Women
be wise
WHY IT’S HARD TO MOVE UP
Although women
dominate and
power-up education,
educational
leadership is still
overwhelmingly white
and male. Why, and
what to do?
24
Leadership
Calm, serene, always-polite Audrey
is simmering with rage. “I’m just so angry.
I’ve given up so much for this job… years
away from my family, my friends. And now
I have to help the new guy get up to speed.”
Recently passed over for a promotion, Au-
drey was told by the retiring superintendent,
her mentor, that the board felt she “lacked
ambition.” Audrey fumed, “I’ve always been
a team player, calling out what others con-
tribute. I hate self-promotion. I want my ef-
forts to speak for themselves. Where did I
go wrong?”
In my work as a leadership coach and fac-
ulty member at the Georgetown Institute for
Transformational Leadership, and former
education professor, I lead workshops for fe-
male leaders wrestling with how to get ahead,
especially in sectors historically—and still-
-dominated by male leadership. At an educa-
tional conference in California recently, one
of my partners and I ran a workshop called
“Still Pale and Male,” exploring some of the
dilemmas of female leaders in education.
To a full and buzzing room, we laid out
some of the facts: Although women have
made significant leadership advances in the
last two decades, less than a quarter of the
14,000 school districts in the United Stated
are led by women. (It will be 77 years before
women are no longer statistically underrep-
resented in the superintendency at this rate.)
Within the principalship, the problem is
equally acute. As principal leadership posi-
tions rise in stature and power, the number
of female leaders declines. Only 30% of high
school principals are female, and less than
9% of all principals currently are women of
color. "We have a profession composed of
women — run by men," said one retired su-
perintendent. Or as one of our clients wryly
observed, "The higher the prestige, the paler
and maler."
In the state of California, the situation
is equally stark. The number of female su-
perintendents has actually declined from
By Kirsten Olson