Educational Leadership: Where are the Women?

Abstract

Throughout time, stereotypes regarding women and men have permeated society, creating manyobstacles for women, especially in the professional world. Where words like nurturing,compassionate, emotional, expressive, communal, passive, uncertain, subjective and supportivehave historically been used to describe women; words like intelligent, powerful, competent,objective, independent, methodical and driven have typically been reserved to describe men(Porat, 1991). These adjectives have long supported the social perception that men are superiorand women are inferior. Obviously times are changing. Women are emerging as powerfulleaders in business and government and are disproving many long-standing skewed perceptionsof females. Despite these advances, however, certain labels for women continue to impede theirefforts to be strong leaders in other areas.