Educational Leadership and Gender

This entry examines the role that gender has played in the selection of leaders as well as in the way leadership is carried out. Gender adds a diverse perspective to the traditional White male world of school administration.

Since the beginning of the 20th century when school administrator hierarchies became the dominant organizing framework in U.S. schools, educational administration has been dominated by White men. As the levels of the administrative hierarchy increased, the number of women obtaining administrative positions decreased. Although opportunities for administrators of color were available in racially segregated schools, many of those opportunities disappeared with the school desegregation that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Although women have been overrepresented in elementary teaching and slightly underrepresented at ...