Reconsidering Feminist Research in Educational Leadership

Abstract

Research on women in U.S. educational leadership changed substantially during the second half of the twentieth century. Numerous scholars have chronicled and categorized these changes and have described periods or phases through which research on female educational leaders has passed (e.g., Banks, 1995; Blount, 1998; Marshall, this volume; Shakeshaft, 1987, 1999). From its virtual nonexistence prior to the early 1960s, through a largely positivistic and functionalist period in the late 1960s and 1970s, to a span of increasingly sophisticated work in the 1980s and 1990s, the field has both expanded and evolved. Especially within the past two decades, feminist epistemology and advocacy have played important roles in shaping the changes in the field. Through feminist research in educational leadership we have learned much about how gender inequalities were created and structured within our systems of school administration and how they are maintained and perpetuated (Bell, 1988; Estler, 1975). Feminist research on school leadership has documented, among other things, the persistent underrepresentation of women in high-paying and prestigious leadership positions (Blount, 1998; Glass, 1992). It has revealed the ceiling that keeps women out of upper management positions and has shown us that this ceiling is glass if one is White, but concrete if one is a woman of color (Alston, 1999; Banks, 1995; Jackson, 1999; Ortiz, 1999). Researchers of gender and educational leadership also have centered women in their work and have explored the characteristics of women leaders and the institutional and professional cultures within which they work