Does principals’ gender matter in their leadership performance and leadership style the case in governmental primary schools of Addis Ababa

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to compare the leadership performance and leadership style of male and female principals in Addis Ababa governmental primary schools. A QUAN-qual research approach with a causal-comparative design was employed. 29 schools led by male principals and 29 schools led by female principals were randomly selected. From these schools, 919 teachers and 113 vice-principals were randomly selected to rate-their principals’ leadership performance and leadership style. Besides, 5 Woreda Education Office Heads were purposely selected as key informants. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. The study revealed that female principals significantly show superior performance than their male counterparts in four of the five major tasks of principals. No statistically significant difference was observed between the leadership styles that male and female principals dominantly used. However, the democratic leadership style was the most commonly used leadership style by principals.