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       CHAPTER

      2

       NAVIGATING GENDER BARRIERS

       GUIDING QUESTIONS

      • What key roles and responsibilities do you see yourself having as an educational leader?

      • How will you shine as a leader?

      • Do you have any doubts about your leadership potential that resemble the barriers revealed by research on women in leadership? What are they?

      We included the word journey in the title of this book for a reason: just as no teacher arrives in a classroom with all the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind that highly effective instruction requires, no one enters into school leadership with all the skills, experience, and confidence one needs to lead in a highly effective way. But becoming a leader isn’t exactly smooth sailing, especially for women. Understanding what you might encounter—the winds and waves of gender barriers as well as the complexity of the work—will help you build the resilience and the skills you need to ensure the wind stays at your back and the waves don’t swamp you.

      I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

      —Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888),

      American author

      We offer these brief descriptions of our own first steps on the school leadership journey.

       A Word From Barbara

      In the mid-1990s, a school district in midwestern Australia approached me to apply for an interim principalship of a small, rural school. My children were then three and five years old, and my husband’s work at that time involved extensive travel. Relocating would have been a big decision even without the demands of the role and the expectations of a conservative farming community where most of my colleagues were males who had wives to support them in raising their young families. Yes, I was a capable teacher, and I had some leadership experience, but I was short on confidence to lead a school, even a small one. When the school hired me, I felt it dragged me to the role kicking and screaming, “I’m not ready. I need experience. They’re going to find out I’m an impostor.”

      In hindsight, I know I fell into the trap, like so many other women, of assuming I had to have at least 80 percent of the skills and experience required before even trying for a position—counterintuitive given that you can’t get the experience unless you seek the opportunities, step up, and lead!

       A Word From Jane

      I found myself in an educational leadership doctoral program, spurred on by my husband, who said, “You’re already doing the research. Get the degree so that it is recognized.” This wasn’t an obvious career path; I have an MBA in finance and still do quite a bit of corporate consulting. But a school principal (with whom I eventually coauthored two books) had invited me to apply my executive-coaching skills to working with her staff years before instructional coaching grew into a hot topic. I paid my dues working side by side with the teachers in her school, helping them differentiate instruction as student demographics and curriculum demands went through rapid changes.

      Soon, through word of mouth, school leaders called me in for coaching, conflict resolution, and other professional development; I took a partnership approach with school leaders across the United States and in other countries. When I look back, it amazes me how I developed as an educational leader in an organic, not planned way, as many, many women do.

      Both of us could add to our stories, listing barriers we encountered or sometimes created ourselves. Hopefully, you’ve reflected on the guiding questions at the beginning of this chapter so you can compare the thoughts you have about becoming a leader with the difficulties other women have navigated.

      Leadership barriers take many forms, from unconscious biases about looks or attire to blatant sexism around maintaining traditional patriarchal leadership expectations. Conversations with female educators have shown us that many cannot adeptly recognize these barriers, including those they create on their own. Instead, they often believe they themselves are the problem in need of a solution. We’ve observed that women underestimate their capacity for school leadership. Often, women have inaccurately high notions of the skills and experience that leadership requires, or they lack confidence and thus struggle to articulate their accomplishments or career aspirations.

      Barbara’s experiences guided her into research focused not only on women and leadership but also on championing school leadership development and professional learning more broadly. Recognition, recruitment, development, induction, transition, and ongoing renewal are essential, not just nice to have, to ensure that every school has high-quality and well-supported education leaders. To highlight the changes needed in each of these areas if women are to step in and step up, and to help you prepare to navigate the gender barriers in school leadership, consider the following.

      • What women want

      • What gets in the way

      • What women can do

What Women Want

      Just the United States and Australia alone have more than one hundred thousand primary and secondary schools, all of which need talented, high-performing leaders—several for each site (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018; NCES, n.d.b). Every student in every school deserves leaders who commit to ensuring incredible student outcomes by enabling teacher professional growth and engaging their school communities.

      A good leader inspires people

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