Since the inception of Aequitas Educational Consulting, friends and co-workers have asked a million questions, which we love. Commonly, they ask why this work is important. We’ve got lots of answers for that! Sometimes, we hear arguments against the work; individuals contest that it isn’t needed or it isn’t really what schools should be doing right now. These discussions can be tough, but they are essential. My blog series, which kicked off two weeks ago, addresses these criticism and questions. We want to have more of these conversations and we want to engage them with data rather than anecdotes. In the spirit of bridge-building, this week brings you Argument #2.

Argument #2: Fewer women are in school leadership roles because there are not as many qualified female applicants as qualified male applicants.

We hear this a lot. Frankly, it’s a tough one for me. In order to respond, I have to ask further questions – most importantly, what makes an applicant qualified for a school leadership role? Though there are certainly objective qualifications, such as certification, many of the skills that we believe administrators need cannot be as easily quantified.

A quote from Alyssa Mastromonaco’s book, which Lauren cited previously, quickly came to mind when I was writing this post.  Women are expected to prove that they can do the job before they get a shot at it. Men are assumed to have the skills to do the job and so they get a shot at it. This difference in expectation often manifests in coded language that emerges in job descriptions and interviews. For example, phrases like “teaching tough kids”, “have difficult conversations”, or “dealing with discipline problems” often suggest more than a skillset for administrators; this language instead suggests the kind of person who is an administrator.

We also hear regular mentions of women being described as “aggressive” or “abrasive” when they demonstrate the characteristics that, in men, are described as “assertive” or “direct”. Study after study, as explained by this New York Times article, reveals that when research participants are asked to picture leaders, they picture men, and when they identify characteristics we value in leaders, we pick out those that we associate with men. Remember those coded phrases above? Tough, discipline, and difficult often reference skills and demeanors for which men are lauded and women are ridiculed.

In fact, as explained in the same NYT article, men gain professional status for speaking up at work in a way that women do not. Now, our brains certainly aren’t doing this on purpose. In fact, you are likely sitting there thinking how much you would love to see more female leaders, if the qualified women would just apply.

It is true that you are likely seeing fewer female applicants. That is due, in part, to the factors described above, and in part to the lack of mentoring and support for budding female leaders in schools. Speaking just from my own experience, when I decided at the age of 29 to go back to school to pursue a PhD in educational leadership, countless people pointed out how young I was and how I should probably teach for a few more years. At the same time, I watched males without advanced degrees, in my own district and in other districts, be promoted to positions such as department head, assistant principal, and teacher evaluator, without a mention of their age and status. Mentorship of the next generation of leaders is essential and yet women are often left out of these structures, often because of a belief that younger women will not be able to lead, will struggle with conflict, or will be perceived as weaker because of their age and experience.

If you find yourself making the argument that there are few women in school leadership because they simply do not apply for those roles, ask yourself about how you engage with women in your organization. Do you nurture leaders of all genders and promote promising educators from within? Do you include people of all genders and leadership styles on your hiring committees? Have you asked someone to review your job postings and interview protocols in order to check for biased or coded language? Do you really hold people of all genders to the same hiring standards? Lastly, ask yourself how you can recruit female talent from outside (perhaps through job fairs and professional networks) so that, in creating a more representative workforce, you can shift the field away from believing that women are less qualified than men simply because of their gender.

- Amy

PS: We just launched a new feature on our website - Resources! For more like today’s blog, check out the Leadership tab.