Leaders with a diverse set of experiences, viewpoints, and backgrounds are crucial to encouraging different perspectives, broadening an institution's world views, and fostering innovation particularly important at colleges and universities responsible for educating and training future leaders, workers, and citizens. Studies show that gender…

To date western feminist scholarship on gender and work has primarily focused on women providing valuable information as to their discrimination and invisibility, especially in the echelons of power and in senior decision-making positions. Feminist scholars have needed to explore women's under representation in senior leadership positions because…

In colleges and universities throughout the United States, women are underrepresented at the rank of full professor. This national pattern holds true at two highly selective small private liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, one formerly a men's college and the other formerly a women's college. Analysis of personnel data at the former women's…

Despite gains overall, women are still under-represented in leadership positions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Data in the US suggest around one-quarter of deans and department heads are women; in science this drops to nearly 1 in 20. Part of this problem of under-representation stems from the population pool:…

Women have increasingly moved toward greater gender equality at home and in the workplace. Yet, women are still underrepresented in leadership roles and still considered an anomaly compared to men when in high positions of leadership especially within institutions of higher education. In examining differences between how men and women lead, it is…

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a regional economic grouping of 15 countries whose common vision is to promote economic, social and political development and growth. Arguably, sustainable growth can be realized if there is equal access to all positions of power and influence in the area, but an investigation of 117…

Little did I know when I first stepped into that ninth grade classroom as a very young, timid, first year teacher at Brooks County High School in Quitman, Georgia, that I'd still be plugging away in this profession almost 50 years later! The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective perspective on the status of women in educational…

Despite the almost equal proportion of females to males who receive doctoral degrees in the U.S., women remain underrepresented in senior positions--faculty and administrative--in institutions of higher education. Unlike the more blatant discrimination extant before the era of civil rights legislation, barriers today are less obvious to the…

Women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and in STEM leadership positions. According to the most recent data available from the National Science Foundation, in academia only 31% of full-time STEM faculty and 27% of STEM deans and department heads are women. By comparison at Stevenson…

The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions in higher education is well documented. There are a number of potential reasons for this gender disparity, but gender discrimination appears to be an important maintenance factor. The paper proposes a taxonomy of gender microaggressions, which are forms of gender discrimination, to help…

The article examines the major influences of the black Zimbabwean boundless-extended family system on the professional trajectories of women leaders working within the higher education system of Zimbabwe. The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted with thirty female leaders who shared information about their major family responsibilities.…

This study documented the experiences of women college presidents in associate, baccalaureate, masters and doctoral institutions in the United States. Using the quantitative and qualitative methods, the researcher looked at the women college presidents' perceptions on how gender affects leadership abilities, professional relationships, and…

The United States Census Bureau characterized the position of school superintendent as being the most male-dominated executive position of any profession in the United States (Glass, Bjork, & Brunner, 2001). Paul Houston, president of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) has stated that the future of school system…

As we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the globalization and privatization of the academy is destabilizing the patterns of university professional work developed over the past hundred years (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). To grasp the extent of changes taking place and to understand the forces of change on women in…