mirza, 1993; Dillard, 1995). Women leaders were now seen to have agency and be positioned, but also positioning themselves, within a range of discursive constraints and possibilities as educational change was seen to be uneven, unpredictable, irrational, and emotionally charged (Blackmore, 1995; Boler, 1999). This perspective foregrounded, for women leaders, their feelings of contradiction and ambivalence; collapsed false binaries between reason and emotion; recognized how women leaders were positioned in contradictory ways as women and as leaders according to their gender, race, language, ethnicity, and sexuality (Chase, 1995; Blount, 1994; Skrla and Scheurich, 2000); and challenged the authenticity of mainstream theories and knowledge base in educational administration and leadership (Shakeshaft, 1995; Ikpa, 1995; Ortiz and Ortiz, 1995). Paradoxically, this poststructuralist focus on identity diverted attention from wider historical and materialist analyses at the time that relations between the individual and the state in education with neoliberal restructuring in both Anglophone and developing nation states were being fundamentally transformed (Blackmore, 1999b; Stromquist and Monkman, 2000). Women became the new source of, and resource for, leadership in the neoliberal restructuring of education in the 1990s as teaching became more feminized and casualized internationally (Goldring and Chen, 1994; Court, 1998). Research indicates how women leaders,
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particularly feminists, have been ambiguously situated by the new contractualism of marketized and managerialized school systems, producing significant ethical dilemmas as often, but not always, women’s preference due to their experience is for more democratic and collegial rather than contractual and entrepreneurial relationships (Chase, 1995; Blackmore, 1999a; Grogan, 1999; Reynolds, 2002; Young, 2003). The first decade of the twenty-first century now sees schools confronted with multiple demands: greater cultural and linguistic diversity; the changing social relations of gender and families as more women enter paid work; greater extremes of poverty and wealth; increased student mobility with flows of refugees, migrants, and third-culture kids; and the emerging effects of internationalization of schooling on local provision (Grogan, 2002; Blackmore and Sachs, 2004). In particular, the voices of indigenous feminists (Battiste, 2005; Fitzgerald, 2006; Ahnee-Benham, 2003) and marginalized women from religious and linguistic minorities in the Anglophone nation states (MendezMorse, 2003; Shah, 2006) are challenging white middle class women and men in leadership to consider the privilege and advantage that accompanies their whiteness. As black, Muslim, or indigenous women leaders, they are expected to not only negotiate the complexity of localized gender, race, and class politics within their cultural groups and communities, but also mediate between cultures transnationally and intranationally (Ngurruwutthun and Stewart, 1996). Their alternative histories, epistemologies, and experiences of, and in, educational leadership confront mainstream administrative theory and practice because many claims reach beyond (and before) the nation state, and dominant (recently reinvigorated) scientific paradigms, as well as outside schools and systems as organizations, drawing on community-based activism and social movements (Mendez-Morse, 2003). Feminist theorists now struggle with how globalization impacts women, educational management, and leadership at the macro level (Stromquist and Monkman, 2000; Blackmore, 1999b), while addressing the ways in which culture, race, gender, and class interplay within local community and organizational politics in terms of who leads, how women lead, and with what effect. Culture, nationhood, citizenship, and religion are being foregrounded within the feminist literature (e.g., Oplatka and Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2006). In this context, feminist research on leadership is best depicted now as a series of interconnected or transnational inquiries with a familial resemblance, articulated differently within particular cultural, historical, and material contexts in terms of the relationship between education, the individual, the state, other social movements, and equity discourses and strategies (Stromquist and Monkman, 2000; Grogan, 2002). The paradox is that as education becomes critical in terms of promoting human rights internationally
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along with social justice for girls and women, and for improving individual and collective life chances, there is significant evidence that the number of women in formal leadership in the Anglophone nation states is on the decline.
Reframing Gender and Leadership Many feminists have argued that the focus on leadership is itself the problem for research, policy, and practice around the issue of gender and leadership. Treating leadership as the solution and equating it to a formal position individualize what is a collective practice. Research evidence and theories of distributive leadership illustrate that effective organizational change in complex network societies and learning organizations requires multiple modes of leadership across multiple sites, in particular teacher leadership. However, regardless of the type of leadership, feminist theories foreground the purpose of leadership as social justice and equity (Grogan, 2002). Significantly, the issue of gender and leadership is still constructed as a woman’s problem. Focusing on women and leadership fails to recognize how educational organizations produce gender identities and are structured by the wider social relations of gender in culturally specific ways (Aailto and Mills, 2002; Oplatka and Hertz-Laraeowitz, 2006). There is little research that problematizes the ongoing dominance of men in educational leadership from the perspective of the new sociology of masculinity (Lingard and Limerick, 1995; Lingard and Douglas, 1999). A relational sociology of gender would question how different masculinities and femininities are produced in relation to each other from a range of subject positions inflected by class, race, and ethnicity, and question the enduring nature of white masculinism. Furthermore, class and race, as religion and culture, fragment, fracture, and shore up dominant social relations of gender. The critical organizational theory argues that organizational structures, processes, and cultures are socially constructed to advantage some and not others, and are not gender, race or class neutral. Gender, race, and ethnicity are not variables, problems, or issues, but integral in structuring effective leadership and organizations (Hearn and Parkin, 1992; Aailto and Mills, 2000). The gender and leadership question is symptomatic not only of the lack of diversity in leadership generally with regard to race, class, and culture, but also of the difference in terms of values and politics (Blackmore, 2006). Women gaining a critical mass in school leadership will not necessarily change values and practices. First, women as a group, similar to men, take different political and value stances (Weiner, 1995). Second, it is generally underestimated how context (confluence of political economy, governance, cultural practices, and organizational culture) shapes the conditions of possibility of,
and for, democratic/inclusionary/emancipatory leadership practices. Democratic nations have to consider leadership not only for social justice (Grogan, 1999), but also for diversifying images, practices, and theories of leadership and management. Western education systems currently face increased disengagement of teachers with the principalship not only because of the complexity and overwhelming nature of the job, but also because women, as have men in the past, no longer view teaching as a lifetime career option but more as an episode in their career portfolio with more lucrative and family-friendly career options available. Thus, diversity in leadership requires wider systemic shifts in governance and value systems (Blackmore, 2006). Yet, research and policy continue to focus on women’s underrepresentation in leadership, when they should be encouraging diversity in leadership to meet the challenges of democratic, globalized, cosmopolitan societies.
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Mendez-Morse, S. (2003). Chicana feminism and educational leadership. In Young, M. D. and Skrla, L. (eds.) Reconsidering: Feminist Research in Educational Leadership, pp 161–178. New York: SUNY Press. Mirza, H. (1993). The social construction of black womanhood in British educational research: Towards a new understanding. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice, pp 32–57. London: Falmer Press. Ngurruwutthun, N. and Stewart, M. P. A. (1996). Learning to walk behind; learning to walk in front. A case study of the mentor program at Yirrkala community education centre. Unicorn 22(4), 3–23. Nixon, M. (1987). Few women in school administration: Some explanations. Journal of Educational Thought 21(2), 63–70. Noddings, N. (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Oplatka, I. and Hertz-Lararowitz, R. (eds.) (2006). Women Principals in a Multicultural Society. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Ortiz, F. and Ortiz, D. (1995). How gender and ethnicity interact in the practice of educational administration: The case of Hispanic female superintendents. In Donmoyer, R., Imber, M., and Scheurich, J. (eds.) The Knowledge Base in Educational Administration. Multiple Perspectives, pp 158–173. New York: SUNY Press. Ozga, J. (ed.) (1993). Women in Educational Management. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Reynolds, C. (ed.) (2002). Women and School Leadership: International Perspectives. New York: SUNY Press. Sander, B. (1993). Educational administration and developing countries. In Capper, C. (ed.) Educational Administration in a Pluralistic Society, pp 238–266. New York: SUNY Press. Schmuck, P. (1996). Women’s place in educational administration: Past, present and future. In Leithwood, K., Chapman, J., Corson, D., Hallinger, P., and Hart, A. (eds.) International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration, vol. 1, pp 337–368. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Shah, S. (2006). Leading multiethnic schools: A new understanding of Muslim youth identity. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership 34(2), 215–237. Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in Educational Administration. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Shakeshaft, C. (1995). A cup half full: A gender critique of the knowledge based in educational administration. In Donmoyer, R., Imber, M., and Scheurich, J. (eds.) The Knowledge Base in Educational Administration. Multiple Perspectives, pp 139–157. New York: SUNY Press. Skrla, L. and Scheurich, J. (2000). Sexisms, silence and solutions. Women superintendents speak up and speak out. Educational Administration Quarterly 36(1), 44–75. Sleeter, C. (1992). Power and privilege in white middle class feminist discussions of gender and education. In Biklen, S. and Pollard, D. (eds.) Gender and Education, pp 25–42. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Strachan, J. (1993). Including the personal and the professional: Researching women in educational leadership. Gender and Education 5(1), 71. Stromquist, N. and Monkman, K. (eds.) (2000). Globalisation and Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Tuhiwa-Smith, L. (1993). Getting our from under: Maori women, education and the struggles of Mana Wahine. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice in Education. International Perspectives, pp 58–78. London: Falmer Press. Weiler, K. (1993). Feminism and the struggle for democratic education. In Arnot, M. and Weiler, K. (eds.) Feminism and Social Justice: International Perspectives, pp 210–225. London: Falmer Press. Weiner, G. (1995). A question of style or value? Contrasting perceptions of women as educational leaders. In Limerick, B. and Lingard, B. (eds.) Gender and Changing Educational Management, pp 23–33. Sydney: Hodder. Yeakey, C., Johnston, G., and Adkinson, J. (1986). In pursuit of equity: A review of research on minorities and women in
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educational administration. Educational Administration Quarterly 22(3), 110–149. Young, B., Staszenski, D., McIntyre, S., and Joly, L. (1999). Care and justice in educational leadership. Canadian Administrator 33(2), 38–51.
Further Reading Coleman, M. (ed.) (2005). Special Issue: Diversity and Leadership. Leadership, Educational Management and Administration 34(2). Grogan, M. (2000). Laying the groundwork for a re-conception of the superintendency from feminist postmodern perspectives. Education Administration Quarterly 36(1), 117–142.
Larson, C. and Murtadha, K. (2002). Leadership for social justice. In Murphy, J. (ed.) The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century, pp 134–161. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Murtadha-Watts, K. (1999). Spirited sisters. Spirituality and activism of African American women in educational leadership. In Fenwick, L. (ed.) School Leadership, pp 155–167. Lancaster: Technomic. Ortiz, F. (1982). Career Patterns in Education: Women, Men and Minorities in Public School Administration. New York: Praeger. Ozga, J. and Walker, L. (1999). In the company of men. In Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (eds.) Transforming Managers: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, pp 107–120. London: UCL Press. Young, B. (2002). The Alberta advantage: DeKleining prospects for women educators. In Reynolds, C. (ed.) Women and School Leadership: International Perspectives, pp 75–91. New York: SUNY Press.