Gender and school leadership: Are women still under-represented as school principals?

Abstract

Teaching is a feminised profession in most parts of the world, but the proportion of principals is almost always lower than that of classroom practitioners. There is extensive research on this issue with explanations for the disparity including cultural factors as well as bias and discrimination in some contexts. I remember a Chinese male principal explaining that the lack of women in leadership positions at his school was because they were good at nurturing children but could not see ‘the big picture’ (Coleman et al., 1998). Such attitudes are less common in the 21 century but the problem of under-representation of women principals remains in many settings, meaning that potential leadership talent is not being utlised. This issue is explored by Miryam Martinez Martinez, Manuel Molina-Lopez and Ruth Mateos de Cabo. They discuss a two-dimensional market, with the ‘supply’ of women leaders being reduced by low self-efficacy, and the ‘double standards’ evident on the ‘demand’ side, with ‘higher bars set for the evaluation of women’. They note that, within the OECD, 68% of teachers are women while this is true for only 45% of principals. The authors draw on the World Management Survey (WMS) to analyse data from eight countries, UK, USA, Sweden, Canada, Germany, Italy, Brazil and India, to investigate their management practices. They conclude that programmes to reduce the ‘double standard’ in the evaluation of women should be implemented to make better use of the available talent pool. Mohammed Alsharija and James Watters examine the role of principals as change agents in Kuwait. They interviewed 16 principals to ask how they perceive their role as change agents and the support they need to facilitate their role in leading change. The findings lead to four demands by the principals, including the need to be involved in planning projects, and not just implementing them, and a wish for greater autonomy and empowerment in enacting their roles. These data support previous research in centralised contexts (e.g. Bush et al., 2021) that top-down policy initiatives are unlikely to succeed without school-level ownership and ‘buy-in’. Hilde Forgang investigates the relationships between municipalities and school principals in rural parts of Norway. She notes that the municipalities function as school districts in Norway, adding that many of them are quite small. She surveyed 13 school principals and interviewed three district superintendents. She concludes that district leaders should prioritise building systemic competence and encourage cross-boundary collaboration to build professional networks. Resource allocation is an important activity for principals, especially in contexts with a significant degree of school-level autonomy. Sherry Ganon-Shilon, Emanuel Tamir and Chen Schechter assess this issue in the context of Israeli high schools. They interviewed 22 principals engaged in implementing the ‘Courage to Change’ national reform, and interpreted the data through a sensemaking framework. They conclude that principals focused their attention on promoting student learning, deepening student-teacher relations, and adopting new pedagogy. Editorial