Increasing Gender Equity in Educational Leadership

Abstract

This chapter examines the research on gender equity in educational leadership published since 1985. Since the numbers of women in educational administration have remained very small compared to the numbers of men in educational administration, the research on gender equity has focused on women. There have been some gains at the central office level and in the elementary principalship, but the majority of educational leaders in schools and districts are still White men. Many of the studies investigating this problem over the past two decades have contributed knowledge of women’s experiences as principals and superintendents to the existing literature on educational administration, which was largely written about and by men. In particular, scholars have targeted the barriers to women in school administration, career paths of women administrators, and women’s leadership styles. These categories are little changed from the literature reviewed in the previous chapter on “Strategies for Overcoming the Barriers to Women in Educational Administration” (Shakeshaft, 1985c) in the Handbook for Achieving Sex Equity through Education.1