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 a few 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 #3.

Argument: Women just aren’t suited for leadership positions.

This argument is a tough one. It is not often stated explicitly but instead undergirds a lot of the biases against women in leadership and so it is essential to address it. We often see it embedded in coded language, like the language I discussed in my last blog, which implies or directly states that women can’t handle the pressure of leadership. Even journals that ostensibly promote female leadership use coded language, as evidenced by a quote from a May 30th article from Education Week , which states that women “prefer teaching and being close to students. The hours [of work] are punishing, school board politics can be brutal, and public scrutiny is intense. The average superintendent stays on the job less than five years. For some women, that uncertainty is not worth uprooting their families.” The force of this quote, intentional or not, is that women cannot handle the demands of the job as well as their male counterparts; they are simply not built for it. And yet, study after study tells us that this is simply not true. 

These studies consistently reference how hard women must work to achieve leadership or managerial roles. I can’t help here but come back to Alyssa Mastromonaco (we’re admittedly a little obsessed). A Georgetown University report entitled, “Women Can’t Win” finds that while women outnumber men at all levels of higher education, women have to have more degrees than men in order to achieve equivalent earning power and salaries. In the hiring process, women have to prove they can be successful before they even get the job. But once they become leaders, a Harvard Business Review study finds, women score consistently higher on leadership indicators, most notably “takes initiative”, “practices self-development”, and “displays high integrity and honesty”. I think we can all agree these are characteristics we love in schools and school leaders! So how can we get more women leaders into our schools? First, stop entertaining discussions about women being less suited for leadership. 

But how can you do that in your school? Look out for the coded language. Listen up (and interject) when people ask: 

• How will she balance the demands of her family with the demands of the job?
• Is she tough enough to handle the job -or- Is she is too harsh to lead?
• How will her age influence her leadership capacity? 
• Does she require more experience to meet the demands of her position? (Even when she has comparable experience to male candidates?)

You might be thinking that these things never happen in your interview or evaluation committees. And yet, we know they do. A friend recently relayed to me an anecdote about a colleague and member of an assistant principal search committee. This person questioned the seriousness of the female finalist in comparison to the male finalist for the position. The reason he perceived her as less serious? She wore a sweater set and pencil skirt and not a suit, like the man had worn. No one on the committee said anything and my friend was horrified by this comment and by her own silence in the committee. She didn’t want to be perceived as being difficult but it bothered her for months afterwards. So the best advice I can give comes directly from our friends at Homeland Security: If you see something (or hear something), say something. You’ll be glad you did.