Women Doing Leadership

This chapter focuses on women’s leadership in HE by drawing on relevant literature and the data analysis from our study, which takes a close look at self-reported leadership activities as well as the leadership they observe in their institutions. For study participants, engagement with leadership and self-perceived leadership skills and levels of activity were consistently high. These women tended to see themselves as relational more than assertive in their leadership, but quite assertive, nevertheless. We also found that up to a third of participants reported having been in a near-impossible leadership situation. Having formal leadership responsibilities was associated with wanting to rise to a very senior position, while seeking leadership opportunities and engaging in informal leadership was linked with wanting to be of service to the organisation, suggesting a significant and partially untapped altruistic motivation for leadership. Women who worked part-time, had significant caring responsibilities, and more generally saw work as not their central life interest were just as keen to engage with leadership as others, even though participants with formal leadership responsibilities tended to report more work interference with home life. Overall, the data highlight that many women are enacting or seeking opportunities to enact leadership in HE.