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CHAPTER

1

ENGAGING WOMEN IN SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

GUIDING QUESTIONS

• Does the gender of a leader make a difference in how he or she leads? If so, does the gender difference matter? Why or why not?

• Can you think of ways that gender has influenced your approach to leadership?

Teaching is arguably one of the world’s most important professions, as it influences students’ future. High-quality leadership comes second only to teaching in improving student learning (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010). After all, you’d have a hard time finding a single school where student achievement improved in the absence of talented leadership. Australia and the United States, like many countries, face the major challenge of identifying, attracting, and developing the next generation of school leaders. While yes, these countries have the separate issue of encouraging more men to embrace the teaching profession, they need to ensure that women embrace leadership as a desirable future.

Take a moment to envision school leadership. Draw a picture or diagram if you wish. Who appears in the picture? What are they doing? How might you describe your visualization? What might you categorize as more masculine or feminine? Does the picture depict effective school leadership regardless of gender? Does gender matter to the picture?

What messages do you receive subtly and not so subtly? Do the images depict equity in school leadership? Let’s turn to one of society’s go-to information sources—Google—to see how people view school leadership.

In 2018, we did an online image search for teacher. The top sixteen images that this search generated featured 70 percent female teachers and exceedingly traditional teaching methods grounded in the “chalk and talk” era of 20th century education. On the same day, an image search for principal showed the reverse of the teacher images, with 70 percent of the principals being male. Try it yourself. What images pop up? Most disturbing to us were the depictions of angry female principals in the few images the search revealed.

In this chapter, we will examine the existing gender gap in educational leadership, what gender means in leadership, masculine and feminine archetypes, and the practical and the prophetic reasons why we need new leaders, especially female leaders. As you read our case for increasing the percentage of women leaders in education, think not only about how the gender imbalances affect you but also how the image of a leader as male affects the thoughts of girls and boys, parents and community leaders, professors, and everyone else who has a stake in what happens in schools.

If you’re already convinced that more women need to step up to educational leadership, then consider this chapter a resource for facts you might need to convince others of the importance of engaging more women in the practical leadership development journey.

Gender Archetypes, Stereotypes, and Women in Leadership

Our discussions of masculinity and femininity focus not on individual men and women but on the archetypes that have evolved in Western cultures. Think of masculinity and femininity as interdependent sets of values that, over time, need each other.

The masculine lock on how people define leadership goes back centuries. Beard (2017) eloquently describes how deep-seated definitions of proper male and female roles date to at least ancient Greece. She quotes Telemachus in Homer’s The Odyssey, who tells off his mother Penelope (Odysseus’s wife) when she simply asks for a visiting bard to play a different tune for him:

Mother, go back up into your quarters, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff … speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in the household. (as quoted in Beard, 2017, p. 17)

Beard (2017) then goes on to describe how speaking in public and the words that define power also define masculinity:

We are dealing with a much more active and loaded exclusion of women from public speech—and one with a much greater impact than we usually acknowledge on our own traditions, conventions and assumptions about the voice of women. What I mean is that public speaking and oratory were not merely things that ancient women didn’t do: they were exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender. As we saw with Telemachus, to become a man (or at least an elite man) was to claim the right to speak. Public speaking was a—if not the—defining attribute of maleness. Or, to quote a well-known Roman slogan, the elite male citizen could be summed up as vir bonus dicendi peritus, ‘a good man, skilled in speaking’. A woman speaking in public was, in most circumstances, by definition not a woman. (p. 17)

No wonder women who consider stepping up into leadership are often seen as challenging or threatening male archetypes of leadership even today!

Advice abounds on how women can gain leadership credibility by fitting into the masculine culture—how to dress; how to assume the proper postures; how to speak with a deeper, more resonant tone; and so on. However, leadership doesn’t need more of the masculine.

Research actually backs up our collective desire to add the feminine to how we lead. John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio (2013) first asked sixteen thousand people from thirteen countries around the world to classify a list of behavior traits as masculine, feminine, or neither. They then asked a different sixteen thousand people to rate how important they found the same traits to leadership. Across ages, genders, and cultures, people associated feminine traits with their image of an ideal modern leader. None of the identified masculine traits made the top ten, although two gender-neutral ones—collaboration and candidness—did (Gerzema & D’Antonio, 2013). The rest of the top ten featured traits associated with the feminine: humility, patience, empathy, trustworthiness, openness, flexibility, vulnerability, and balance.

Perhaps even more telling, the same research shows that 66 percent of adults, including 66 percent of the men polled, agree with the statement, “The world would be a better place if men thought more like women” (Gerzema & D’Antonio, 2013).

Thus, archetypes arise out of what cultures value. With this explanation, can you see how education systems seem to rely more on masculine values? For example, they overemphasize standardized, objective testing and don’t pay as much attention, especially in accountability measures, to more subjective but equally crucial data such as each student’s developmental, social, and emotional needs. Accountability systems need both, don’t they? This illustrates the essence of how we use the masculine and feminine archetypes, which we support with research, in these pages.

Leaders need to ensure that they add the feminine to the school leadership world—using both-and thinking rather than assuming that either set of values is more important than the other.

However, each person is an individual, so assuming that all people of a given gender have the same traits is stereotyping. In chapter 6 (page 99), you will have a chance to consider whether the male or female archetype is more your natural style and what that may mean for leadership development.

THINK ABOUT IT

• Offer some examples of ways people hold school leaders accountable for behaving in humble, patient, empathetic, trustworthy, open, flexible, vulnerable, and balanced ways.

• Offer some examples of opposite traits being the standard (for example, being results driven rather than flexible).

• Because what systems choose to measure often drives behavior and norms, what do your examples say about the current archetype for school leadership?

The Gender Gap in Educational Leadership

Women hold more school administrative positions than they did in the 1980s, so some might question whether schools need to pay attention to gender. Let’s look at the facts.

Consider the following snapshot of statistics across the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

• In the United States, in the 1980s, only about 25 percent of school principals were female (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). In 2017, while about 75 percent of teachers were female, a little over half of principals were male, and the percentage of male principals was higher at the secondary level (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).

• Also in the United States, as of 2015, only about 27 percent of school superintendents were female, up from 7 percent in 1992 (American Association of School Administrators, 2015). Also, female superintendents have higher mean and median ages than male superintendents. And, they appear to make more sacrifices in their personal lives. Significantly fewer female superintendents report being married or partnered, and female superintendents also report a higher divorce rate. The data suggest the price women might pay for their career choices:

Female respondents report slightly lower satisfaction with their career choice; more than two percent more female than male respondents say they would not choose the superintendency again. (American Association of School Administrators, 2015)

• In Australia, across the three schooling sectors—(1) government, (2) Catholic, and (3) independent schools—some notable changes have occurred, from increasing to stalling and decreasing representation, from 2006 to 2018 (McKenzie, Weldon, Rowley, Murphy, & McMillan, 2014).

∘ Overall, while 57 percent of upper-secondary teachers are women, only 39 percent of principals are women. In the primary sector, 81 percent of teachers are women, while 57.5 percent of principals are women.

∘ Independent schools have the lowest proportion of women in leadership roles. In government and Catholic schools, the percentage of women in leadership, including the principalship, continues to increase.

∘ Note that while males still outnumber females in the principalship, the gap widens when you look just at leaders over age 55 and narrows for younger age cohorts—a heartening trend.

∘ In 2013, less than 10 percent of primary and secondary teachers intended to apply for a principal, deputy, or vice principal position in the next three years. Even within this small percentage, women still had lower leadership aspirations than men—the percentage comprised 24 percent men and 6 percent women at the primary level, versus 10 percent men and 6 percent women at the secondary level.

∘ Women in assistant or deputy principal roles still show less interest than men in principalships.

∘ Also, 73 percent of male teachers report having an uninterrupted career (for example, not taking unpaid leave or relinquishing positions) in schools, compared with 46 percent of female teachers.

• In the United Kingdom, 90 percent of primary school teachers are female, compared with 70 percent of principals. In secondary schools, 63 percent of teachers are female, compared with 39 percent of principals—figures that have changed very little since these data were collected for the first time in 2010. An even wider gender gap, though, exists for many cultural minorities. Further, while the gender pay gap widens with seniority, women have lower median salaries than men at all levels (Department for Education, 2017).

Across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, females compose 70 percent or more of the teaching staff—though the gender distribution of school leadership staff does not reflect the gender mix among teachers. For example:

While the proportion of male teachers in primary schools is relatively small in many countries, there is an over-representation of male principals. This suggests that male teachers tend to be promoted to principal positions more often than female teachers, although most of them are recruited from the ranks of teachers who are mostly women. (OECD, 2018, p. 402)

Web searches reveal similar statistics in many other countries. The leadership gender gap exists in education, as it does in so many other fields.

THINK ABOUT IT

Does anything surprise you about these figures? If you were in charge of your education system, what would you wish to see change the next time such statistics are generated? What actions might you take to foster progress toward those changes?

This imbalance replicates in higher education, too. In higher education, men remain four times more likely than women to serve in the most powerful positions (Robinson, Shakeshaft, Newcomb, & Grogan, 2017). Researchers Katherine Cumings Mansfield, Anjalé Welton, Pei-Ling Lee, and Michelle D. Young (2010), who have explored the lived experiences of female educational leadership doctoral students, describe progress for gender equity as glacial. In the United States, female professors continue to earn less, obtain promotions more slowly, and struggle with heavier teaching and service loads than male professors (Mansfield et al., 2010).

In political positions worldwide—where most education policy is formed—women hold less than one-third of the seats in the lower houses of national legislature (OECD, 2017). In 2018, the U.S. Senate had an all-time high of twenty-two female senators of one hundred total senators (Abramson, 2018). And, while a record number of women were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, they still make up less than a quarter of the House (Jordan, 2018).

When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court], and I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

U.S. Supreme Court justice

In summary, every way you look at it, women have plenty of room to increase their influence regarding what happens in schools.

Trends in Gender and Leadership

Does gender really matter in good leadership, or do the qualities of good leaders transcend gender? Do we need more women in educational leadership? After all, whatever a woman’s motivations for pursuing a leadership position, neither the path nor the work is easy.

Gender does matter. Greatly. In this section, we will explore why closing this gender gap in school leadership is absolutely vital. What does gender have to do with leadership? A whole lot if you consider trends in pop culture, research, and statistics. Trending topics and issues include the following.

• Gender equality

• Sexism

• Pay parity

• The Me Too movement, which has prompted a long-overdue focus on sexual harassment

• The social and economic impacts of girls’ access to education worldwide

• Stereotypes about women leaders and the discrimination they face—not just from men but also from other women

• How to sort biological and brain-based gender differences from the gender differences that culture produces

Not paying attention to gender’s impact on leadership has perpetuated many of these issues, the consequences of which we have only begun to comprehend and remedy. Further, it has become increasingly clear that the barriers women face actually hurt all genders. Instead of creating a binary distinction between female and male leaders, we hope to create understanding of how this distinction influences choices and how effective leadership requires drawing on the best of both.

THINK ABOUT IT

While the #MeToo hashtag may seem like a phenomenon that arose in 2017 from high-profile abuse cases, Tarana Burke founded the Me Too movement in 2006 to empower women, especially young and vulnerable women, through empathy. Burke (2018) states that the #MeToo conversation has expanded to focus on determining the best ways to hold perpetrators of abuse responsible and stop cycles of abuse. The Me Too movement’s growth shows that needed conversations may take a decade or more to finally grow and bear fruit.

It’s easy to be both encouraged and discouraged, given the relatively short time we have been discussing the issue compared to how long it has been an issue; time and persistent focus are required. What changes have you observed as a result of the Me Too movement in the media, in marketing, and in your workplace? What impact has the message of the movement had on your conversations with women? With men? How does it inform discussions about gender and expectations with your students?

Gender is not the same as sex, which describes biological and physical male and female differences. Gender, a nonbinary social construct, relates to the social and cultural behaviors we attach to people; as we discuss further in chapter 9 (page 153), it is widely acknowledged that greater variation occurs within the genders than between them. For the context of this book, we view the feminine and masculine constructions as widely as possible.

Our interest in influencing more women to take on leadership roles took root in our first work experiences, with Jane starting out in the archetypal male world of finance and Barbara delving into research on how women’s lives differ from men’s from the start of her broad career in education and leadership.

A Word From Barbara

Through the lens of my Portapak (a 1978 version of a GoPro camera), I learned some visceral lessons about gender, equity, and power. During my first year in university, my eighteen-year-old self wanted to investigate and share the stories of women and children who stayed in what were called women’s refuge homes. These homes gave women and children a safe haven from domestic violence—then a concept that people talked about in hushed tones—if acknowledged at all.

The camera lens created a space for me to observe and engage in others’ lived experiences. I aimed to put the spotlight on a significant social issue that needed attention and whose powerless victims needed greater access to quality support. Finally, I presented what I filmed to my class. Viewing the heart-wrenching and challenging experiences of the women, who articulated their vulnerability with dignity and generosity, we were rendered silent in our inner turmoil—first, at the injustice, and second, at our own dilemma of what we could or should do.

One challenging insight was that people seem to blame the victim for being in a situation of violence, and that domestic abuse was somehow lesser than similar abuses that occur outside the home. Perpetrators were not held to account and certainly saw their power over their partners as a right in their domestic partnership.

In the 21st century, topics around gender equity, pay equality, violence against women, and the motherhood penalty trend in the media. Daily commentary and research illuminate stereotyping and unconscious bias as significant barriers to recognizing female talent that undermine career advancement.

Do women have to make hard choices to get ahead, meaning does being a woman set you back and having a family stunt your career? Limiting notions of gender can devalue, obstruct, and confine women and men. In a wide variety of job-specific and cultural contexts, we observe male leadership identified as the norm. My own reflection was not to doubt myself, and to challenge limiting notions of gender, as a woman and a potential leader.

Practical and Prophetic Reasons to Have More Women Leaders

Education needs female leaders for four reasons, both practical and prophetic. The first two reasons are practical, revolving around tapping into all the available talent pool and balancing the many unbalanced education policies. The other two reasons are prophetic—in the sense of a key definition of that term. While your mind might skip to visions of the future, consider the more useful definition of prophesying as projecting what will happen based on what is happening. Thus, prophesying answers the following two prompts.

1. If things continue as they have gone in education, this is what will come to be …

2. If things change, and more women step up as school leaders, these are the possibilities that will come to be …

The four reasons we need more women in education are as follows.

1. Practically, we need to remove gender-specific leadership barriers and consider all the available talent pool.

2. Practically, we need a better balance in the mix of values that drive education decisions.

3. Prophetically, we need a new vision of school leadership.

4. Prophetically, girls, and the women we might mentor, need to see themselves as future leaders.

In the next four sections, we’ll look at research-based reasons that have prevented women from entering school leadership and illustrate the previous four reasons why education needs more female leaders. And, we’ll look at the impact that more female leaders might have on the next generation, when hopefully a Google search for leadership images will produce very different results than we described at the beginning of this chapter (page 9). The value and importance of the feminist perspective embraces equity for all, irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality. We still have a long way to go to reach that.

I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?

—Ellen Page,

Canadian actor

An Unbiased View of Women, Who Make Up Half the Talent Pool

Why do public and private leadership globally have such a dearth of female representation? Understanding the answers to this question is crucial to ensuring we are finding qualified candidates of all genders.

In their work in schools and systems across Australia, Barbara and her partner continue to observe that women take a more circumstantial than intentional path to school leadership than men (Watterston & Watterston, 2010). Men begin to map a path toward a principalship earlier in their careers and then intentionally pursue that path. Many factors might influence these differences, from the need to balance work and family demands, devotion to classroom teaching or lack of confidence to fulfill the role, to unconscious biases in expectations of male and female leaders, workplace flexibility, or recruitment practices. Whether these are personal or systemic barriers or biases, they contribute to the percentage of women who aspire to take formal leadership roles.

In our work with women who choose to pursue educational leadership, they consistently share how they experience a far different reality than men who travel the same path. Developing as a leader is about choices. Do women have to make harder choices to unleash their leadership potential and nurture their talents and skills? Do we attempt to force female life cycles into a male career model, which will not work now nor in the future (Broderick, 2009)? Are organizations examining the policies that limit the choices women have? Are they looking for the unconscious biases that render leadership potential invisible based on gender?

These biases aren’t really disappearing. The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle (OECD, 2017) highlights that OECD countries have made little progress since the 2012 OECD report Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now. Not only have women faced these same issues for decades, but progress has stagnated. Here, Maisie Holder (2017) summarizes seven key findings from the 2017 OECD report:

1. Women in OECD countries leave school with better qualifications than young men, but they are less likely to study in the higher earning STEM-related fields.

2. In every OECD country, women are still less likely than men to engage in paid work. When women do work, they are more likely to do it on a part-time basis.

3. Women continue to earn less than men. The median female worker earns almost 15% less than her male counterpart—a rate that has barely changed since 2010.

4. Gender gaps tend to increase with age, reflecting the crucial role that parenthood plays in gender equality. Much more than fatherhood, motherhood typically has sizable negative effects on workforce participation, pay and career advancement.

5. Women are underrepresented in political office, holding less than one-third of seats in lower houses of national legislatures, on average, in the OECD.

6. Countries need to invest in female leadership opportunities through for example mentoring opportunities and network supports.

7. Male role models in senior management need to drive the change in gender stereotypes and norms that continue to hamper women’s access to leadership.

Thus, practices and policies keep women from considering the leadership path. However, when women manage to reach higher and higher levels of leadership responsibility, whether in education or in other sectors, very real biases make it difficult for them to find equal footing with the men around them.

Let’s look closely at just one of the biggest dilemmas most women face (that men simply do not): the double bind. Leaders are expected to be tough, and so are men. Thus, they cannot face the double bind. Women, on the other hand, often face criticism for being too tough or too soft. The Catalyst (2007) report The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Damned If You Do, Doomed If You Don’t explores gender stereotypes that create predicaments for female leaders. Sponsored by IBM, it involved surveys and in-depth interviews with working women and women leaders. People evaluate female leaders against a masculine leadership style, creating perception barriers regardless of how women behave or perform. This dilemma has the potential to undermine women’s leadership. The double bind includes the following three predicaments (Catalyst, 2007).

1. Extreme perceptions: People perceive women leaders as too soft or too tough but never just right.

2. A high competence threshold: Women leaders face higher standards and lower rewards than men leaders.

3. A tendency to be seen as competent or likable: People perceive women leaders as competent or liked, but rarely both.

Almost everywhere you look, the workplace is skewed in favor of men. Women remain underrepresented in venture capital firms; music executive positions; movies, both on screen and in behind-the-scenes roles, such as director; high-profile professional athletics; and, as mentioned previously, politics. And even if successful, the lack of support and challenges founded in sexism can range from an irritation to the extreme.

Women belong in all places where decisions are being made…. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

U.S. Supreme Court justice

In 2012, when Australia’s first female prime minister Julia Gillard made her now famous misogyny speech in the House of Representatives, she shared a fifteen-minute riposte to the misogyny to which she had been subjected by the opposition and the press since taking over as prime minister in 2010 (Gordon, 2018). With more than three million views on YouTube, the speech had a significant impact, resonating with women and men around the world.

Politics continues to provide stark examples of the lack of progess on gender inclusivity and engaging the perspectives of women. For example, on March 23, 2017, in the White House, members of the House Freedom Caucus—all men—decided the fate of maternity coverage in health care plans (Terkel, 2017). The picture that Vice President Mike Pence tweeted of men sitting at a table discussing women’s health care was heavily shared online and became a meme.

At the same time, examples of positive progress for the voices of women in positions of power and influence are present as well. When it comes to female political power, the Queensland government in Australia is smashing the glass barriers. On February 13, 2017, the re-elected government was sworn in with fifty-fifty female-to-male representation and a significant number of women in senior ministerial roles (Caldwell, 2018). A news photo of the labor caucus stood out because of the even ratio and the inclusion of lawmakers of both genders holding their infants.

Reflect on these examples and how they create messages around power and voice. As educators, what messages will our students receive?

How many talented leaders do workplaces stymie because these biases and barriers continue to determine who “looks like” a leader? Our first reason for having more women in leadership focuses on recognizing and calling out these biases and barriers, because shining a light on hidden talent in all its diversity will find leaders who far more represent the world in which they live.

A Better Balance of What People Value in Education

Another practical reason that education needs more women in leadership involves an overemphasis in schools on certain priorities to the detriment of equally important priorities traditionally more connected with the feminine. Since the late 1990s, schools have emphasized academic achievement and standardized testing in reading and mathematics, leading to less emphasis on the arts, social studies, and physical education. Teacher accountability and evaluation systems have become commonplace. While these measures are meant to close achievement gaps among different student groups, U.S. schools saw no significant improvement for twelfth-grade high school students as a result of these measures between 2005 and 2015 (The Nation’s Report Card, 2018). And levels of teacher and student engagement and satisfaction decreased.

Students who report that they feel engaged at school will more likely do well and pursue postsecondary education. The Gallup (2016) Student Poll reports that about 74 percent of fifth graders in the United States find school engaging. However, 34 percent of twelfth graders feel engaged at school, compared with 40 percent in 2011. Further, 32 percent of twelfth graders are actively disengaged, meaning they are ten times more likely to get poor grades and have less hope about their future. Similar figures are noted in Australia, where engagement levels decrease as students become older (Subban, 2016). This has implications not only for progress but also for graduation rates and, ultimately, quality of life.

Unsurprisingly, disengagement remedies involve high levels of teacher efficacy together with high expectations for student progress, with a personalized, purposeful, whole-person approach to learning—all of which relate to whole-child initiatives such as social and emotional learning, working on adult team dynamics, and so on. These adhere more strongly to the traditionally feminine emphasis on relationships and soft skills rather than only academic outcomes.

Similarly, the growing masculine overemphasis on teacher accountability since 2005 or so correlates with a decrease in teacher engagement—and teachers cannot be at their best if they are not engaged in their work. The 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher (Markow & Pieters, 2012) shows that the percentage of teachers satisfied with their jobs dropped from 59 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2011. The percentage of teachers planning to leave the profession increased from 17 percent to 29 percent. Further, only about 45 percent felt optimistic that student achievement levels would improve over five years. The results from the Nation’s Report Card (2018) bear out the teachers’ pessimism.

Estimates of attrition vary widely in Australia (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2016). According to the Staff in Australia’s Schools 2013 survey (McKenzie et al., 2014):

5% of primary and 8% of secondary teachers indicated they intended to leave teaching permanently prior to retirement. These figures were slightly higher (7% and 11%) for early career teachers…. The two most important reasons for intended early departures were “workload too heavy” and “insufficient recognition and reward.”

While we will discuss this in depth in chapter 6 (page 99), the accountability measures that have dominated education policy since the late 1990s reflect the values associated with the masculine archetype—values such as being analytical, objective, and logical. These are strong, worthwhile values, but education remains incomplete without the equally worthwhile values that the feminine archetype encompasses, such as being empathetic, creative, and passionate.

Look at the following quotes from female leaders and educators, and consider how more women in power might bring more balance to how we are currently educating children.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship will not even have a trade (as cited in Weekes, 2007, p. 101).

—Simone Weil (1909–1943), French social philosopher and activist

It’s not what is poured into a student, but what is planted (as cited in Weekes, 2007, p. 101).

—Linda Conway, American media scholar

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought—that is to be educated (as cited in Weekes, 2007, p. 99).

—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963), American educator, translator, and classics scholar

The world is talking about girls’ education and there is an impetus for change…. The shooting of Malala, the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram, and the increased evidence of how transformative girls education is … Education is about a far more localized service…. It’s got to be sensitive to culture and context (as cited in Isaac, 2016).

—Julia Gillard, Australia’s first (and only) female prime minister

You might find equally inspiring quotes about educating the whole child from male individuals. We chose these to describe the essence of what more female voices might add, even though individuals of either gender might hold different values.

Thus, the critical points about how women might influence what is valued in education include the following.

• Education values are out of balance, putting at risk whether both teachers and students can engage wholeheartedly as learners.

• A focus on certain kinds of student achievement and testing correlates with a decline in student and teacher engagement, with no appreciable improvement in student achievement.

• This imbalance and the consequences came about while society emphasized traditionally masculine values of objectivity and measurability, perhaps in part because men were disproportionately represented in governmental and educational leadership positions while decisions that resulted in our current testing and accountability environment were being made.

If women’s voices increase, might education begin to shift toward a more balanced approach? Similar shifts happened when women gained increased representation in other fields. Might schools pay more attention to gender issues and holistic considerations if more women enter educational leadership, as has happened in science and medicine when more women enter practice at the highest levels? For example, training doctors in whole-patient care—and measuring how well they do it through surveys and other tools—is becoming commonplace. Only one female need take part on a scientific study team for it to likely include analysis of sex and gender differences (Foley, 2017). Since 2016, in the United States, researchers seeking funding from the National Institute of Health must test new drugs on female as well as male animals before they go to human physical trials (Bischel, 2016). And examinations of gender and racial biases in how and when doctors provide care and manage pain have at last taken place (Foley, 2017).

How many potential solutions to the dilemmas we face in education remain hidden because the women who could formulate them haven’t been nurtured to become the leaders they are meant to become? To summarize, to get that better balance of education values, education needs diverse voices and interdependent sets of values that embody the masculine and feminine archetypes.

WORDS FROM A LEADER

One of the barriers I had to navigate as a woman leader was understanding the dynamics of male networks that have dominated decision making in my profession and that indirectly wanted to discredit my voice due to my gender. I did this by finding my voice through being clear about what my vision was and how I would address getting to it, which often was quite different than how a man went about it.

I found that being transparent and honest in my communications, dealing with the emotional content of a message as well as the factual content, was not a negative but allowed a different type of connection. I feel I was able to stand up and have an opinion, but the dynamic of “men knowing best” perpetuated due to the fact that there were so many men in positions of authority of decision making. My self-awareness and self-knowledge allowed me to stand up to bullies and bully behavior in a professional way, and not to be diminished by them. (Beth Russell, retired U.S. middle school principal, personal communication, April 17, 2018)

A New Vision of School Leadership

Prophetically, we need more women as leaders to change what people expect from leaders. We both joined the workforce in the 1980s, and we can’t forget the distinguishing fashion of the day: working women wore the “uniform” of power suits with enormous shoulder pads and rather ridiculous variations of the male tie to imitate the powerful male image of leadership and success. Yet in the 21st century, women still receive advice about acting like men at work, from how we dress to how we speak.

As mentioned in the introduction (page 1), Mary Beard (2017) points out, “We have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man” (p. 54). Let’s start creating that template with seven key themes that emphasize how women might help reshape educational leadership.

1. Organizations with a higher percentage of female leaders deliver better financial results, as do those with more diverse teams (Krivkovich, Robinson, Starikova, Valentino, & Yee, 2017). While schools have different metrics, we might see similar results with student outcomes.

2. Women possess certain qualities that will become crucial as the world’s pace of change increases. In her book Own It: The Power of Women at Work, Sallie Krawcheck (2017) lists these as risk awareness, relationship focus, holistic view of problems, long-term thinking, value of lifelong learning, and focus on meaning and purpose. Consider how school strategic plans might change if these qualities were truly valued.

3. Women’s career histories are characteristically relational. They constitute a normal part of a larger and intricate web of interconnected people, in which women tend to make career decisions in relation to their impact on others, most notably family. This weblike way of living may also explain the different way that women’s attention activates. As Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson (2010) discuss in The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, attention incorporates what you notice, what you value, and how you connect the dots. They describe women’s attention as tending to operate like a radar, scanning the environment, picking up clues, and noticing many different things at once. Men tend to have more laserlike attention, focusing deeply on the matter at hand. Holistic leadership in schools requires using radar, not a laser, to see the impact of policies on multiple facets of the community, not just academics or discipline or other single focuses.

4. Female leaders display more characteristics associated with the transformational leadership model; through inspiration and empowerment, they act as positive role models, encouraging initiative and creativity. This would help school environments move away from carrot-and-stick approaches to motivation which have been shown ineffective (Pink, 2010).

5. Some feminine characteristics that make women more effective at stock-market trading than men may also serve schools. Peter Swan (2017) found that over a seventeen-year period, women’s more pervasive buy-low and sell-high behavior indicated that they stayed more informed than male traders. They behaved more selectively, had a calmer approach, and took more time to evaluate trades. He surmises, “A female invasion of Wall Street might not only see far more stable markets, but also a far lower likelihood of the next global financial crisis” (Swan, 2017).

6. Having more women in educational leadership may reset the leadership norm and encourage a wider variety of leadership styles. Korn Ferry (2016) has explored how varied leadership styles affect employee engagement and effectiveness perceptions. While it remains true that each person needs to develop a comfortable leadership approach that honors her or his strengths, the most effective style for any leader—male or female—is a function of the people he or she leads and the situation. High-performing leaders have access to a repertoire of leadership styles and adeptly use the right style at the right time. The Korn Ferry Institute (2016) study also finds that women create better performance-driven climates than their male counterparts, using more visionary, affiliative, participative, and coaching leadership styles.

7. Educators should consider what might happen if more women rise to the top positions in educational leadership, given what they already know about female superintendents. In researching the leadership practices of Texas female superintendents, Jessica Garrett-Staib and Amy Burkman (2015) find that female superintendents seem to have strong self-concepts in two leadership areas that have the highest effect on positive institutional leadership outcomes; they “encourage the heart” and “inspire and share vision” (p. 164). In other words, they gain buy-in for organizational vision and motivate others to join in the effort via values and inspiring purpose rather than through positional power or rewards and consequences.

Setting aside for a moment the double-bind problem women face, it is absurd to desire women to act more like men in order to become school leaders. Instead, schools need women—and men—to actively engage in redefining leadership so it includes, as research supports, both masculine and feminine values.

Throughout this book, we’ll use infinity loop diagrams, such as the one in figure 1.1 (page 28), when we emphasize both-and, not either-or, thinking about a concept or an issue. Before each value set named (for example, masculine leadership and feminine leadership in figure 1.1) is a summary of the upside of focusing on those values. And following each is the downside if we only focus on those values, neglecting the others. The infinity loop emphasizes the systems nature of interconnectedness. An ongoing tension exists between each side, requiring conscious thought and management to stay on the upside of both.

THINK ABOUT IT

This is Jane’s favorite quote regarding the advice women often receive to act more like men in order to gain leadership access. What parallels does it have to education?

The thrust of The Confidence Gap’s [Kay & Shipman, 2014] self-help prescription was “Be more like guys who may not know what the hell they’re doing but just act like they do.” This directive bypassed over a crucial complicating factor: almost every problem in current American economics was caused by arrogant, overconfident attitudes like those the authors were encouraging. (Zeisler, 2016, p. 210)

Consider for a moment what you gain from the archetypal masculine and feminine ways of leading and what you lose when you set one aside.

Figure 1.1: Infinity loop diagram representing masculine and feminine leadership styles.

In summary, to help get that new vision of school leadership that this third reason for more women leaders requires, education policies and practices need to shift to a better balance of values, not substitute feminine for masculine styles. This way, students benefit from the values and best ideas of both.

Girls’ Visions of Themselves as Future Leaders

The fourth reason that women need to step in and step up to school leadership is to inspire the next generation of women to lead. Prophetically, consider how today’s boys and girls might begin to envision leadership if women begin to swell the ranks at all levels of educational leadership. Gender inequities exist in all areas of life across all countries. So what does this mean for the next generation of school leaders?

Plan International (2017) has investigated girls’ experiences of inequality, their ambitions to lead, and their views on gender stereotypes as they grow into adolescence and young adulthood. Its 2017 report The Dream Gap: Australian Girls’ Views on Gender Equality highlights that the lack of visibility of girls’ experiences lies at the heart of the agonizingly slow change toward gender parity (Plan International, 2017). This organization works around the world to make girls truly visible, acknowledge girls’ power and potential, and not turn away when people exploit, discriminate against, and silence them.

Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head in 2012 when she dared to suggest that girls go to school. We find it more than ironic that we are focusing on women in school leadership while, globally, girls’ and women’s lack of access to education not only forms a key barrier to creating self-actualized, contributing human beings, but also perpetuates a cycle of poverty and subjugation. Economic prosperity, education, and gender equality are intrinsically linked.

There’s a moment when you have to decide whether to be silent or stand up.

—Malala Yousafzai,

Pakistani activist and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate

According to Gayle Smith (as cited in Suliman, 2017), president of the ONE Campaign, “Over 130 million girls are still out of school—that’s over 130 million potential engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers and politicians whose leadership the world is missing out on…. Girls are least likely to be in school in South Sudan, with nearly three-quarters of school-age girls out of the classroom.” Without an education, young women are “locked away from a better future” (Suliman, 2017).

Education can help society transform toward gender equity (Unterhalter, 2007). Educators play a key role in nurturing students’ self-worth as they explore their identities; they can enhance students’ well-being and foster equity both within and beyond the classroom. The messaging that students receive from educators at a very young age can help debunk outdated and constricting gender stereotypes and create a more inclusive future in which gender is not limiting. If girls and boys see more women in leadership positions, they will begin to see it as the norm.

THINK ABOUT IT

An important part of this process is recognizing and challenging your own gender biases. Search YouTube (www.youtube.com) for the short video Always #LikeAGirl (Always, 2014). Watch it with at least one other woman. What feelings surface as you watch it? What actions might you take to change what the film depicts? What gender biases of your own does the video help you recognize? What actions might you take to challenge these biases and change the stereotypes the film depicts?

The Need for More Leaders, Especially Women Leaders

The work of the contemporary school principal continues to intensify, and the role’s demands and complexity continue to increase. Many OECD countries, though, face principal shortages due to the imminent retirement of a large proportion of principals and other school leaders from the baby boomer generation, and statistics revealing a reluctance to apply for principal positions. These are important challenges to address. As a result, education systems and schools must prioritize developing high-quality, aspiring leaders and attracting the best possible candidates for school leadership positions. In a female-dominated workforce, identifying and developing the next generation of school leaders also requires encouraging talented women to take on these roles. Commentary and statistics reveal that some experienced teachers are reluctant to apply for principal positions (McKenzie et al., 2014).

The whole goal of feminism is to become redundant. My dream is for a world where I won’t have to call myself a feminist because there will be gender justice.

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

Nigerian author

According to University of Tasmania professor emeritus Bill Mulford (2008), education has entered the golden age of school leadership—a period in which interest and research in the practice of school leadership is higher than ever before. We know that principals can have a profound impact on a school, and that leadership “is second only to teaching among school-related factors in its impact on student learning” (Leithwood et al., 2004, p. 3). More than ever before, schools need to improve how they address the readiness gap, support current school leaders, and make the leadership role an attractive option for educators. Therefore, ensuring that more and more women seek leadership is crucial.

Next Steps in the Journey

Are you ready to aspire to leadership? You have a myriad of exciting opportunities to create meaningful change—to embrace power to! To ensure you stay inspired in spite of inevitable difficulties along the way, in the next chapter, we’ll explore the still-existent gender barriers and what to do about them.

Step in for Further Reflection

The following activities provide you with valuable opportunities to reflect on the ideas, strategies, and concepts covered in this chapter. If you are approaching Step In, Step Up as a twelve-week journey, you can spread these out over several days.

You may complete them individually or with a group so you can share your thoughts and ideas. Keep a journal so you can revisit your thoughts as you travel this journey.

1. From your own experience in schools, do teachers (who are mainly female), as well as community members, have different expectations for female and male principals? Our discussions with female principals suggest this is the case. Do teachers and community members more tolerate and forgive behaviors from male leaders that they would less accept from a female leader because they are used to men in leadership roles? Do they have different and possibly higher expectations of female principals, particularly if, stereotypically, they perceive men as default leaders (Watterston, 2010)?

2. Complete these sentence stems by brainstorming at least six answers for each. Don’t judge what comes to mind; feel free to spend just a few minutes, or an extended period of time depending on the ideas the prompt sparks for you. Try working with two sentence stems per day, journaling about the answers that intrigue you the most.

∘ “If I could change one thing for teachers, it would be …”

∘ “Teachers never have enough …”

∘ “Considering my experiences as a teacher, I wonder about …”

∘ “Considering my experiences as a teacher, I beat myself up over …”

∘ “As an educator, I dream of …”

∘ “I do a great job with …”

∘ “As a leader, I could influence or accomplish …”

∘ “I take a keen interest in …”

∘ “I believe I’m getting better at …”

∘ “For self-care, I’m at my best when …”

∘ “The most impressive thing I’ve seen a school leader do is …”

∘ “My leader role model is _____ because …”

∘ “I can talk to _____ about my dreams because …”

∘ “The difference I would like to make as a leader is …”

∘ “I could become an inspiring leader because …”

∘ “As a leader, I would like to be known for …”