Leadership pathways for women’s leadership development: a multifaceted undergraduate leadership development initiative

Abstract

PurposeThe Women in Leadership Development (WLD) Initiative is a year-long, multifaceted co-curricular leadership development opportunity created to support the unique developmental needs of emerging women leaders. WLD was intentionally designed around the context of second-generation gender bias with a firm grounding of research and theory on gender and leadership.Design/methodology/approachOrganized around three leadership pathways – leadership training, leadership coaching, and leadership support networks – WLD brings together the best practices of leadership development in combination with feminist pedagogy and critical perspectives to foster meaningful and impactful development of women leaders.FindingsThis paper describes the design of the initiative and how each leadership pathway supports the leadership development journey for emerging women leaders. It provides a model that is impactful as well as foundational, for undergraduate women’s leadership development.Originality/valueWomen leaders, in particular, can benefit from leadership development that takes gender into account (DeFrank-Cole & Tan, 2022a; Ely et al., 2011).