Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building 1032418532, 9781032418537

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“Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building: Voices from across the Globe provides an outstanding collection of and valuable addition to research on women in educational leadership that expands the conversation on women leaders in countries typically underrepresented. This multicultural tapestry makes a critical yet constructive examination of the progress, successes, and challenges women leaders face as they strive for equity and justice. The authors explore women’s experiences in a variety of educational leadership positions, highlighting their courage and hope for women globally. I highly recommend this important work for all scholars and practitioners to expand on and amplify the voices of women in education leadership.” Elizabeth C. Reilly, Chair International Special Interest Group, American Educational Reearch Association, professor, educational leadership and administration, School of Education, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA “This book makes a timely and long overdue contribution to research on women and leadership. It moves beyond the ‘anglosphere’ where much of the research has engaged and in doing, provides a unique and fresh lens on this topic. This book is a ‘must-read’ for all those committed to equity and social justice in education.” Professor Jane Wilkinson, Monash University, joint editor, Journal of Education Administration and History “Brilliant book that is well overdue and gives voice to the many women that are still to be heard.” Victoria Showunmi, Associate professor of education, University College London “The voice of women leaders in education sing out in this book. The authors explore educational leadership through the lens of underrepresented groups with a welcome inclusion of Islamic and Eastern education systems. Individual voices share how they overcome cultural and ethnic barriers. Their collective voice recognizes women leaders need to be supported and celebrated from where they stand. A glorious way to disrupt the status quo!” Vivienne Porritt, Order of the British Empire, cofounder and strategic leader of WomenEd

Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building

This book foregrounds the voices of women in educational leadership to draw on the power of diverse perspectives and to create an environment that better embraces a broad range of leadership styles. Chapters explore formal and informal women’s educational leadership practices and examine the methods and approaches used by successful women leaders across West Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Australia. The book examines how best to humanize educational leadership in a way that invests in the unique skills and talents that women leaders possess, and it identifies a leadership model that is situated within a range of intersecting theoretical frameworks that revolve around collective leadership, transformation theories, and community partnerships. In doing so, the book elevates education into the sphere of comprehensiveness, inclusion, equity, sustainability, and social justice. By sharing the lived experience of women leaders using a multi-perspective narrative approach, the book develops and hones exemplary educational leadership and community-engaged practices for the good of all. This volume will be key reading for scholars, doctoral students, and researchers engaged in fields such as education policy, women’s studies, and international and comparative education, among others. Dr. Khalid Arar is a professor of educational leadership and policy, College of Education at Texas State University, Texas, USA and an associate editor of the International Journal of Leadership in Education. Dr. Rania Sawalhi is a mother of five amazing children and adults. She earned her PhD in educational leadership from the University of Warwick, UK. Rania launched educational leadership labs and is the cofounder of WOMENEDMENA, LIFE, and many other initiatives. She currently works in the Qatar Foundation. Dr. Rida Blaik Hourani is an associate professor. Rida Blaik Hourani earned her PhD in Education policy and management from the University of Melbourne. Rida Blaik Hourani has worked in the Middle East and Australia and researches policy, educational leadership, school reforms, educational transformation, sociology of education, and social justice. Dr. Trista Hollweck is a pracademic who straddles the world of research, policy, and practice. She is a former teacher, vice-principal, and school district consultant and currently the director of the ARC Education Project (University of Ottawa) and co-lead of the Canadian Playful Schools Network. Dr. Corinne Brion is an assistant professor at the University of Dayton. Her research focus is cultural proficiency, equity, diversity, inclusion, and how culture affects women in leadership positions.

Educational Leadership for an Equitable, Resilient and Sustainable Future Series editors: Khalid Arar, Miguel Guajardo, Meng Tian, and Linyuan Guo-Brennan

This timely series brings cutting-edge knowledge and research about equity, inclusion, and sustainability to the field of educational leadership, re-examining the need for educational leaders, administrators, and community builders to contribute to a more equitable and resilient society. Books in the series demonstrate an interdisciplinary, intersectoral, and decolonial leadership approach to building equitable, resilient, and sustainable institutions and communities across different nations, and propose concrete suggestions for better ways to invite marginalised groups to participate in the organisation and community building that leads to a sustainable and resilient future. Truly international in nature, books in the series will appeal to researchers, scholars, academics, and students who research and study educational leadership progression across the globe. Readers should have certain knowledge about education systems and the ongoing geopolitical environment that is shaping and shaped by education practices across all levels. Books in the series include: Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building Voices from across the Globe Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Rida Blaik Hourani, Trista Hollweck, and Corinne Brion Islamic-Based Educational Leadership, Administration and Management Global Critical Insights Edited by Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Amaarah DeCuir, and Tasneem Amatullah For more information about the series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Educational-Leadership-for-an-Equitable-Resilient-and-SustainableFuture/book-series/ELERSF

Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building Voices from across the Globe

Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Rida Blaik Hourani, Trista Hollweck and Corinne Brion

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Rida Blaik Hourani, Trista Hollweck, & Corinne Brion The right of Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Rida Blaik Hourani, Trista Hollweck, & Corinne Brion to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Arar, Khalid, author. | Sawalhi, Rania, author. | Hourani, Rida Blaik Hourani, author. | Brion, Corinne, author. | Hollweck, Trista, author. Title: Women in educational leadership and community building : voices from across the globe / Khalid Arar, Rania Sawalhi, Rida Blaik Hourani, Trista Hollweck & Corinne Brion. Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Educational Leadership for an Equitable, Resilient and Sustainable Future | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022041293 (print) | LCCN 2022041294 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032418537 (Hardback) | ISBN 9781032418544 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781003360063 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Educational leadership--Cross-cultural studies. | Women school administrators--Cross-cultural studies. | Women college administrators--Cross-cultural studies. | Community and school--Cross-cultural studies. | Community and college--Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC LB2806 .A618 2023 (print) | LCC LB2806 (ebook) | DDC 371.2/011--dc23/eng/20220922 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041293 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041294 ISBN: 978-1-032-41853-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-41854-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-36006-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063 Typeset in Baskerville by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

This book is dedicated to the incredible women educational leaders who have shared their stories with us. We celebrate and thank you for your generosity of spirit, strength, resilience, compassion, collaborative and collective efforts, and powerful leadership skills. We are forever grateful for the opportunity to learn with and from you. We hope this book captures your experience and inspires many more women leaders to lead from where they stand. And especially for Salam Kanaan (September 11, 1962–May 27, 2021). We mourn your loss, but your leadership legacy lives on.

Contents

List of illustrations x About the Authors xi Acknowledgment xii Preface xiii 1 Women in educational leadership and community building: An introduction

1

2 Women leaders: Space, place, role, and change

21

3 Women enhancing change through social justice

40

4 Women’s collective leadership: A comprehensive transformation

55

5 Women and power dynamics: A covert revolution

75

6 A new wave of women’s educational leadership

93

7 Beyond education: Empowerment model

110

8 Women’s educational leadership: Concluding thoughts

126

Index 132

Illustrations

Figures .1 4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7

Collective leaders enhancing transformation The four key domains of the women’s leadership model Self-knowledge cycle Think as a designer (adapted from Sawalhi et al., 2020) Directions for building individual capacities and change Women’s leadership empowerment model Model stages & implications Assessment cycle for model implementation

56 113 114 115 120 121 122 122

Tables .1 2 4.1

Table adopted from Henry and Pringle (1996, p. 99) Features, implications, and praxis of collective leadership

23 58

About the Authors

Dr. Khalid Arar is a professor of educational leadership and policy, College of Education at Texas State University, Texas, USA, and an associate editor of the International Journal of Leadership in Education. Dr. Rania Sawalhi is a mother of five amazing children and adults. She earned her PhD in educational leadership from the University of Warwick, UK. Rania launched educational leadership labs and is the cofounder of WOMENEDMENA, LIFE, and many other initiatives. She currently works in the Qatar Foundation. Dr. Rida Blaik Hourani is an associate professor. Rida Blaik Hourani earned her PhD in Education policy and management from the University of Melbourne. Rida Blaik Hourani has worked in the Middle East and Australia and researches policy, educational leadership, school reforms, educational transformation, sociology of education, and social justice. Dr. Corinne Brion is an assistant professor at the University of Dayton. Her research focus is cultural proficiency, equity, diversity, inclusion, and how culture affects women in leadership positions. Dr. Trista Hollweck is a pracademic who straddles the world of research, policy, and practice. She is a former teacher, vice-principal, and school district consultant and currently the director of the ARC Education Project (University of Ottawa) and co-lead of the Canadian Playful Schools Network.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to express sincere gratitude to all the women leaders who participated in the first-hand interviews coming from different places, cultures, and geographies including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia, Palestine, Lebanon, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, UK, Australia, and Canada. This book wouldn’t have come to fruition without your transparent and powerful narratives. As authors, we were fortunate to witness your successes and challenges and remain humbled by your determination, strength, and ability to navigate patriarchal and traditional cultures. We are inspired by your stamina and desire to impact education in your nations. We are thankful for what you taught us about your respective cultures, leadership, and community impact. Finally, our thanks to our parents for enlisting in each of us the value of education, learning, and contributing to a better community and society. The first author is also grateful for the editors of the Journal of Education Administration: Professor Jayson Richardson and Professor Chen Schechter, and for Emerald Publishers, who allowed him permission to republish part of his article: Arar, K. (2018). Arab women’s educational leadership and the implementation of social justice in schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 56(1), 18–32. Khalid, Rania, Rida, Trista, and Corinne

Preface

If the mind of a woman is humiliated and dies, the mind of the entire nation has withered and died. —Tawfiq al-Hakim Women’s educational leadership has received vast attention in the last three decades in the global North in general and in Anglophonic societies. Yet marginalized and underrepresented women’s voices in these societies still need to be heard equally (Coleman, 2011; Fuller et al 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Robinson et al., 2017). To date, women’s voices are scantly covered in the global South, despite greater visibility in public spheres and advancement in management and leadership careers (Fitzgerald, 2010; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2010; Lumby & Azaola, 2011, 2014). Additionally, the voices from Indigenous and marginalized women leaders from West Africa in low-fee private and public school contexts are notably missing. Although there are various books, authored and edited, on educational management, administration, and leadership, few have highlighted the strategies employed by women leaders to overcome cultural and ethnic related challenges or obstacles that underpin school leadership and their critical influence and delimitations on education and society. Whereas only a few texts have touched upon the issues and barriers encountered by women in their capacities as leaders, they are situated mostly in American and other Anglophonic societies (e.g., Brunner & Grogan, 2007; Coleman, 2011; Featherstone & Porritt, 2020; Fuller et al., 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Porritt & Featherstone, 2019). Until this time, there has been no attempt to trace the qualities that feature in the feminine approach to leadership, especially in areas such as the global South. The comprehensive title of our book, Women in Educational Leadership and Community Building: Voices from across the Globe, is the first attempt to present a new way of looking at the characteristics of underrepresented women leaders, anchored in the research on women leaders in education. The book addresses women’s leadership and how as collective leaders they facilitate transformation. It weaves a multicultural tapestry that captures diverse women’s voices and portrays a covert revolution characterized by multi-perspective changes in people, organizations, and communities. Transformation at the public

xiv Preface level is evidenced through the construction and monitoring of policies, which facilitates robust systemic changes. This book explores formal and informal women’s educational leadership practices and how to humanize educational leadership in a way that invests in women leaders’ uniqueness, skills, and talents. In addition, this book aims to drive educators away from regular stereotypes associated with male and female leadership roles. The book celebrates women leaders’ roles and achievements throughout their professional journey of self-empowerment and empowering of others in the midst of a neoliberal era that features traumas resulting from displacement, wars, inequities, and social injustices. The book identifies a leadership model that is situated within a range of intersecting theoretical frameworks that revolve around collective leadership, transformation theories, and community partnerships as a way to elevate education into the sphere of comprehensiveness, inclusion, equity, sustainability, and social justice. Using a narrative approach that reflects women’s voices, this book opens the door for educators and policy makers to explore new insights of transformation given the 21st-century crossroads, where cultural, ethnic, political, social, and economic conditions present stressful demands that require multidimensional and multiple responses in a progressive and dynamic manner in order to humanize education as an integrated and interdisciplinary ecosystem. Specifically, our book focuses on “what leadership is for and how best to draw on the power of diverse perspectives on educational leadership” (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2010, p. 47) while shedding some light on women’s educational leadership in different global cultural contexts (Arar, 2018a). In addition, it aims to maintain originality and individuality, highlight the important role of social justice, and support women educational leaders to lead from where they stand (Arar, 2018a). This book challenges current trends and opens the door for both women and men to benefit from new insights to better understand one another and work collaboratively. This book does not explore educational leadership through a feminist lens but offers a new perspective that takes into consideration religion, as well as cultural tacit and explicit norms (Arar, 2018b). The authors posit that women leaders tend to bring an instructional focus to leadership, include spiritual and community engaged dimensions in their work, and seek to achieve a balance between their personal and professional realms and contributions. Examining the methods and approaches used by successful women leaders across the Middle East, South Africa, Europe, North America, and Australia, the authors seek to answer important questions concerning women leaders’ promotion of equity and justice and offer suggestions and ideas for developing and honing exemplary educational leadership and community engaged practices. The book is divided into eight chapters including an introduction and conclusion. The introduction (Chapter 1) presents the book’s authors and outlines our collective impetus to explore women’s leadership stemming from our own positionalities, professional life experiences, and

Preface  xv epistemology. We set out to redefine women’s educational leadership as the process of developing the whole human through both formal educational organizations, such as schools, and informal educational settings within communities, the health and community sectors, or edutainment. As a collective, we challenge the current prevailing theories of educational administration and associated cultural practices that tend to favor certain images of male and female leaders. Specifically, in response to the recent interest in examining the lives of women leaders and portraying their functional roles in educational institutions from feminist and sociopolitical viewpoints, we offer a new view of women’s leadership that recognizes the uniqueness and context in each woman’s story. Importantly, this view takes religion into consideration, as well as cultural tacit and explicit norms. Considering that knowledge pertaining to gender and educational leadership in developing countries, especially Arab societies, is still relatively limited and that women’s path to leadership is known to be especially difficult, this perspective can open the door for both women and men to benefit from new insights, better understand each other’s unique contributions, and ultimately enhance our collaborative work in educational and community-engaged practices. Chapter 2 explores how women educational leaders engage others by intertwining their personal sphere with the public sphere for greater collective change. Starting with a focus on women’s identity formation in general, we then move to consider women’s leadership identity, the impact of displacement in both a geographic and positional sense, and ultimately how transformation can occur in a neoliberal era. Whereas neoliberalism centers competitive self-interest, the women in this book offer a counter-narrative in that they prioritize societal and community development in their leadership work. Since women’s beliefs toward their roles are shaped by religion, culture, and tradition, education is a vital and necessary right in helping women and girls better understand the factors that shape their professional involvement and experiences. As mothers, aunts, and local leaders, many participants influence how leadership is conceptualized and set the standards for empowerment, professional aspirations, and success in their families and communities. However, displacement—in both its geographical and positional senses—continues to constrain, challenge, and empower women leaders’ personal and professional experiences. With the number of displaced women and girls in Africa and the Middle East consistently high due to conflict and violence, there is an urgent need to support women as advocates and role models in their formal and informal leadership work. Chapter 3 examines how women leaders have triggered policy changes anchored in principle of social justice (SJ) at the educational, social, and community levels. SJ promotes the view that it is the duty of society and its institutions to advance economic welfare for all its members. Specifically, this chapter highlights how language and inclusion policies were influenced and how transformation was galvanized in the public sphere.

xvi Preface Whereas there is aspiration for school policies and praxis to further address discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization, the status quo is often maintained through the power distribution inherent in educational organizations whereby certain groups are favored over others. Women educational leaders in patriarchal contexts as one such group are propelled to introduce principles of SJ in their leadership work in an effort to fight traditional social systems. To ensure comprehensive and equal involvement of the population in public education, school cultures need to be democratic, inclusive, equitable, humanistic, and empowering with resources distributed equally, with all students experiencing physical and mental security. The narratives of the women leaders in this chapter highlight the important contribution women principals and superintendents make to school transformation in Islamic and Eastern education systems. These women leaders promoted SJ in their schools through a pedagogy of care, empowerment, and accessibility. They demonstrated perseverance, courage, determination, and the power of social comradeship in facing multiple barriers in hostile contexts and become agents for change and to reduce educational and societal gaps. They worked to promote professional collaboration and discourse, construct a guiding vision of equitable education, and employ goal-oriented planning and performance. As their stories reveal, it was not only the effect of personality factors, values, and their sense of personal responsibility that contributed to their social commitment to equity and justice, but also their backgrounds, personal difficulties faced in childhood, and constraining rules and regulations experienced in their local communities and societies. Chapter 4 focuses on women’s collective leadership. It showcases the capacity of formal and informal women leaders in the fields of education, social work, and community development to facilitate economic and educational sustainability, social equity, and social justice. Collective leadership in this context is described as shared leadership where women leaders work collaboratively toward a shared organizational goal and vision. It is a move away from the traditional notions and perspective of command-and-control models of leadership to more authentic engagement, shared learning, reflection, and mutual accountability. In their capacity as leaders, the women negotiated power, as well as practiced autonomy and agency by using approaches that are socioculturally contextualized. The stories in this chapter reveal how the women leaders worked as community builders and often performed tasks and initiatives above and beyond traditional educational leadership. Despite facing numerous constraints and multidimensional challenges, their collective leadership work is visionary, inspirational, and motivational. They not only empower themselves, but as mentors, coaches, problem-solvers, and leaders they also empowered others such as refugees, special education students, and marginalized minority groups. Relationships, interdisciplinarity, distributed practice, and sustainability are at the heart of their leadership efforts which extend across vertical and horizontal community and public levels. Trust, empowerment,

Preface  xvii support of others, and optimizing human capacity are critical elements of collective leadership and catalyze meaningful and multifaceted transformational and transformative social change. Chapter 5 examines how women leaders employ shared leadership strategies in their educational and community leadership practices, which enables them to challenge the status quo and promote equity and diversity. This collective leadership approach is likened to a covert revolution whereby women in formal and informal leadership positions harness the power of diverse people to better understand and negotiate power, autonomy, and agency and mobilize transformation. This chapter’s stories of the women principals in public and low-fee private schools in Africa show how women leaders used their unique leadership styles, organically created support systems, and passion for societal improvement to navigate and covertly challenge patriarchal cultural norms. By simply doing their jobs well, making critical improvements to their schools, and helping students perform better, they gained the respect of their families, colleagues, and community members to foster gender equity and catalyze transformational change. Despite the gender stereotypes, discrimination, and inequity that favor men in educational administrative positions, these women leaders not only excelled as school principals but highlighted the importance of care giving and community building as well as harnessing collectivism in their work. The propensity to learn with and from peers was enhanced through existing networks and associations. As leaders in the home and community, they brought a democratic, participatory, and empathetic approach that built genuine relationships with teachers, staff, students, and community members. The women leaders showcased in this chapter were good communicators, community-oriented, and powerful role models for students in their school and not only navigated the power dimension and hierarchy but used it to their advantage to exercise their own leadership style and transform their families and communities. Chapter 6 moves from the exploration of women’s informal and formal educational leadership to take on board the role and disposition of women entrepreneurship and more specifically, women educational entrepreneurship. As discussed earlier, women leaders, especially those in developing countries, face numerous challenges and limitations because of tacit and explicit sociocultural norms, gender discrimination and stereotyping, as well as geographical and positional displacement. In response to these challenges, the women in this chapter describe how they started small businesses and projects, which have not only helped them support themselves and their families but also had an impact on their communities, institutions, and organizations. This chapter highlights how these women leaders often started their leadership work, such as a new private school, without funding, any prior training, or advance preparation. However, it is through their hard work, collective leadership, problem-solving, and perseverance in the face of challenges, constraints, and resistance that they were able to thrive as entrepreneurs. Framed by four types of

xviii Preface entrepreneurship—business, social, public, and cultural—the narratives of the women leaders in this chapter provide powerful examples of how women entrepreneurs were able to overcome the gender gap, contribute to the economic advancement and growth of their communities, promote social inclusion, and combat poverty and discrimination. Additionally, these women entrepreneurs contributed to their communities and systems by humanizing different products through their use of empathy and embedding entrepreneurial skills and dispositions into all areas of their lives, such as cooking, raising children, and beyond. To further develop and sustain women entrepreneurs in developing countries and across the globe, further support and resources are needed. First, more meaningful entrepreneurial training is required, with financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills embedded within educational systems in the early years and in curricula more broadly. Second, communities and networks of support for women entrepreneurs should be facilitated so that women leaders can share their experiences, ideas, and opportunities and mentor one another and grow as a collective within the educational sector. Chapter 7 focuses on the importance of support for women educational leaders in building leadership capacity, accessing equitable access to leadership positions, and navigating cultural and other explicit and tacit norms they experience once in these positions. Meaningful support, training, and resources will not only impact women leaders but also have the potential to transform societies by eradicating poverty, fostering gender equity, and modeling girls’ empowerment. As the stories from women leaders in this chapter highlight, educational leadership can be formal and/or informal, sought after, emerging by default, or assumed through nomination and/ or inheritance. Their leadership practices are situated within the wider parameters of an interdisciplinary and integrated ecological system that includes many factors, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, family, religion, politics, and society. Representing a wide range of circumstances and contexts, the women’s stories in this chapter showcase the importance of ecological leadership, role modeling, mentoring, and self-empowerment. These stories highlight how when women leaders deeply understand the self—historically, biologically, culturally, and politically—their leadership practices are further enhanced and can lead to the empowerment of others in their home, work, and community. As such, the four stages model outlined in this chapter recognizes that different circumstances and contexts may require different leadership capabilities and that there is no one-size-fits-all model for women educational leaders. This chapter ends with a call for more women educational leadership programs to be designed based on women’s needs and experiences and to help participants better understand the nature of the challenges they face as women leaders, develop critical communication and negotiation skills, and create essential networks of collective support. These programs must also consider the sociocultural context of the women leaders and provide participants with the necessary support to foster transformational

Preface  xix change at familial, local, and systemic levels. Through their different roles as mothers, wives, sisters, and colleagues, there is a large scope to support women to lead from where they stand. In this sense, women’s educational leadership is conceptualized as having a ripple effect whereby changes and development work initiated at the local level can stretch out toward the community and public sphere. Chapter 8 presents the concluding thoughts of the authors and revisits the purpose and contribution of the book. The women leaders presented not only educate the future citizens of their nations, but through their work in formal and informal educational spaces and places, they are slowly changing the mindsets of men, elders, other women, their communities, and the broader society. Their stories offer powerful examples of how educational leadership practices can lead to both transformational and transformative change. This type of leadership not only involves change for families, communities, and public systems, but also has the powerful potential to address social inequity and injustices. Although each woman’s story was chosen to illuminate women’s educational leadership in developing countries, each narrative is individual, circumstantial, and contextual. The women leaders showcased demonstrate deep self-awareness and an understanding that they are situated within an ecological system with constraints and limitations. Despite these constraints and limitations, they practice collective leadership, and model courage, strength, and persistence as they navigate the cultural and other explicit and tacit norms of their contexts. However, despite the clear impact in their schools and communities, the women leaders also experienced a myriad of microaggressions and sexism that cannot and should not be ignored. Building the leadership capacity of women in developing nations, giving them equitable opportunities and access to leadership positions, and supporting them once in these positions will not only benefit and empower individual girls and women, but also has the potential to transform communities and societies. Thus, there is a need, especially in Islamic and Eastern contexts, to develop platforms for women educational leaders to share best practices and initiatives as well as build supportive networks to further their collective leadership work. To build sustainable outcomes, address social inequities, and reach the Sustainable Development Goals to mitigate and eradicate global poverty in all its forms by 2030, women leaders are a key piece of the puzzle. They must be recognized for their integral role in educational systems in the formal and informal spaces and places they occupy as mothers, wives, sisters, and colleagues. As a global community, we must endeavor to build collaborative networks and to provide resources and funding so that women educational leaders are supported to lead from where they stand. Throughout this book, a series of questions are posed at the end of each chapter. We believe these questions offer a useful starting point for our collective next step and require further consideration and exploration.

xx Preface

References Brunner, C. C., & Grogan, M. (2007). Women Leading School Systems: Uncommon Roads to Fulfillment. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Coleman, M. (2011). Women at the Top: Challenges, Choice and Changes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Featherstone, K., & Porritt, V. (Eds.). (2020). Being 10% Braver. UK: Sage. Fitzgerald, T. (2010). Spaces in-between: Indigenous women leaders speak back to dominant discourses and practices in educational leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 13(1), 93–105. doi: 10.1080/13603120903242923 Fuller, K., Cliffe, J., & Moorsi, P. (2015). Women’s leadership preparation within the senior leadership team. Planning & Changing, 46. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2010). Women and Educational Leadership. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2011). Women and Educational Leadership. California: Jossey-Bass. Lumby, J., & Azaola, C. (2011). Women principals in small schools in South Africa. Australian Journal of Education, 55(1), 73–85. Lumby, J., & Azaola, C. (2014). Women principals in South Africa: Gender, mothering and leadership. British Educational Research Journal, 40(1), 30–44. Porritt, V., & Featherstone, K. (Eds.). (2019). 10% Braver: Inspiring Women to Lead Education. UK: Sage. Robinson, K., Shakeshaft, K., Grogan, M., et al. (2017). Necessary but not sufficient: The continuing inequality between men and women in educational leadership, findings from the AASA Mid-Decade Survey. Frontiers in Education, 2(12). doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00012

1 Women in educational leadership and community building An introduction

Introduction This book moves beyond the traditional feminist perspective wherein women develop their identity in relation to men and equal working conditions. Rather, the stories captured in these pages highlight how women’s educational leadership develops to suit women leaders’ own unique context and needs. As Unterhalter and North (2010) highlight: Effecting equal treatment for women and men is not simply a straightforward question of distributing equal amounts of pay or expenditure on schooling, but it entails understanding, for example, that many women do not work in the formal sector, and that relationships of care within families affect how people engage with public institutions. Confronting the marginalization or trivialisation of matters concerning gender or women’s interest means organizations may need to look beneath processes that assure a surface equality, but in fact maintain deeply entrenched misogynist ideas. (p. 391) By sharing the real stories of women leaders using a multi-perspective narrative approach, this book provides a journey into women’s educational leadership in diversified global contexts. In most societies, women’s access to leadership in the public sphere has been constrained by a series of barriers because of social systems with restrictive expectations and goals. Scholars theorized that men, by nature, seek prestige and status, while women aspire to create successful relationships (Coleman, 2011; Fuller, 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). However, as more women enter the labor market, they begin to seek careers in management and leadership. Women leaders worldwide encounter challenges and barriers to their social and employment mobility, discrimination, and stereotyping (Robinson et al., 2017). Additionally, as Blackmore (1999) explained, men strive to retain and maintain dominance in management: “Administration has become identified with particular ‘masculinist’ cultures, which are hegemonic in particular administrative contexts … the DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-1

2  Women in educational leadership and community building values, ideologies and structures associated with dominant theories of administration and associated cultural practices favor certain images of masculinity” (p. 29). In the USA, over the past 15 years there has been a significant increase in the number of women in educational administration posts, such as principals and superintendents (American Association of School Administrators 2015 Mid-Decade Survey). In Canada, the Survey of Principals from Statistics Canada determined that in the 2004–2005 school year, women accounted for close to half (47%) of principals in the country and were most often working at the elementary level (Blouin, 2006). For example, in Ontario, there has been a steady rise in the number of female principals and superintendents. Since 1998, the number of female principals and vice-principals to male has increased to 62%, and in 2006 almost half of all directors (34 of 72) were women. The profiles of women superintendents are becoming more like those of their male counterparts (Arar, 2022). Men and women are spending about the same amount of time in the teaching profession before their appointment as superintendents, women and men seem to encounter stress similarly, and women are receiving professional shadowing and mentoring much more than in the past. There is also little research that confirms a belief that women superintendents are more burdened and limited by family circumstances than men. Nevertheless, internationally, men are still 40 times more likely than women to work in the most powerful positions in education with key responsibilities (Robinson et al., 2017). Differences in school leaders’ gender appears to affect their career trajectories and personal life, as well as their workplace characteristics. In recent years, there has been development in research investigating women in educational leadership, administration, and management (Arar et al., 2013; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). These studies have examined and described challenges that women leaders have faced and their function in educational institutions from feminist and political viewpoints. Attempts have also been made to examine the work and leadership style of women leaders. Other studies have investigated the social change that women managers have been able to achieve, including their attempts to promote pedagogies of social justice (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Mansfield, 2013).

New perspectives, not new waves As women have been ascending to educational leadership and management posts, research has been revealing their experiences, investigating their stories, exploring their narratives, and conveying their functioning in educational institutions from feminist and other multi-dimensional sociopolitical perspectives (Arar et al., 2013; Fuller, 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Robinson et al., 2017). Attempts have been made to explore and examine whether there are unique feminine leadership and administrative styles, and to point out social and pedagogical progress that women have

Women in educational leadership and community building  3 been able to impact, including prevailing and promoting social justice in educational institutions (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). Having women’s leadership efforts examined through a feminist lens has led to barriers. Because feminism seeks to ensure equal rights for both genders, some scholars have tried to explore women’s leadership successes by claiming a new wave of feminism, such as Islamic feminism (Khalil & DeCuir, 2018). In this book, the authors offer a fresh view of women’s leadership that recognizes the uniqueness in each woman’s story. In this book, we challenge current trends and open the door for both women and men to benefit from new insights to better understand one another and work collaboratively. Although we do not use a feminist lens, we offer a new perspective that takes into consideration religion as well as cultural tacit and explicit norms (Arar, 2018). The women leaders in this book tend to bring an instructional focus to leadership, include spiritual and community engaged dimensions in their work, and strive to achieve a balance between the personal and professional in their contributions. Examining the methods and approaches used by successful women leaders across the MENA region, West Africa, Europe, and Australia, the authors seek to answer important questions concerning women leaders’ promotion of equity and justice and offer suggestions and ideas for developing and honing exemplary educational leadership and community-engaged practices. Few researchers have recognized the barriers and obstacles that women face to attain educational leadership positions. However, exceptional works conducted in Europe and in the USA (Coleman, 2011; Fuller, 2015; Robinson et al., 2017) indicated that women developing a professional career in leadership, including education leadership, face gender-related barriers, gendered role perceptions, cultural perceptions that identify “femininity” with ineffective leadership and managerial practices, covert discrimination against women, and male control of educational management (Blackmore, 2016). Other studies indicated that family-related variables were significant in impeding the development of women leaders (Metcalfe, 2008; Shakeshaft, 2015). Three decades ago, Shakeshaft (1987) identified internal barriers to women’s advancement to managerial positions including “low self-image, lack of confidence, and lack of motivation or aspiration” (p. 83). However, later studies found that previously identified gender-specific attitudinal behaviors tended not to prove true for women leaders (Brunner & Grogan, 2007; Lumby & Azaola, 2014). Other reasons noted as deterring women from executive roles included a lack of female role models and lack of managerial experience and mentoring skills (Coleman, 2011). Similarly, Brunner and Grogan (2007) described the “conspiracy of silence” that thwarted women’s attempts to achieve senior posts, noting how, despite opposition, women have succeeded in educational supervision. Blackmore (1999) showed how women leaders developed strategies to overcome barriers on their way to the top. Until now, little attempt has been made to track the qualities that are featured in the feminine approach to leadership in developing countries (the

4  Women in educational leadership and community building global South), in contrast to the principles of the traditional approach in developed societies, regardless of whether the traditional leader is a woman or a man. “Women and Educational Leadership” (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2010) was the initial attempt to present a novel way of looking at the characteristics of underrepresented women leaders, anchored in researching women leaders in education. Through narratives, we explore formal and informal women’s educational leadership practices and consider ways to humanize educational leadership that invests in women leaders’ uniqueness, skills, and talents. In addition, we challenge educators to move away from stereotypes associated with male and female leadership roles. Rather, we celebrate the originality and individuality of women educational leaders, highlight the important role social justice (SJ) plays in their work, and support them to lead from where they stand (Arar, 2018).

Defining women’s educational leadership Women’s educational leadership has received vast attention in the last three decades in the global North in general, and in Anglophonic societies in particular (e.g., Coleman, 2011; Fuller, 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Lumby & Azaola, 2014; Robinson et al., 2017; Shakeshaft, 1987, 2015). Women’s management and leadership have been explored and discussed in different countries in numerous ways, with a focus on the political (Blackmore, 1999), professional (Oplatka, 2006), gender (Blackmore, 1999; Lumby & Azaola, 2011), and social issues (Fuller, 2015). Across the world, leadership positions have traditionally “belonged” to men (Fuller, 2015; Lumby & Azaola, 2014; Robinson et al., 2017). Brunner and Grogan (2007) described the experience of the few women who entered the traditionally male professional territory of educational leadership as “running with the wolves.” Although women’s existence in these roles is gradually increasing, as noted earlier, it remains marginal (Arar et al., 2013; Lumby & Azaola, 2014). This book defines educational leadership as the process of developing the whole human through formal educational organizations, such as schools and other formal and informal educational settings. We view educational leadership as encompassing numerous educational activities in the health sector, edutainment, in communities, and beyond. The relevant literature has identified certain qualities and characteristics of educational leaders that challenge inequality and inequity within numerous educational settings. Specifically, educational leaders have aimed at promoting social justice practices within the realm of education and community (Arar & Massry-Herzallah, 2016; Brooks & Miles, 2006). It is argued that women educational leaders, while advocating for SJ, have enhanced egalitarian culture and values, and assisted students to reach their potential by ensuring equality of access and supportive policy and actions (Watson & Brooks, 2017). Nevertheless, as Mansfield (2013)

Women in educational leadership and community building  5 pointed out, the main contribution made by women educational leaders was the transformational imprints they have made in terms of school culture becoming more “democratic, participatory and inclusive” (p. 646). Additionally, women leaders have helped their staffs to recognize different types of “inequality, lack of guidance and oppression” (p. 647). Similarly, Rodriguez and Fabionar (2009) noted that women educational leaders “developed the ability to critically analyze the socioeconomic status of the students and the school community” (p. 55), which influenced their understanding of poverty, exclusion, oppression, and repression. Furthermore, women leaders’ recognition of students’ context and background has been shown to enable them to establish trust and distribute necessary resources (Rivera-McCutchen & Watson, 2014). Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011), as well as Newcomb and Welton (2013), found that many women leaders in the studied context, mainly in the USA, who promoted transformational values such as social justice in their schools, had a broad realization of their students’ political-social-economic context. They expressed assertive criticism of the exclusion of students through their chosen leadership style and the values that guided their work. These women provided a personal model and became involved in day-to-day teaching. They had a sense of mission and fought to realize moral principles to increase equality of opportunity for all students in their societies. Despite the increase in recent studies, the voices of underrepresented women leaders still need to be heard equally and transmitted equitably to better understand the various features and components of transformational education and systemic transformation (Coleman, 2011; Fuller, 2015; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Robinson et al., 2017). Additionally, despite a dramatic increase in research on gender and educational leadership in Western Europe and North America during the last three decades (Fuller, 2011; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011), knowledge concerning gender and educational leadership in developing societies is still relatively limited (Arar et al., 2013; Oplatka, 2006). In particular, little is known about cultural determinants affecting women’s leadership in Arab societies. Authors writing in the Gulf States note that, in Arab society, it is widely believed that women’s place is primarily at home. If they are inclined to pursue a profession, their participation is expected to be in areas of education (mainly teaching), health (mainly nursing), and other support or clerical jobs largely at the lower end of organizational hierarchies. Leadership positions are typically reserved for men (Al-Lamsky, 2007; Al-Suwaihal, 2010). “Gender regulation” determines gender norms in all the different dimensions of a particular culture, and a culture may be identified as either modern or traditional according to the extent to which it adopts and enforces a specific gender order. In the regulation of gender roles, a distinction is often drawn between the public and private spheres of human activity (Arar, 2018). The public sphere is the domain where politico-economic needs are met, where relationships are characterized by competitiveness, rationality, and benefit, often considered more suitable for men. The private sphere

6  Women in educational leadership and community building is perceived as an area of intimate relationships, characterized by reciprocity, compromise, concern, and emotion, often considered more suitable for women. Recent studies (Bush, 2014; Bush & Glover, 2016; Fitzgerald, 2010; Lumby & Azaola, 2011; Mestry & Schmidt, 2012; Oplatka, 2006) have described the social barriers and resistance that women from developing countries face when they aspire to reach managerial posts. Women’s path to leadership is especially difficult in these societies. Research has shown that rigid traditional patriarchal norms prevent the appearance of women in the public sphere in these societies and support the maintenance of male dominance in leadership and managerial posts (Arar et al., 2013). The unfolding personal, social, and professional narratives of women leaders necessitated us as scholars to recognize our positionality and epistemologies and consider how they directed us in telling the stories of the many paths women leaders took to attain leadership positions, and their agency and contribution to their societies.

Positionality, epistemology, and inquiry Gross domestic product grows when a country educates its girls and its women. When a corporation employs more women to its senior leadership, the organization performs better financially than when there are only men in the top positions and senior management (Dychtwald & Larson, 2010). In this book, we share the life stories and narratives of women leaders across the MENA region, Europe, West Africa, and Australia. These are the stories of women who forged their way to leadership positions in education, informal education, and social welfare. We describe their challenges, their coping strategies, and their resilience, stamina, and commitment to the advancement and well-being of their society’s members, and their efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. The narratives of women in different life spheres, and their personal, professional, and public engagement offers a view into a multifaceted social world revealing their development, perceptions of various phenomena, and contribution to the profession, the community, and the public sphere. As authors, our impetus to explore women’s leadership and their contribution stems from our own positionality, professional and life experience, and epistemology. Through this book, we hope to get a deeper understanding of women’s educational leadership situated in developing countries and their unique contribution to the field. Researching women in educational leadership has important ontological, epistemological, and social significance. Epistemologically, researching this issue requires complex observation of the human, social, cultural, and institutional levels, contravenes critical lenses, and aspires to provide understanding, listening, and commitment to creating a shared space between diversified peoples and cultures. The five authors of this book—each of whom has dealt separately with the question of women’s challenges, attainment of educational leadership, and contribution in different cultural and social structures,

Women in educational leadership and community building  7 national contexts, and spaces—are rooted in the epistemology and social commitment to just societies. The authors’ positionalities are presented in the following section. Khalid Arar: When I started my career as a teacher in different Palestinian schools, I was constantly aware of the physical presence of the male principal and the authority he radiated through the school building. I grasped the critique of the Palestinian scholar Hisham Sharaby of the structured patriarchy of the male-dominant Palestinian society. At the same time, I also taught in an elementary school, where a pioneer woman had begun to work as the principal. I was therefore able to observe the struggle and social crisis she underwent to reach her position, observing up close her characteristics, daily challenges, and practices that differed so much from those of the male principal I had known as both a student and a teacher. Moving between the two schools gave me an opportunity to see the differences between the two institutions and to discern the difficulties encountered by the woman principal. I heard her first-hand story from a teacher who worked in close cooperation with her, and I witnessed the educational discourse that she tried to promote. Later, during my postgraduate studies, I went back to the woman principal and interviewed her, among others, for my dissertation about women leadership and educational change. Although this was her personal story, it was also the story of a society, and my research became a journey of discovery concerning the Arab Palestinian society of which I was a member. Seven years later, after a short period of teaching, I was nominated to lead a senior high school. Appointment to this senior post was considered a natural promotion for me as an Arab male. My selection for such an important role, at the age of 33, revived previous thoughts concerning the obstacles that ambitious Arab women encounter. This reality evoked numerous moral questions: Why did I have more rights than a woman? What public spaces were open to me as opposed to those available to Arab women? These questions opened up an additional sphere of inquiry, leading me to investigate the “women’s path” and discovering that their movements were essentially restricted to an area between the domestic space and the educational space. Since then, these questions navigated my research agenda about Palestinian Arab women aspiring to educational leadership positions and their double marginality both in a male-dominated society and a minority controlled by a colonial ethnonational racist regime. Rania Sawalhi: I am originally from Palestine, born in Kuwait, raised in Jordan, and currently living in Qatar with most of my family settled in the USA. I was raised in a household that followed my father’s rules, which included not allowing my mother to work as a teacher although she graduated from a private secondary school in Palestine where she learned three languages (Arabic, English, and French). I saw how she influenced everyone she met and encouraged them to learn and to discover their strengths. There was a huge difference between my grandfather’s beliefs and how he treated women, including my mother, and my father’s practices. When

8  Women in educational leadership and community building my husband proposed, I asked him to promise me that he will allow me to work, regardless of whether it was a formal position or a voluntary work aiming to help unprivileged women and children. Since then, he has tried his best to support and help me. Even more, he will insist that I “lean in” when I think that I will not be able to deal with my different roles as a mother of five pursuing postgraduate studies, a full-time job, and voluntary work. Interestingly, the first question I am asked by others those around me is, “How does your husband allow you to do all of this?” I joined senior school leadership roles as an academic vice-principal when I was in my late 20s, facing many challenges with long working hours. I had no one to help me as I was living away from my family with three young children at that time—except my mother’s voice over the phone telling me how to accept imperfection and not to compare myself with her way of raising us. Her voice was so calm, so confident, so encouraging, and so believing. During my work as a principal and then in higher education as a supervisor of student teachers I would always try to help other women to find their inner voice and strength. I was part of an International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI)/Journal of Professional Capital and Community (JPCC) 2020 Innovation awarded project (Sawalhi et al., 2020), which aimed to train undergraduate female students to develop their competencies and design their values system using design thinking approach; we conducted many studies to explore factors affecting teacher leadership in Arab countries. I was interested in teacher agency and teacher identities, which shed light on the critical need to support women in dealing with challenges and building self-confidence. I believe that a more institutionalized approach is needed, which encouraged me to be a cofounder of the WomenED MENA network to support women in educational leadership practices. In addition, I launched a reading group to discuss books relevant to women educational leadership and coaching called #WELRead—all of this under the umbrella of celebrating small achievements and recognizing the circles of influence that each one of us has. Rida Blaik Hourani: My professional journey started as a social studies teacher at the American community school (ACS) in Beirut. This was in 1985 in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War. My first employment was exquisite. It gave me the chance to connect with various stakeholders who came from versatile ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Nonetheless, the flashy experience was interrupted by serious events. Due to the fact that Lebanon was a war zone and so many Americans were evacuated for security reasons, the USA Department of Education placed financial limitations on the school. The school had to go through significant budget cuts, including restrictions on stationary supplies, school maintenance, and infrastructure facilities. Due to the war, there were electricity and water shortages across the country, and the school had to be self-sufficient. The school was run by a cluster of remarkable women leaders, managers, and administrators. The faculty was informed about the financial

Women in educational leadership and community building  9 measures, and we were given the choice to leave or stay under such harsh circumstances. I opted to stay, and my decision was accompanied with exciting challenges across the journey—until the school became a target for attacks from counter political parties, and its continuation was at stake. It was a prominent educational institution. It represented the notions of academic freedom in times of racism, prejudice, religious, and ethnic sectarianism. The school had to survive. The savior was within each one of us as a community member. The community affiliation and dynamics rescued the school in these times of crisis. Teachers had to cross the green lines that divided West Beirut from East Beirut, so they frequently arrived late to school. The school body functioned in a so-called contingent style of management and leadership, yet there was something else that kept us (and the school) going. It was the collective entrepreneurship style of leadership and management that emerged. The community spirit was high in terms of solidarity and consolidation; the “me–I” implications were absent. There was an unannounced memorandum of understanding in terms of filling in the gaps, overcoming chaos, meeting the students’ needs, substituting for a tardy or absent teacher who couldn’t make it through the green lines crossing and/or accommodating the shortages, whether these shortages necessitated teachers painting their classrooms, becoming handywomen to fix broken shelves and windows, polishing the floors, and doing the gardening and other cleaning chores. Such an exposure empowered me as a teacher and shaped me as a women leader in the field of education. I believe in bottom-up leadership, prioritize community building, and optimize self-exploration to strengthen career-related experiences. My teaching journey draws on more than one epistemological angle. Deciding to escape the civil war and move to Bahrain as a single woman in 1988 was a turning point for me and for the women in my social surrounding. Criticism and various harsh statements were made to me for daring to drift away to attain socioeconomic independence—statements such as, “You are ruining your social reputation. … Who would marry a woman living overseas on her own?” or “Moving to a strange country on your own is haram” (haram is the Arabic word for sacrilegious). I was determined to go and start a new chapter. Nurtured by my family’s support, I pursued my journey of self-exploration, chosen displacement, and empowerment. I have also witnessed another style of displacement—a forced displacement that I had to undergo due to marrying a Palestinian refugee who was stateless. Now, I have moved from the status of “Who is going to marry you?” to “Are you marrying a refugee?” I became a refugee by default. I was situated in a country where so many ethnic and cultural misconceptions have been associated with immigrants; their (immigrants) sufferings stem from stereotypical prejudice. I encountered continuous job rejections. One day, I decided to go to a consultancy job employment agency in order to scrutinize my qualifications and potentials. The question I asked was, “Why isn’t anyone employing me?” The response was simply answered by an Australian White professional job employment officer: “You have mentioned that you are

10  Women in educational leadership and community building a Muslim, you speak Arabic and are a mother of two daughters. No one would employ an immigrant mother; you will be too much trouble.” Empowering myself and extending this empowerment to others were my footprints, which I didn’t realize until recently when my daughter Jeanine said these words to me: Thank you for leading the example and paving the way for Lujayn and I to be confident, outspoken and independent young women. Thank you for teaching us to worry less about fitting glass slippers and more about shattering glass ceilings!! Education that functions for community building and enhancement, exploration beyond inhibitions and displacement in its various forms and shapes have driven me towards advocating women’s leadership. Trista Hollweck: I am a White cisgender woman who lives in Canada with my husband and three school-aged children. I am conscious of the privilege and power of my European settler ancestry in relation to settler colonial normativity that is an indelible part of the Canadian consciousness. I am the first person in my family to hold a doctorate. Both of my parents grew up in poverty and were on their own from the age of 16. Whereas my mother was from a small town in Manitoba, my father emigrated to Canada from Germany at 11, after his father was released from a prisoner of war camp at the end of World War II. My parents believed that education, hard work, key mentors/advocates, and a good deal of luck were how they were able to provide a comfortable life for my sister and me. As a professional, I identify as a pracademic, a boundary-spanner who is actively engaged in multiple local and global education spaces, including schools, universities, academic research, education boards, networks, and advisory committees. I grew up in Ottawa, Ontario and attended McGill University to complete my bachelor of arts in English literature and women’s studies. After graduation, I spent two years teaching in a small farming town in Hokkaido, Japan. After spending a year travelling Southeast Asia, I completed my Post Graduate Certificate of Education in Edinburgh, Scotland and returned to Ottawa to begin my teaching career. Since 2000, I have crossed the border between Ontario and Quebec to teach for the Western Quebec School Board (WQSB), one of nine English school boards in the province. Whereas the French educational community is a minority in most of the provinces and territories of Canada, it is the English educational community that is a minority in Quebec. After five years teaching, I became a vice-principal at 31. As one of the few women leaders and younger than the others, I felt a bit out of my depth. Luckily, I had an incredible mentor in my principal who supported me every step of the way. As an educator, I work within a relational framework, and in my administrative role I worked to embed restorative justice practices into the school ethos and policies. I also am deeply interested in building supportive communities that contribute to teacher and student

Women in educational leadership and community building  11 well-being. This work has led me to develop and coordinate a teacher induction program for the district that included a mentoring and coaching fellowship, which became the focus of my doctoral studies—a qualitative case study of the WQSB’s Teacher Induction Program. I am fascinated by educational leadership and specifically women’s educational leadership. I am learning and leading in a variety of contexts. I am leading a pan-Canadian research and network development project funded by the Lego Foundation that examines learning through play in public schools across seven provinces. I am also the director of the ARC Education Project, a global educational movement that advances equity, broad excellence, inclusion, well-being, democracy, sustainability, and human rights in high-quality, professionally run systems. I am a board member of the ICSEI and the cochair of its generational renewal, inclusion, and diversity (GRID) committee. I am a cofounder of the #WomenEDQuebec network to support women leaders and a member of the women education leaders’ reading group (#WELRead) that engages me in critical discussions with international women leaders on books by women leaders. I want to make a difference, to support other women leaders, and ultimately, to create and support transformational change across school systems. Corinne Brion: I am a heterosexual White woman native from France. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am an assistant tenure line professor. I am a daughter, sister, aunt, stepdaughter, daughter in law, and wife. I am an educator, researcher, community builder. I am a person of faith. I am a citizen of the world. I have been fortunate to have strong women in my life. My mother encouraged me from an early age to be independent. She valued and provided me with a holistic and well-rounded education because she wanted me to stand on my own financially and emotionally. Because she was adventurous herself and enjoyed traveling, she would take me to “see what is happening outside of France.” As a family, we discovered different countries, ways of living, and traditions. She was a proponent of learning about diverse cultures. My mom used to say: “Go, learn about cultures because culture plays a central role in everyone’s personal and professional lives and one day you will have to work and live with people from various cultures.” My doctoral dissertation chair was another woman who influenced my career and research interests because she provided me with the opportunity to work in Africa. She used to call me the Indiana Jones of Africa because I had so many adventures during my six years in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. My stay in Africa was the richest time of my life. I gained a greater understanding of various African cultures and reflected on the differences with the Western beliefs, norms, and values I was most accustomed to and knew. As a native of France who works in the United States, and as a second language learner and speaker, the impact of culture on women is of great interest to me. I know what it’s like to experience cultural mismatch. When I was principal of a new charter school in Oregon, I heard people ask,

12  Women in educational leadership and community building “What is she doing here, when she is not even from here, she has an accent and how does she think she is going to lead this school?” Right then and there, it became very clear that to relate to and learn from one another, my stakeholders and I needed to better understand each other’s cultures. Today, one of my lines of inquiry seeks to understand how African women educational leaders navigate cultural norms to transform educational systems and educate the future citizens of their nations. As the Ghanaian Fante proverb states, “If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.” My work revolves around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and goal 5 specifically. Goal 5 reads: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Goal 5 target 5.5 strives to: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic, and public life. And as always, my mother was right: Learning to work and live within various cultures, embracing and advocating for the differences is key and is the essence of cultural proficiency, social justice leadership, and creating inclusive and equitable educational systems. After many professional and educational adventures, I am now married to a wonderful Ghanaian man, and we reside together in the United States. Methods While each of us is interested in the area of women leadership, we arrive from distinct perspectives. This book represents a fertilization of common vision and intense collaboration. We offer the reader a particular and uncommon insight into an underexplored topic. Focusing on the perspective of the women leader’s experience means bringing their voices and first-hand life stories to the fore. Thus, we sought meaning using narrative inquiry to create a comprehensive and well-illustrated picture of the lives of women educational leaders in different social, cultural, and national contexts. Our research employed the collective case study conceptual framework defined by Stake (2000), whereby the researcher examines numerous cases to scrutinize and convey a phenomenon, population, or general condition (p. 437). As an instrumental study, we used numerous cases and narratives to better understand the wider case of women educational leaders in less examined contexts. The narrative approach also enabled us to retain the unique story of each participant (Lieblich et al., 1998). As our study employed an interpretive paradigm, we used the models suggested by Primecz et al. (2009). We see our work as an example of the intercultural interactions (pp. 269–270), an understanding that we bring ourselves as scholars to the research. Yet, at the same time, our study is situated within the scope of multicultural interactions between our research participants and their personal and public spheres. Thus, open questions were employed to elicit the women’s stories. The narratives that emerged from the semistructured interviews were analyzed and considered according to the “listener’s guide,” a strategy developed from psychological

Women in educational leadership and community building  13 studies of girls’ development (Gilligan et al., 2004). This strategy required four readings aiming to follow and explore the different “voices” heard in the text. This process allowed the exposure of the narrators’ relations with themselves, with others, and with the society to which they belong. As indicated, this strategy was taken from psychological research and adapted for use in the educational field (Arar et al., 2013). As a framework, the authors reviewed the transcribed interviews multiple times to emphasize how the narrators recount their lives (Gilligan et al., 2004). These are called “listenings” rather than “readings” because listening necessitates active participation by both the narrator and the listener (p. 159). The multiple listenings revealed the multiplicity of voices and faces found in stories and provided “ways into the complexity of voices and relationships” (p. 26). The selection of a narrative genre depended on the assumption that through their stories the women participants grant meaning to their life events as they perceived them, thereby illustrating a picture of their world (Mishler, 1995). Through the telling, they were being able to assemble and portray the “tale” of their lives into an organized whole and to award each event its position and meaning according to order of significance and worth. A comprehensive picture emerges from the story that describes the individual’s development within the various systems and aspects of her life. Analysis of these stories (Gilligan et al., 2004) facilitated the formation of a rich and broad perception, explaining the studied phenomenon in depth (Stake, 2005). Brown and Gilligan (1992) elaborated on four types of listening for stories that can be attained from interviews: (1) listening to the narrative, the skeleton of the story that maintains its spirit and the core content of the events as they were voiced in the interview; (2) listening to the narrator’s views and aspects of “self”; (3) listening to the paths and means in which the individual talks about her relationships; and (4) listening to the way in which the individual explores herself and narrates her experiences as part of her social and cultural settings. This method is suitable for research that involves an individual’s life span because it permits the narrator to illuminate her life as a comprehensive whole. The use of the method perpetuates the identification of the voices that embody (1) empowering and nurturing events dispersed within women’s biographies; (2) personal development in their social context; and (3) professional development as voiced in their life stories (Arar et al., 2013). We opted the unique tool of the Listener’s Guide as the most relevant method to examine the lives of women leaders in the studied society because traditional research data-analysis methods were too limited to adequately conceptualize the processes interknitted within the personal, social, and professional lives of these women leaders in a developing society (Coleman, 2011; Crawford, 2009).

Women educational leaders who contributed to this book There were 41 women educational leaders from various countries across the globe who contributed to the narratives found in this book. The women

14  Women in educational leadership and community building who took part in the interviews were diversified in terms of their sociocultural and ethnic backgrounds, the educational roles they have played, and their educational leadership practices. The following section includes a brief description of the interviewees: Adwoa is from Ghana. Her name means Monday in Twi, one of the main languages in Ghana. Adwoa is a principal at a public school. She is 55 years old and divorced. She holds the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in education and at the time of the interview was going back to school for her master’s. Alia is a 56-year-old Lebanese educator. She is a principal at a private school in Lebanon and a part-time instructor at the Lebanese University and Arab Open University. She holds a PhD in science education. Amal is a Saudi human resources manager and volunteers in Qatar, China, the UK, and Germany. She has a master’s degree and is a mother of three. Asantewaa is named after an influential queen of the Ashanti kingdom. She is from Ghana. She is a public-school principal, married, and 48 years old. She has both the equivalent of a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education and plans to continue to her PhD. Carole is a Christian principal of a multi-ethnic school in the city of Jerusalem. She is in her mid-50s and a mother of several adult children. She has an MA degree in the Arabic language and lives in a mixed-ethnic city. In the past, she was a teacher and instructor and was the first woman appointed as a senior superintendent. Dima is a 60-year-old Palestinian woman. She holds a PhD in social psychology. She is the regional staff counselor MENA Region of the UN Children’s Emergency Fund (—UNICEF). Dima has worked extensively as a social psychologist in refugee camps in Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. Dorca is a principal at a low-fee private school. She is from Ghana. Dorcas is divorced and remarried. She is 46 years old. Dorcas has the equivalent of a bachelor and master’s in education and at the time of the interview was contemplating pursuing a PhD in leadership. Doris is from Liberia. She is 56 years old and married. Doris is a school principal in a low-fee private school (LFPS). Doris finished high school. Elena is a Lebanese Palestinian who is a naturalized Cypriote. Elena is 62 years old. She works as an educational coordinator in an nongovernmental organization (NGO) located in Cyprus. Elena holds a BA in communication arts and is currently working on her MA in education. Fadia is a Muslim superintendent of educational counsellors in her late 40s, married, and a mother of several children. She lives in an Arab city and has an MA in educational counselling. Fatima is from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She is 42 years old and a principal at a primary public school in the UAE. She has an MEd. She has worked as a school leader and curriculum specialist. Fiona is from the UK. She is 64 years old. She has an MA degree in educational psychology and a BA in theology. She is currently located in Cyprus and works as an associate priest at Saint Helena Church. Fiona has

Women in educational leadership and community building  15 worked as a children’s services consultant, head of integrated services, and educational consultant at various county councils in the United Kingdom. Florentine is from Ghana. She is a principal at a public school. Florentine is married and is 39 years old. Florentine holds the equivalent of a bachelor and master’s degree in education. Gertrude is from Burkina Faso. She is a principal at a LFPS. She is 39 years old and married. Haya is a 46-year-old Palestinian academic who is currently working in Qatar. Haya holds a PhD in sociology, anthropology, and is an assistant professor in behavioral science at Qatar University. Hiba is Palestinian Lebanese. She is 57 years old. She has a BA in psychology and a teaching diploma in Education. She is a director of a private school in Lebanon. Isabelle is a Muslim superintendent in her mid-30s, married and a mother, living in a village. She has a PhD in Arab language and has completed postdoctoral studies in the USA. She has been a superintendent for three years. Isra is an Iraqi vice principal in Qatar. She holds PhD in educational leadership. She is a mother of five. Julienne is a principal in a public school. She is from Burkina Faso. Julienne is 61 years old and married. She holds the equivalent of a bachelor and master’s degree in education. Khadija is 56 years old. She is a Lebanese Australian academic based in Cyprus. She holds a PhD in education policy and management. Khadija worked as a teacher and a school department head in Lebanon, Bahrain, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. Leilah is a LFPS principal from Liberia. She is 63 years old and married. Leilah earned two university degrees in education, the equivalent of a bachelor’s and a master’s in education. Margarette is from Burkina Faso. She is a principal at a LFPS. She is 56 years old and married. Margarette finished high school. Maria-A is from Liberia and is a principal of a LFPS. She is married and 35 years old. Maria-A finished high school and is taking courses toward a university degree in education. At the time of the interview, Maria was not sure of the degree she was going to pursue because she had just started her higher education journey. Maria is from Liberia and works as a principal in a LFPS. Maria is married and 58 years old. Maria finished high school. Marie is from Burkina Faso. She is a principal at a LFPS, married, and 35 years old. At the time of the interview, Marie was finishing her bachelor’s degree in education. Mary is from Liberia and works as a principal in a LFPS. Mary is married and is 46 years old. Mary finished high school. Milena is 34 years old. She is from Liberia and works as a principal in a LFPS. Milena is married and is currently pursuing her bachelor’s in education.

16  Women in educational leadership and community building Moufida is a 64-year-old Egyptian academic who holds a PhD in English literature and drama. She is also a professor at an Egyptian government institution. Moufida had also worked as an academic in the USA, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. Muna is 38 years old and a Jordanian working in the Gulf Council countries (GCC). She faced displacement when her family did not allow her to study what she wanted, and when her husband took her to work in a GCC country where she was unable to find a job due to local policies. Muna started working as a science primary teacher although she did not have an educational degree. Nour is a 59-year-old Palestinian. She holds an MA in educational psychology and held the position of CARE director in Palestine, West Bank, and Gaza. Nour worked extensively with Palestinian local and global NGOs. Precious is a principal at a public school. She is from Ghana. A 59-year-old widow, Precious holds the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in education. Rahaf is a 46 Jordanian English teacher who worked in different countries (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and USA). She started her catering company to support her family. She has a master’s degree and is a mother of three. Rola is a Palestinian high school principal in the city of Ramlah. She was a school counselor and a supervisor for counselors before she turned to lead a high school in an underprivileged suburban neighborhood in her late 50s. Rola is married and mother of three children. She earned her MA degree is in educational counselling. Rama is a 44-year-old Egyptian accountant who has worked in ( Jordan, Qatar, and the UK). She launched a private school. She has a master’s degree and is a mother of three. Salwa is a 26-year-old Egyptian English teacher. She is well known for her voluntary work in Qatar and other countries. Samy is from Ghana. She is a principal at a LFPS. She is 61 years old and married. Samy finished high school. Sanaa is a Lebanese Australian who died at the age of 108. She was an educator and proprietor of a school in Lebanon and a preschool in Melbourne, Australia. She was awarded an honorary medal for her educational contributions in Lebanon. Sanaa held a BA in education. Sara is a Saudi national. She is 55 years old. She has a PhD in molecular pharmacology. Sara is currently an academic and scientist at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center. She is also vice dean and associate professor at Al Faisal University in Saudi Arabia. Shiraz is a Palestinian principal in her late 50s, married and the mother of several adult children. She lives in Nazareth city and has a PhD in literature. Shiraz was among the first women to lead a school in the Palestinian education system and has held this position for six years. Siham is a Muslim high school principal in her early 40s and lives in a mixed city. She has a BA degree in sciences and a MA in management of education systems. She leads a multiethnic primary school in one of the Palestinian cities.

Women in educational leadership and community building  17 Trish is 56 years old and Portuguese, and holds a PhD in fine Arts. Trish had been raised in Mozambique. She is an academic who worked in the UK and is currently working at a higher education institution in the United Arab Emirates. Veronique is a principal at a LFPS. She is from Burkina Faso. Veronique is married and 43 years old. She holds the equivalent of a bachelor’s in education. Wendkuuni’s name means God’s gift. She is from Burkina Faso. She is a principal at a LFPS. She is 47 years old and married. Wendkuuni finished high school. Yusra is a Palestinian Lebanese and a naturalized Australian who is 27 years old. Yusra holds an MS in public health. She is an activist, educator, and policy and sector developer in Melbourne, Australia.

Concluding thoughts Our research investigating women leaders recognizes and advances the need for the voices of participants to be heard. It exposes the barriers that they encounter and the ways in which they empower others in educational processes. Concomitantly, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the position and role of women educational leaders when it comes to establishing equity, diversity, and inclusion in different education settings and communities. The literature highlights injustices and difficulties inherent in various multicultural and diverse societies, and the stories from our participants expose the attempts and deeds of women educational leaders to initiate, commence, and practice an agenda of inclusive education to enhance systemic transformation and transformational education. In this book, a great effort has been made to document the stories of women leaders, but also to understand from a pluralistic perspective their educational leadership experience and how they have worked to create livable and human-oriented communities. In addition to the authors’ expertise in the field and their personal experiences, what is pervasive throughout the book is the deep diversity and equity approach, and orientation to understanding women’s contribution. We believe this to be a benchmark of social and human values. Our collective efforts led to a redefinition and conceptual model of women’s educational leadership. Leadership in this book refers to a wide array of contexts. Specifically, the book includes the contextualized voices of underrepresented women leaders from across the globe who not only work in K–12 educational sectors but also higher education, community advocacy, and edu-entrepreneurship. We critically examine women’s educational leadership from a holistic approach and use narrative inquiry to trigger innovation and change. We are interested in women leaders’ challenges and how they play proactive roles in developing their societies. This renders the triangulation of self-empowerment, institutional changes, and public-community transformation significant as a vehicle for meeting 21st-century

18  Women in educational leadership and community building challenges. We believe this book is an important contribution to the literature by focusing on the experiences of women leaders in developing countries examined through a multi-perspective narrative approach. As we have discovered, women’s leadership experiences can be demonstrated formally or informally and contributes to women’s empowerment through numerous scopes of space and time. In the next chapter we ask questions such as: What do we mean by displacement in women’s educational leadership? Why is self-empowerment important? And how can women leaders rediscover their identities in different spaces, places, and roles?

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Women in educational leadership and community building  19 Fuller, K. (2011). Learning gendered leadership: A case study of leadership apprenticeship. Paper presented at BELMAS Annual International Conference, July 9, 2011, Wybston Lakes, Cambridge, UK. Fuller, K. (2015). Learning gendered leadership: A discursive struggle. In E. Reilly & Q. Bauer (Eds.), Women Leading Education across the Continents: Overcoming the Barriers (pp. 181–186). London: Rowman and Littlefield. Gilligan, C., Spencer, R., Weinberg, M. K., & Bertsch, T. (2004). On the listening guide: A voice-centered relational method. In P. M. Camic, J.E. Rhodes, & L. Yardley (Eds.), Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in Methodology and Design (pp. 157–171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2011). Women and Educational Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Khalil, D., & DeCuir, A. (2018). This is us: Islamic feminist school leadership. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50(2), 94–112. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Lumby, J., & Azaola, C. (2011). Women principals in small schools in South Africa. Australian Journal of Education, 55(1), 73–85. Lumby, J., & Azaola, C. (2014). Women principals in South Africa: Gender, mothering and leadership. British Educational Research Journal, 40(1), 30–44. Mansfield, K. (2013). I love these girls—I was these girls: Women leading for social justice in a single-sex public school. Journal of School Leadership, 23(4), 640–663. Mestry, R., & Schmidt, M. (2012). A feminist postcolonial examination of female principals' experiences in South African secondary schools. Gender and Education, 24(5), 535–551. Metcalfe, B. D. (2008). Women, management, and globalization in the Middle East. Journal of Business Ethics, 83, 85–100. Mishler, E. G. (1995). Models of narrative analysis: A typology. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 5(2), 87–123. Newcomb, W. S., & Welton, A. (2013). Introduction: Women leading for social justice. Journal of School Leadership, 23(4), 586–591. Oplatka, I. (2006). Women in educational administration within developing countries. Journal of Educational Administration, 44(6), 604–624. Primecz, H., Romani, L., & Sackmann, S. (2009). Cross-cultural management research: Contributions from various paradigms. Cross-Cultural Management, 9(3), 267–274. Rivera-McCutchen, R. L., & Watson, T. N. (2014). Leadership for social justice. It is a matter of trust. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 17(4), 54–65. Robinson, K., Shakeshaft, K., Grogan, M., et al. (2017). Necessary but not sufficient: The continuing inequality between men and women in educational leadership, findings from the AASA Mid-Decade Survey. Frontiers in Education, 2(12). doi:10.3389/feduc.2017.00012 Rodriguez, G. M., & Fabionar, J. O. (2009). The impact of poverty on students and schools: Exploring the social justice leadership implications. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education (2nd ed, pp. 55–73). New York: Allyn Bacon. Sandberg, S. (2015). Lean in – Women, work and the will to lead. NHRD Network Journal, 8(2), 137–139. doi: 10.1177/0974173920150225

20  Women in educational leadership and community building Sawalhi, R., Hawari, G., & Altengi, M. (2020, May 13). Al Thrwa Al Naema: Toward Women’s Leadership Development. Emerald Publishing. https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing. com/opinion-and-blog/al-tharwa-al-naema-towards-womens-leadership-development Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in Educational Administration. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications. Shakeshaft, C. (2015). “Am not going to take this sitting down”: The uses and misuse of feminist standpoints—Theory in women’s educational leadership research. In E. Reilly & Q. Bauer (Eds.), Women Leading Education across the Continents: Overcoming the Barriers (p. xv). London: Rowman and Littlefield. Stake, R. (2000). The Art of Case Study Research. London: Sage Publications. Stake, R. E. (2005). Qualitative case studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 443–466). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Unterhalter, E., & North, A. (2010). Assessing gender mainstreaming in the education sector: Depoliticised technique or a step towards women’s rights and gender equality? Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 40(4), 389–404.

2 Women leaders Space, place, role, and change

Introduction Building on the brief introduction to the interviewees in the previous chapter, our focus now turns to a better understanding of the stories of women who are progressively engaged in empowering themselves and others. Following Kupferberg et al.’s (2002) path, the stories describe women’s self-construction that is accomplished through epiphanies, featured by personal narratives which are tumultuous in times, places, and spaces where voices are silenced, marginalized, or forgotten. Personal experiences become a source for inquiry, empowerment, and knowledge. They feature the harnessed and possessive power that is necessary to influence trajectories for change during ethnoracial and sociopolitical turbulences. Mapping personal experiences constitutes the foundations and dynamics of collective change (Guajardo & Guajardo, 2013, 2018). This chapter begins with a quick tour of women leaders’ identity formation in general followed by a focus on leadership; displacement, especially in relation to education; and their transformational journey in the midst of a neoliberal era. Neoliberalism has reinvented the notion of the individual form of competitive self-interest that neglects social development and community boundaries. The hegemony of neoliberalism has an impact on public and private educational systems and organizations. Many of the issues that our world is witnessing are outcomes of a legacy of hate, oppression, and discrimination. Accordingly, global capacities—in their current neoliberal connotation—have led to increased inequities on social and professional levels (Arar et al., 2020; Cahill & Konings, 2017; García & Guajardo, 2018). Given the context of neoliberalism, socioeducational and socioeconomic entities have become catalysts for change (Arar et al., 2020; Cahill & Konings, 2017). Women’s educational leadership constitute these entities; hence, women leaders galvanize anticipated changes in times of neo-liberal hardships.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-2

22  Women leaders

Women’s identity and self-exploration The process of identity formation is a never-ending process. It starts from youth when individuals begin to identify their values and personal beliefs. Although identity might be considered as a label that leaves little room for individuality, scholars suggest that gender, racial, sexual, and class identities reflect individuals’ current context (Ranjitha & Unnithan, 2017). Womanhood is an ever-changing concept that has different implications for women around the globe. Women’s beliefs regarding their roles are shaped by religion, culture, and tradition. Education is vital in forming individuals’ understanding of the factors that shape women’s roles. Esteban-Guitart (2019) assumes three theoretical principles: “(1) that human identities are culturally situated and distributed; (2) that there is a constitutive link between learning and identity; and (3) that sense (significant experience) plays an important role as a learning generator” (p. 168). The personal experiences we have lived could well be an initial definition of identity. Having said this, we need to reflect on what we consider education. In this book, education is understood as more than schooling. In fact, scholars are still investigating how babies might start learning language in the wombs of their mothers. We support girls and women’s right to have a proper education that meets their needs, engages them fully, and aids them to design their values system and plans for their future. We argue for education that is conceptualized within an emancipatory critical pedagogy; one that is designed to meet human needs, considers women’s important role in motherhood, and shapes the identity and dynamics of social change (Gümüş et al., 2020). Self-exploration is another channel of identity formation. Poon and Danoff-Burg (2011) and Jankowski and Takahashi (2014) agree that self-exploration that embodies being rational, autonomous, and closely connected to others can lead to greater societal and communal value and empathy. Self-exploration is the avenue for micro and macro transformation socially and professionally speaking, and one’s self-exploration serves a unique function in moving toward establishing goals and orientations for institutional and community transformation. Franks et al. (2012) and McDonald and Asher (2018) emphasize that self-disclosure and self-exploration are focal points for self-awareness, self-assessment, and making new steps and decisions toward change on the levels of self and community.

Developing leadership identity Attempting to explain how women lead, Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) note that “women have become leaders largely because of what they can do with leadership, not what they can be with it” (p. 97). Discussing women’s roles and contributions lead to discussing influence and leadership as social change. Komives et al. (2005) showed in their grounded theory study that

Women leaders  23 [t]he essential developmental influences that fostered the development of a leadership identity included adult influences, peer influences, meaningful involvement, and reflective learning. Each of these four properties has dimension, which means they change across the stages of the central category (p. 595) Women practice leadership and influence in their homes and families, in their work, and communities. This understanding gives a new meaning to education that moves away from the formal concept of schooling. Mothers help teach their children at homes; this role might be considered a form of homeschooling, or perhaps teachers might even be considered as mothers. Mangen and Audousset-Coulier (2020) document that “women experience identity conflicts that manifest themselves invisible in their professional roles and visible in their non-professional (e.g., homemaker) roles and as gendered beings, in their professional and private spaces” (p. 1). Therefore, leadership is taught at a very early stage. It’s modeled through mothers and female figures within the social circle (Brunner & Grogan, 2007; Glass & Franceshini, 2007). In the same vein, in her study, Fitzgerald (2010) presented Henry and Pringle’s framework (1996) and showed samples of used indigenous terms that could be equivalent to leadership terminology. The table illustrates the framework that captures the various modes and features through which women practice and demonstrate leadership formally and informally. Regardless of whether women lead and practice leadership formally or informally, they continue to be role models and icons for change. Women in leadership positions demonstrate empowerment and autonomy regardless of the mode of their leadership practices. They impact fellow women’s social and economic status in order to mediate change (Fitzgerald, 2010).

Table 2.1  Table adopted from Henry and Pringle (1996, p. 99) Term

Leadership

Kuia (elder grandmother) Whaea (mother) Rangatira (tribal leader) Tohunga (expert) Tuakana (eldest sibling) Wahine toa (warrior woman)

Wise leader; authoritarian Guiding and leading from behind Autocratic and confident leader Analytical and leading by expertise Directive; leader-in-waiting Leading by example and power of convictions Tentative; leading through friendship Daring; leading by force of personality Tentative leadership exhibiting a lack of confidence

Teina (younger sibling) Potiki (youngest sibling) Tauiwi (foreigner)

24  Women leaders

Women leaders and displacement In this section, we explore two types of displacement that women leaders are vulnerable to. The first is the original definition of displacement, which refers to women’s forced movement from their home, or country. Displacement is also experienced through the various factors that displace girls and women from their potential positions in leadership. The positional displacement goes beyond the geographic boundaries to stretch toward sociocultural, political, and gender hegemony that have acted as a multidimensional ripple effect to simultaneously constrain, challenge, and empower women in terms of their personal and professional experiences (Arar, 2011; Robinson et al., 2017). Displacement is one of the most comprehensive global issues that has had an impact on women. Cases of displaced women and girls are much higher than those of men and boys. The UN High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR, 2020) report show that the numbers of displaced women stipulate preexisting discrimination and social, ethnic, and economic disadvantage. In March 2020, the UNHCR noted that new approximate numbers show that at least 21 million women and girls were displaced within their geopolitical boundaries by conflict and violence. Two-thirds of these uprooted women and girls were from Africa and the Middle East (The Irish Consortium on Gender-Based Violence, 2016). Regardless of the form, shape, time and/or place of displacement, women suffer and encounter socioethnic and professional rupture and challenges as a result. Numerous obstacles are also connected to women’s displacement, such as ties and affiliation to family, dearth of female leadership models, absence of managerial experience, and patriarchal policies. All of these factors have potential to hinder women from moving ahead toward personal fulfilment and professional promotion and delimit them from leadership in the public sector (Arar et al., 2012). In particular, the dearth of women leader role models (formally and informally) can deter women from promotion and seeking leadership roles. Moreover, challenges stemming from the existing social order influences women leaders’ advocacy for justice and discourse as community builders (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Jean-Marie et al., 2009). Finally, the association of leadership with masculinity, and social systems that transmit leadership unquestionably to men is another challenge that women face (Coleman, 2011; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). In the developing societies context, consolidated norms and conventional values may account for many of the educational drawbacks outlined previously. Political leaders in many developing countries rarely advance sustainable, equitable political and socioeconomic policies based on the development of progressive and nurturing systems instead of personal power; this consequently has an impact on women’s personal and professional experiences. Furthermore, political and religious leaders in

Women leaders  25 conservative Arab societies fight to keep a status quo system that sustains male hegemony. By doing so, the traditional dynamics keep the upper hand and control women’s professional progression (Arar, 2014; Arar & Shapira, 2012). When we look at displacement through a social lens, we begin to see how displacement acts as a dynamic for change at the individual, organizational, and community level. Displaced women suffer from restricted mobility and little opportunity for economic and/or social autonomy, which hinders their ability to move forward on the personal, professional, and communal levels (Klenke, 2011; Manchanda, 2004). From an economic perspective, there is financial pressure for men to support women’s work outside the home as a means to provide additional income. Dychtwald and Larson (2010), Shapira et al. (2011), and Moghadam (2004) described the emergence of women in the modern economies, where they are witnessing more economic independence than in the past years. Due to their socioeconomic independence, women were reported as being more confident and energized. Given the potential for financial profitability, many Arab states have stipulated laws that safeguard working women and prohibit gender discrimination in the workplace. Despite this, women continue to face discrimination (The Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, 2009). For example, as indicated by Al-Hussein (2011), women leaders still face negative stereotypes about working women. These images, promoted by both men and women, often characterize women as being less qualified, professionally incapable, and incompetent. Additionally, they are replete with gender-based judgment and discrimination where women are stereotypically described as impulsive and less skillful in terms of their leadership and managerial practices. As a result, these images can shake working women’s self-confidence and self-efficacy. Despite the multiple constraints facing women outlined by Moghadam (2004), Abu-Rabia-Queder and Arar (2011), Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011), and Shapira et al. (2011), women as leaders and educational leaders develop channels to maneuver obstacles and create systems and processes to facilitate transformation. However, Torrance (2017) emphasized that women continue to experience gender inequalities throughout their leadership praxis and as a result work to put policies in place that will facilitate women’s empowerment and enhance social justice. Specifically, they contribute to holistic improvements at the systemic, transformational, policy, and practice levels. Klenke (2011) reiterated that: women leaders are shaping political, corporate, and social agendas in developed and developing countries around the world while they bring to leadership different points of views, values, experiences, [and] interests that provide diverse and unique prisms through which they view and approach the tasks and responsibilities of leadership. (p. 233)

26  Women leaders

Displacement in education Throughout their professional journey, women leaders focus not only on self-empowerment but empowering others in the midst of a neoliberal era that features traumas resulting from displacement, wars, inequities, and social injustices. Unterhalter and North (2010) argued that displacement aimed to “go beyond gender” and examined the means in which assumptions about gender associations and identities, for example, women’s “special” potential to teach very young children, were particularly the outcomes of certain constructions of the social world. Additionally, these authors noted that education is often identified as holding the capabilities to act as a social leveler and provide greater equity. However, obviously, this is not always the scenario for all women working in education. In fact, they believe it is worth considering the norms education systems are subliminally supporting in the absence of gender equality at senior levels. Specifically, they note that although 63% of teaching staff in secondary schools are female, only 38% are head teachers. At the primary school level, men are in senior positions at a ratio of almost 2:1 of their overall representation—while just 14% of teaching staff are male, 27% of head teachers are female (Amery et al., 2019; QA Education, 2018). In England, Fuller (2015) noted that the underrepresentation of women in secondary school headship and relevant school administrative positions was an early, continual, and constant theme in the women and gender in educational leadership studies. She posited that a geographical perspective was still valid and worthwhile and might impact the mobilization of human capital and resources to targeted areas and ultimately result in women’s proportional representation in school leadership. Globally, in the field of education, women leaders face obstacles such as discrimination and stereotyping, which impede their employment and socioeconomic mobility (Oplatka & Tamir, 2009; Robinson et al., 2017). As women rise to leadership and managerial positions in both formal and informal educational institutions, attempts to examine their leadership and administrative abilities and contributions, including the promotion of social justice, is taking place regardless of the outcomes (Arar et al., 2012; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). An additional obstacle to women’s educational leadership is related to cultural–geographical contexts, which leads us to Indigenous leadership. Fitzgerald (2010) used the “spaces in between” framework to address questions and to raise some of the problematic narratives that do not comprehensively account for Indigenous women’s ways of knowing, acting, and leading. Drawing on Bhabha (1994), the author suggested that these spaces in between are similar to the implications of the third space—the space (or spaces) that is “the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space that carries the burden of meaning” (p. 141). In effect, oscillating between multiple cultural standpoints offered a degree of in-betweenness. It is what Bhabha (1994) refers to as the mutual and the

Women leaders  27 mutable, or the position in between the colonizer and the colonized that provides the disruption and displacement of hegemonic theories. Building on this work, in this book we have found the concept of the third space, or the spaces in-between, have elucidated evolving, reciprocal, and proactive conversations between us. In his memoir Out of Place, Said’s (2000) story of exile and eternal deprivation of the past is also useful to conceptualize the experience of dislocation, especially as an embodiment of multiple identities and an outline of a strong modernity. For Said, all these sensations—the emotional and reflective state of the self—unfold between different points in time, dynamics of places, and variations of sovereignty, which thus captures an intersection of a powerful intertwined internal and external displacement. From a feminine-cultural perspective, women who live in isolated Arab geocultural spaces also tend to develop their unique culture, thereby altering and amending their existing social order. For example, when educated women move outside their local geo-proximity, they become conversant with new lifestyles, traditions, philosophical paradigms, and social patterns. This consequently influences their own self-formalization, and their relationships with newly explored sociocultural circles. In comparison to their parents and the norms that they have inherited, they adopt new lifestyles. As a result, their deliberation and thoughts portray novel trends and trajectories that may drift away from the way they were brought up and the lifestyle they inherited. Subsequently, they have been found to reposition themselves powerfully within the dynamics of the new community and society (Abu-Lughod, 2010; Erdreich, 2006).

Distinctive space Globally speaking, when women attempt to climb to leadership positions, they encounter obstacles. Yet their battle to prove their worth accelerates in developing societies. Countless studies in these societies have argued whether women should learn or work outside the home, focusing on the type of work that is appropriate and suitable for women, whether women should enjoy employment avenues equal to those available to men, and other related concerns including nonofficial segregation policies, which continue to impose restrictions on the development and promotion opportunities for women (e.g., Arar, 2018; Metcalfe, 2006; Yaseen, 2010). In contrast, Unterhalter (2009) and Unterhalter and North (2010) described a facet of the distinctive space of education which addresses questions of “what works,” “what matters,” and how we think about the relationship between and among these notions. There is a need for an urgent global adherence to multilateral socio-educational and economic systems and policies that reflect an essential balance between “what works” and “what matters.” Furthermore, Davies and Bansel (2007) and Devidal (2009) acknowledged that women leaders are situated in a very challenging context. Thus, an equilibrium is needed to address injustices and inequities,

28  Women leaders as far as untangling the ills that have resulted from the neoliberal systems that have created an alien road map to the moral and postmodern nature of education. For Best (2016), Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas about education and the transition to modernity are worth wrestling with, especially around the practices of social exclusions. Best (2016) identifies Bauman’s underemphasis on human agency as a flaw and indicates that marginalization, social inclusion, and exclusion are based on the individuals’ initiatives and mechanisms and are placed at the core of maintaining social solidarity. Bauman (2014) perceived systemic collective moral negligence and social inequality as being the source of exclusion, which is driven by the systems and the individuals’ judgement of the “Others.” Bauman (2004) argued that the generation of “human waste” in a contemporary era is characterized by a consumerist society where people were no longer pivotal or needed. Consequently, this led to the design of a society that accumulates disorder, social chaos, and inequity. In response to Bauman (2014), Banks (2020) advocated for an emancipatory path that draws on critical pedagogy and principles of a multi-educational system featuring an empowering social structure. Banks (2020) reiterated that creating such a system would lead to enhanced transformation at the meso-social and public levels. Women, being part of this meso-system, will also be impacted. Having said this, a re-examination of ways to transform oppressive structures, systems policies, and praxis that have limited the social, economic, political, and educational opportunities for woman is necessary. Specifically required is exploration of the framework of dialogical space, inter–intra systemic dialogue, and public inquiry as a way to leverage women’s power and galvanize social and institutional changes on the micro and macro levels (Arar, 2014; Arar & Shapira, 2012; Banks, 2020). Stripling and Hughes-Hassell (2003) and Giroux (2003) argue that a neoconservative and norm-forming-community paradigm needs to be considered as the foundation of individual freedom and self-preservation. When the “I” is replaced by the “we,” an overall systemic socio-educational revamping will occur. Stripling and Hughes-Hassel (2003) advocate for inclusiveness by means of social transformation, where the educational system is an agent of socialization and problem solving that addresses issues pertaining to discrimination, racism, inequity, and the norms of social justice. For Stripling and Hughes-Hassel (2003), this path would impact the wider societal infrastructural norms and roles and individual fulfilment in terms of emphasizing personal growth, relationships, self-actualization, and self-awareness. Consequently, this underpins the development of all aspects of human capacities, or empowerment of oneself and others. Within the same scope, Said (1993) in Cultural Imperialism stated: No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman or Muslim or American are not more than starting points, which if

Women leaders  29 followed into actual experience for only a moment is quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale … just as human beings make their own history and they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages and cultural geographies but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. (p. 24) The stories shared by the women leaders in this book capture their displacement as a dynamic force that has shaped their identity and empowered them as agents of transformation. Despite the multifaceted challenges that they have faced as working mothers, immigrants, marginalized and subject to colonial oppression and economic crises, these women continue to grow and empower others.

Displaced women, self-exploration, and empowerment: a journey toward transformation A useful acronym to examine the experience women leaders in this book is that of RASPPA—relationships, assets, stories, place, politic, and action— presented by Guajardo et al. (2016). Guajardo et al. (2016) believed that primary stories anchor the dynamics for change enhancement and constructing communities. RASPPA emerges from the principle of community learning exchange (CLE) (Guajardo et al., 2016); CLE converse a mosaic of groups and individuals to bring to surface community issues and engage in the stimulation and mobilizations of actions and collective change … at the core, stories “must inspire, motivate, and move citizens to act toward the public good.” (p. 35) The ethnic backgrounds of the women interviewees in this book are diverse. Khadija is Lebanese Australian; Yusra is Palestinian Lebanese Australian; Elena is Palestinian Lebanese Cypriot; Nour, Dima, and Haya are Palestinian; Moufida and Salwa are Egyptian; Muna is Jordanian; Isra is Iraqi; and Trish is Portuguese born and raised in Mozambique. Each of these women refer to their displacement in different shapes and forms. Dima is a Palestinian who was displaced internally from her town in northern Palestine and is currently living under Israeli occupation; she referred to various challenges. Dima was born blind. She describes herself as a woman who has gone through a self-exploration journey while pursuing her studies in the United States. Dima adds that she has met multilayered challenges being blind and displaced. However, she has been in a continuous fight against an oppressive system in order to win her space and rights.

30  Women leaders Elena, Dima, Khadija, and Trish all shared that their displacement has helped them become introspective and undergo a journey of self-exploration on what’s next in terms of future goals, achievement, and change. Elena, a Palestinian who lived in Lebanon and is a naturalized Cypriot, indicated, “I don’t feel I have a specific identity. I have a collection of identities. I have been through internal and external displacement.” She explains that she was 15 when the civil war erupted, and due to the war she was displaced. Elena adds that she has lived in diaspora and her displacement has pushed her toward empowering herself and overcoming socioeconomic and cultural challenges. Elena indicated that displacement made her explore new professional and cultural horizons, as well as new paths for enhancing change in herself and in others. Trish, an academic and researcher, is a second-generation Portuguese, born and brought up in Mozambique. Trish described her sociocultural displacement in terms of encountering estrangement being Portuguese living in Mozambique. She felt in limbo culturally and socially, as she belonged to neither of the sociocultural contexts that she was situated in. Trish added that “feeling socio-cultural displacement made me sympathetic, empathetic and tolerant. Out of displacement. I explored my intellectual and artistic capacities and my ability and willingness to motivate and stimulate others.” Khadija is a Lebanese Australian who as a single woman escaped the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Australia with her stateless Palestinian husband and two daughters. Khadija reflected on her displacement through which she has gained strength and explored the “Othe.r” Displacement to her was an eye opener to notions such as peace education, global citizenship, socioeconomic equity, and other humanitarian issues related to refugees and immigrants. Another form of displacement was voiced by Muna, a Jordanian working in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). She encountered displacement when her family didn’t allow her to study what she wanted and when her husband took her to work in a GCC country where she couldn’t find a job due to local policies. Muna started working as a primary teacher despite not having an educational degree. She described her state of displacement as depriving her of the opportunity to study what she wanted because studying engineering was not aligned with the societal norm expected of women. Muna added that she was unable to choose her profession due to being in a country that didn’t allow expatriates to practice certain jobs, so she ended up becoming a primary teacher by default. Moufida, an Egyptian academic, perceived her displacement as follows: What changed my life is being away from my home and my family. I have experienced a self-perception change when I left Alexandria to Cairo and then moved to the U.S. to pursue my higher education. Being away made me believe in myself and gave me a sense of self-accomplishment.

Women leaders  31 Women interviewees expressed various forms of geo-dynamics that they have experienced. Sadeghi (2008) and Khan (2009) indicated that women’s geo-dynamics are characterized by moving into other countries or intercity movement to acquire higher education or work. This often provided new avenues and enhanced empowerment, socioeconomic independence, and advancement of personal attributes, which endowed women with a sense of autonomy in their families and communities. As evidenced from the women’s stories, there is a correlation between the concepts of empowerment, autonomy, freedom of choice, self-exploration, and self-realization. These concepts become visible through various forms of geo-dynamics and displacement.

Self-empowerment and expanding empowerment: unleashing potentials Within their displacement, geo-dynamics, and self-exploration journeys, the women leaders in this book were empowered and able to empower others. Within this realm, Dima worked as an independent consultant with various NGOs in the Middle East and international NGOs and is currently the UNICEF regional staff counsellor. She stated: I had a vision for myself. I reflect on my limitations and fears in order to move forward. I gained self-empowerment though I am a blind woman… empowering others stems from stopping to underestimate the ‘Other’ or being pre-judgmental. I motivate and empower others by not dehumanizing… I empower others through connecting and linking people to each other or to institutions. Trust and connectedness with others are significant to explore others’ potentials; hence pass on empowerment… I have empowered Palestinians living in refugee camps and who were traumatized. Nour, who has been living under occupation in Palestine since the 1990s, is the director of CARE Palestine. She summarized her journey of empowerment: I have empowered myself through self-development, self-learning and organizational-training. Being visionary has empowered me and made me transmit empowerment to other women. Through creating opportunities for them to become socially and economically sustainable and hence independent. In agreement, Dorcas from Ghana said: Now that I see the impact I have on my students and teachers and the girls in particular, I want to pursue my Master and my PhD, I am not stopping … we all have potential, sometimes you just need someone to tell you that you have it.

32  Women leaders Within the same scope of empowerment, Moufida noted, “I have empowered my students especially the girls in terms of building their confidence to be financially independent which will strengthen their social independence and mitigate being treated as marginalized.” Along with the notion of women’s marginalization, at almost every leadership level, women faced social and employment discrimination and stereotyping. Marginalization encompassed women at all levels, status, and stages, including single women, married women, and working mothers. Women are challenged in terms of successfully maintaining multiple roles and by their gender. Despite social oppression and the attempt to marginalize women, the interviewees enabled themselves to produce short- and long-term changes, alter organizations, improve the community, and lead change through democratization, empathy, and altruism and by means of representing a leadership model for fellow women within their own families and their social circles.

Motherhood: everyday educational leadership and multiple roles Women’s advancement in the Arab world initially commences with their own self-development and empowerment within a supportive family. It is in this space where mothers play a pivotal role. The socialization processes they experience drastically influence their nurturing and progress to leadership positions (Arar, 2018). Like similar studies in Western countries, Arar and Shapira (2012) and Arar (2014) revealed that working mothers are role models and they constitute a crucial example in setting the standards for empowerment, professional aspirations, and success. They are also significant in women’s leadership image formation. Mothers enhance leadership abilities, though several circumstances may limit them from being professionally progressive. They are role models by demonstrating what they can accomplish and attain beyond the sociocultural boundaries restricting them. They draw a path-breaking contribution on the personal, organizational, and community levels. From a motherhood scope, Haya, who worked at a higher education institution in an Arabian Gulf country, noted that she faced numerous challenges during her PhD studies and that she was challenged by performing multiple roles as a mother, a working woman, and a student. This caused her to navigate multiple roles simultaneously. Haya added that she also faced systemic constraints. She argued that universities needed to reconsider the promotion criteria for a woman who is an academic researcher, a wife, and a mother. Leilah from Liberia concurred: It was challenging to balance my duties as a wife, mother, and principal. But I am determined, and I did it …, and nobody complains about my long hours anymore the way they did in the beginning. Now they rather support me because they see I am a change maker and change agent and they are proud.

Women leaders  33 Similarly, Khadija discussed her multiple roles as an immigrant who was also working, studying, and parenting in Australia. She said that once her supervisor who was a woman told her, “You can’t be a mother of three children, a PhD student, and a casual teacher … you have to choose.” However, Khadija was determined to fulfill her multiple tasks successfully, and being a working mother didn’t stop her from pursuing PhD completion. Another example of a woman who was caught between a rock and a hard place is Isra, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership and is a vice principal in a GCC country. She noted that due to her nationality and despite her qualification, she couldn’t get a professional promotion. Moreover, she was subject to dismissal because she took a maternity leave and had asked for an unpaid two weeks of absence. Isra voiced, “Why should I choose between work or motherhood? Aren’t motherhood and teaching connected?” As a working mother Elena, illustrated that she was raising three boys on her own and didn’t get any family or organizational support. Elena had to take three or even four jobs at different days of the week in order to support her boys. She added that the family wasn’t a source of support. Nevertheless, despite her circumstances, she remained strong and able to control her situation. She was self-sufficient and resilient in resolving all the challenges. Alia reiterated the difficulties that she had faced as a working mother, especially given the economic crisis and political unrest in Lebanon. Alia was also struggling with meeting her university expenses; thus she had to work in two universities in order to be able to pay for her PhD fees and sponsor her kids’ education and their living expenses. Nonetheless, when asked, Alia highlighted how proud she was of her accomplishments. Whether single, married, or working mothers, multiple challenges were realities for all women interviewees. Nevertheless, the women leaders have risen powerfully above all obstructions pertaining to motherly roles, discrimination, and forms of inequity. Women demonstrating leadership in education and in the community remains an issue of equity and social justice: “We must never lose sight of the facts that the leaders we are discussing are women, that doing leadership may differ for women and men, and leadership does not take place in a genderless vacuum” (Yoder, 2001, p. 815). Women have voiced their exposure to social discrimination, gender, and systemic inequities. In reference to her professional struggle in Malaysia and in the UAE, Moufida noted that she was offered a job at one of the Islamic universities in Malaysia, but the human resources office wasn’t explicit about the Islamic dress code, and upon her arrival she found out that hidjab (headcover) was mandatory, so she abided by the dress code on campus. Nevertheless, several male teachers bullied her because she wasn’t covering her hair (wearing the hidjab) in public outside the university, or as Moufida phrased it, “I was really harassed.”

34  Women leaders In a similar context, Wedkuuni stated, At first, as a woman leader in Burkina Faso, parents and men did not take me seriously. They would make comments and discriminate against me because of my gender. One man even tried to get me fired but it did not work! I am still here! Another example of exposure to unpleasant and challenging experience was expressed by Salwa, an Egyptian English teacher in a GCC country. Salwa indicated, It was in a shock to see the principal screaming and shouting at us, she always threatens us. I tried to avoid her and focus on my teaching and students, being a mother for them, although I am not married. I volunteer with many organizations, when my principal knew about this, she threatened me to report me to the MoE, human resources department. The women’s stories shared here reflect how their efforts were frequently hampered. As Coleman (2011) and Arar et al. (2012) noted, it is unclear mandates, inadequate systems, insufficient resources, and insufficient policies, rules, and procedures that continue to constrain women and cause professional and emotional frustration and disappointment. Nevertheless, leadership is also being practiced and modelled at home.

Practicing leadership at home: leadership as influence A common refrain that emerged from the women leaders’ reflections was that educational leadership is initiated, practiced, and modeled at home. For example, Haya conveyed that she has inherited her strengths and stamina from her mother and mother-in law who were among the first five nurses in Palestine. Both her mother and mother in-law were role models for her and her girls. Haya stated that she wanted to trigger in her daughters attributes related to self-empowerment so they can face challenges in the same way that she was inspired. She exclaimed: Empowerment goes in circles. I also teach my daughters that discrimination is the product of their (your) own expectations and perceptions. If you fight back discrimination, you will not be subject to it. You are a victim of discrimination, only if you allow it. Additionally, Precious from Ghana indicated, I know my leadership is positive and has a positive influence on students and girls in particular because they see themselves in me and understand they do not need to marry and give birth so soon. They can have a career too.

Women leaders  35 This positive attitude is also addressed by Khadija, who raised two daughters who live with the family motto of “I can do it despite everything.” Khadija added that she has witnessed two generations of strong women in her family. These women were her role models: My grandmother was the first Muslim Lebanese women to ask for the right of divorce. Though the right of divorce according to Islamic religion is a women’s right, nevertheless the norm was that women aren’t awarded this right due to male-gender supremacy. In the mid-1930s, my mother was raised by a single mother and my grandmother managed to create a sustainable source of income to maintain a decent life. Despite the divorced-woman-stigma in the early 1930s (in an Arab and Muslim society), my grandmother was able to raise my mother who thrived academically and professionally. The image of strong women in my family never seized to exist in me. From a wider sociocommunity scope, Asantewaa from Ghana said: “I know that the children are insurance for the future of the country.” Women leaders frequently highlighted that being a woman assisted them with mentoring and being role models for the girls in their community. They see the importance of school and many shared the view that motherhood could wait—despite the sociocultural pressures and beliefs. Other women in educational leadership commented, “I want to do something for the development of my country and the empowerment of girls.” Women reported that being an educational leader helped them talk to teenage girls about relevant matters, such as avoiding teenage pregnancy and other concerns specifically related to girls’ well-being. Notably, with more women educational leaders at the helm and engaged in this type of intervention, girls’ safety has improved, and teenage pregnancies have declined considerably in three out of the twelve public schools in Ghana. Subsequently, the power relations that empowered or prevented women from leading fulfilling lives operated at many levels of society from the most personal, formal, and informal role modeling to the highly public systemic order. Accordingly, this stipulated the need for micro- and macrosystemic changes. Women are situated within intertwined systems and embraced a holistic change that is mediated through infiltrating equity in governmental policy making (Arar & Shapira, 2012; Coleman, 2011).

Concluding thoughts The women leaders presented in this chapter represent various ethnocultural groups. Within the realm of the diversified nature and perspectives of displacement, the interviewees’ narratives portrayed multiple hurdles and inequities. The women interviewees have shed light on different elements underpinning the challenges they have encountered. However, they were able to expand empowerment and transmit changes on the professional

36  Women leaders and communal levels. In particular, the women educational leaders in this chapter have elucidated a wide scope of educational transformation mediated by a dual empowerment model. This dual model is characterized by (1) women who have experienced power through observing other exemplary women leaders demonstrating power and (2) women who have been proactive in generating empowerment avenues and have set high standards of success expectations for other women within their milieu. Throughout their stories, the women leaders noted that they didn’t receive the necessary support from the micro and macro systems they were affiliated with. Specifically, family systems as well as external societal and organizational systems were insufficient in providing the resources, policies, rules, and procedures that were required. Consequently, the women were constrained, yet they persevered in their efforts to override the attempts to marginalize them and exclude them. From these women leaders, there is a clear call for multiple systems to better support women’s leadership. This includes endorsing policies that empower women and magnify their working capacities and multiple roles. Of note, some of the women leaders also highlighted that they found self-empowerment when they were away from home. A common element for these women was that being abroad had given them the opportunity to undergo self-discovery and become part of a system that embraced women’s potential and capacities. This captures the binary nature of empowerment, which is outsourced by a robust system or systems and is internally initiated. Therefore, empowerment is both situated and mobilized through the inner self as well as external supportive systems. These systems are hinged to formal and informal socio-educational and governmental institutions. As such, this chapter raises important questions for systems: What power modes and manifestations contributed or may contribute to women leaders’ empowerment in numerous educational spheres? What systems need to be constructed to empower women and cement progressive changes within the spectrum of women’s leadership? These questions and others will be fully discovered and highlighted through women’s educational leadership narratives in terms of triggering and enhancing social justice and transformational change both in the system and community.

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38  Women leaders García, S., & Guajardo, M. A. (2018). Eternal vigilance: Politics, race, and the struggle for educational equity in a central Texas community. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 31(8), 726–746. doi:10.1080/09518398.2018.147 9045 Giroux, H. (2003). The Abandoned Generation: Democracy beyond the Culture of Fear. London Borough: Palgrave. Glass, T. E., & Franceshini, L. A.. (2007). The State of the American School Superintendency: A Mid-Decade Study. A study commissioned by the American Association of School Administration. Rowman and Littlefield Education. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2011). Women and Educational Leadership. New Jersey: Jossey-Bass. Guajardo, F., & Guajardo, M. (2013). The power of plática. Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing and Service Learning, 13, 159–164. Guajardo, M. A., Guajardo, F. J., Janson, C., & Militello, M. (2016). Reframing Community Partnerships in Education: Uniting the Power of Place and Wisdom of People. UK: Routledge. Gümüş, S., Arar, K., & Oplatka, I. (2020). Review of international research on school leadership for social justice, equity and diversity. Journal of Educational Administration and History. doi:10.1080/00220620.2020.1862767 Henry, E., & Pringle, J. (1996). Making voices, being heard in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Organization, 3(4), 534–540. Jankowski, K., & Takahashi, H. (2014). Cognitive neuroscience of social emotions and implications of psychology: Examining embarrassment, guilt, envy and Schadenfreude. Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 68(5), 319–336. Jean-Marie, G., Normore, A. H., & Brooks, J. (2009). Leadership for social justice: Preparing 21st century school leaders for new social order. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 4(1), 1–31. Khan, S. (2009). Of Hockey and the Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman. Toronto, Canada: Tsar Publications. Klenke, K. (2011). Women in Leadership: Contextual Dynamics and Boundaries. Bingley: Emerald Publications. Komives, S. R., Owen, J. E., Longerbeam, S., Mainella, F. C., & Osteen, L. (2005). Leadership identity: A grounded theory. Journal of College Student Development, 46(6), 593–611. doi:10.1353/csd.2005.0061 Kupferberg, I., Green, D., & Gilat, I. (2002). Figurative positioning in hotline stories. Narrative Inquiry, 11, 1–26. Manchanda, R. (2004). Gender conflict and displacement: Contesting “infantilisation” of forced migrant women. Economic and Political Weekly, 39(37), 4179–4186. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4415535 Mangen, C., & Audousset-Coulier, S. (2020). Just a girl: Identity conflicts of women who move into corporate leadership. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/987047/1/ IDConflicts_Feb2020.pdf McDonald, K. L., & Asher, S. R. (2018). Peer acceptance, peer rejection, and popularity: Social-cognitive and behavioral perspectives. In W. Bukowski, B. Laursen, & K. Rubin (Eds.), Handbook of Peer Interactions, Relationships, and Groups (pp. 429–446). New York: The Guilford Press. Metcalfe, B. D. (2006). Exploring cultural dimensions of gender and management in the Middle East. Thunderbird International Business Review, 48(1), 93–107. Moghadam, V. (2004). Patriarchy in transition: Women and the changing family in the Middle East. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 35(2), 137–162.

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3 Women enhancing change through social justice

Introduction Social justice (SJ) is widely discussed in the educational literature, particularly regarding the role educational leaders play in promoting the application of SJ principles in school (Arar, 2015; Arar et al., 2017; Berkovich, 2014; Papa, 2020; Theoharis & Brooks, 2013). However, SJ can be interpreted in different ways and can have political overtones (Brooks, Knause, & Chang, 2015; Jean-Marie et al., 2009). Education policies and their application in schools are severely criticized, because in practice, despite noble declarations to improve SJ, little is actually done to prevent discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion or segregation (Fraise & Brooks, 2015; Waite & Arar, 2020; Wang, 2016). According to Garratt and Forrester (2012), simply providing equal access to educational resources does not necessarily lead to SJ, and more attention should be given to equality of outputs. Brooks and Miles (2006) emphasized that educational leaders should work according to principles of justice, containment, caring, and empathy to ensure greater SJ in their institutions. To do this they need to develop critical assessments of the different forms of oppression and injustice within their workplaces, especially the way in which nonrepresentative distribution of resources and power can lead to preference of a particular group or type of student. Such assessments could help to prevent and correct injustices (Brooks & Miles, 2006; Diem & Boske, 2012). Three types of SJ can be demonstrated in schools: distributive, relational, and cultural justice (Arar, 2015; Bogotch & Shields, 2014; Brooks & Miles, 2006; Fraise & Brooks, 2015). Adopting awareness and sensitivity when it comes to the power distribution in their institutions, school leaders can plan and implement long-term change. They should try to provide equal opportunities for students and strategies and room for staff and students’ support and empowerment. Of course, the leaders’ global view and the school’s social context will inevitably affect the success of these strategies (Arar, 2015; Fraise & Brooks, 2015). The challenge to attempts to improve SJ in schools is especially difficult when the society in which the school exists is a traditional patriarchal society, living under an oppressive political system that provides insufficient DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-3

Women enhancing change through social justice  41 and discriminatory resources to the school (Arar, 2015). Brunner (1999) described such attempts by women principals and superintendents to overcome social systems that had ignored the needs of weak social strata as “running with the wolves.” Due to their motivation for greater SJ, women educational leaders can become agents of social change in their schools and colleges. These women share personal attributes and educational principles and values that drive them to create an ambiance in which democratic processes and participation of staff can help improve equity and SJ. This chapter illustrates the actions taken by women leaders to initiate and implement policies and actions that demonstrate SJ in their work.

Educational leadership and SJ Mansfield (2013) defined SJ as the duties of a society and its organizations to enhance societal and civic welfare. Any society wishing to ensure SJ should ensure that educational resources are distributed equally (Brooks & Miles, 2006) so that each student, irrespective of ethnic, religious, or social background, can receive high-quality education (Bogotch & Shields, 2014). However, educational leaders’ ability to implement equal opportunities and entitlements to high-quality education depends on dynamic changes in their environment and their incentives and drive to envision and constitute a school culture that embraces and employs equity, diversity, and realization. The culture should promote democratic processes, inclusion, and direction, while consciously recognizing any expressions of inequality, discrimination, or oppression (Mansfield, 2013). Such a culture can enable students to develop their personal potential and become empowered by their education with the teachers’ guidance (Dantley & Tillman, 2009). Students need to feel physically and mentally safe within the school (Walker, 2006). Another aspect that should be addressed by educational leaders is the socioeconomic status of both staff and students, identifying the effects on perceptions of and attitudes to teaching and learning abilities and attempting to build a sense of community. They should be aware how stakeholders and their surrounding community are positioned in terms of poverty, exclusion, discrimination, and oppression (Arar et al., 2017; Rodriguez & Fabionar, 2009). In a world where societies are increasingly diverse, educational leaders wishing to implement SJ should also be sensitive to the diverse needs and cultures of their students and their communities, applying a culture-sensitive caring and critical pedagogy to enable all students to have an empowering experience (Gerst-Pepin & Aiken, 2012; Shields, 2004).

Women leaders and social justice Two feminist movement waves in the developed countries of the “West,” and a third Muslim feminist wave (Khalil & DeCuir, 2018), have failed to make

42  Women enhancing change through social justice any significant alteration in the proportion of women in educational leadership (Bjork, 2000). Educational leadership remains marked by a hegemonic “male” culture, which has influenced values, ideologies, structures, and conceptual foundations of educational leadership and administration, as well as social relationships that affect daily school activities (Blackmore, 1999), so that women entering leadership roles often feel threatened as they enter what they describe as hostile and resistant territory. Research, such as the work of Coleman (2011), on the role of women in education systems and the work they do to improve and advance teaching skills and adapt pedagogy (Gardiner et al., 2000) indicates that women educational leaders are foremost in the development of a “transformational leadership” (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). These leaders emphasize particular values and a critical consciousness (Ayers et al., 2009; Brooks & Miles, 2006; Jean-Marie et al., 2009). It has also been shown that their practices in management posts have led to a positive influence on their organizations’ functioning (Brunner, 1999; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Kamler, 2006). Trying to identify the qualities, trajectories, and strategies of women educational leaders who work to minimize gaps and inequality in schools, Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) found that these women distinguish numerous sources of authority, and delegate them to different group members. They manage to promote SJ through their educational work by concentrating on identifying and providing social solutions for educational problems that arise in school. Other scholars indicate that many women educational leaders who promote SJ are aware of and develop their school as a community and investigate and address their students’ sociopolitical and economic context, while strongly criticizing and acting to prevent students’ exclusion. They choose an appropriate leadership style guided by SJ values and set a personal example of practicing a moral code on a daily basis. Such transformational leadership has the power to engender social change in the school (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Newcomb & Welton, 2013) so that it provides a space of care and compassion, and educational staff cooperate to attain equity and enable student empowerment (Sanders-Lawson, Smith-Campbell, & Benham, 2009). Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) and Coleman (2011) found that women’s leadership abilities are evident from early childhood. It is apparent that several women educational leaders underwent experiences of exclusion, anguish, and/or discrimination at an early age, but that these experiences were part of an empowering process enabling them to promote an ethos of egalitarianism, having a sense of mission to improve SJ in their professional roles (Wang, 2016). A supportive family was observed as empowering Arab women who grasped senior positions in schools and colleges (Shapira et al., 2011). Women leaders in the USA were found to be occupied in four main areas of activity more than men leaders: shaping an educational vision, constructing foundations for inclusion, providing support for students and reducing the chasm between them, and enhancing development and empowering others through collective and comprehensive collaboration

Women enhancing change through social justice  43 (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). According to Grogan and Shakeshaft (ibid.), in addition to using more intuitive thinking, women use five different types of leadership: (1) relational, (2) SJ, (3) spirituality, (4) learning, and (5) balanced. It is worth noting that these ways may be applied individually or collectively, but theoretically speaking, they are more likely to characterize women leaders than traditional justice-oriented and dominating male leadership when male leaders apply principles of SJ to achieve social change. In order to progress to positions of influence in education, it is still true that women need to persevere with courage. The term “collective women” refers to women who educate, help, and support the promotion of other women in order to create circles of empowerment and social cohesion that are an essential part of this process (Coleman, 2011).

Women educational leaders: voices pertaining to social justice1 The interviewees’ narratives captured numerous scopes and women’s leadership practices of social justice. This is elaborated in the following sections. Perceptions of social justice: tracking social justice trajectories The findings presented here include citations from previously published research by Arar (2018) on the matter of women’s leadership. The past personal and public life experiences of a school principal affect their perceptions of equal access, equity, and diversity, as does their societal context. Understanding the educational leaders’ backgrounds allows us to better understand their leadership practices (Scanlan, 2012). The interviewees explained how their apprehension of SJ were shaped and articulated by their personal beliefs and life experiences. Shiraz noted: A principal brings her entire lifetime, the house she grew up in, her society. … I grew up in a home with ten children, with a mother, who was illiterate but who could run the country … sharing a piece of bread between nine children. The turning-point came when I became a significant person, a vice-principal. … I tried to free the school from its selective outlook, but when I couldn’t do it as vice-principal, I had to attain the principalship. … I don’t believe in an uncompromising school. I regard the parents’ difficulties to pay as a challenge I must deal with … every child has a place here. … I make room for diversity. Siham indicated how her personal development led her to view SJ as a way to cope with diversity in Arab society. This view stems from her religious faith: The first objective is strengthening faith, to reduce educational gaps, to contain students, to make room for diversity. …We have Muslims, Christians and Druze students, affluent city children and village children, so it’s no easy job to foster a place of diversity.

44  Women enhancing change through social justice Making adaptations to address diversity is one aspect in the application of SJ principles. These principles include equal distribution of resources, cultural sensitivity, respect for all, and maintaining the power balance in the school (Scanlan, 2012). Isabelle related to the socio-educational aspect of SJ: SJ means believing in students and their ability to succeed, to affect their future … it means investing in these children. I don’t put any child to the test of “go home,” but rather embrace them. … I come from a very difficult background, and that background motivates me to instill change. The interviewees’ principles guided them to implement different theories in action to apply principles of SJ. Carole noted: I believe in respecting students. You are an educator in everything you do or say. I always teach, because that’s the real work … it’s important to me to contain the students, I believe they should all be allowed to find themselves … There are many problems in the Israeli education system, because of the “production line” for the matriculation exams; half the students fail and leave. I fight against this production line because it is part of an unjust educational system. … I think it’s important to provide solutions for the students’ diverse needs. There should be room for emotions, they should develop critical thinking, find room for creativity, work with their heads, and be humble. The interviewees had different backgrounds, but they all attained their professional positions from a sidelined or marginal social status, and all had experienced challenges as children and youth. As educational leaders, they were motivated by their background to strive for greater SJ in their schools, using the education system’s mechanisms despite their harsh criticism of that system and its policies. They strove to correct the injustices caused by those policies as described in the next theme. Paving the paths for social justice: a good socio-educational fight against the conventions Rola lived in a large Arab town. She described her childhood as a constant struggle against the norms and restrictions on a girl’s existence in the public domain, and her inability to participate in social activities beyond the home. The norms dictated that as a girl she should help her mother in the home. She had a strong aspiration to correct injustices and also the capability to lead courageously and to proactively repair injustice. For example, she described her behavior as a high-school student: In high school, I was elected, in very difficult elections, to head the student council. I remember that when the Intifada started, the principal

Women enhancing change through social justice  45 refused to declare a strike, although all other schools in Arab society were on strike. … I climbed up on a stone at the school’s entrance and told the students: “Dear friends, today we commemorate the Intifada … if you have any feelings for the children that are being killed over there and are throwing stones for their freedom, then honor this strike and go home.” The principal stood there and looked at me. None of the students entered the classrooms, they all went home. … Everything I wanted to achieve, I had to fight for, persuade, recruit others, and cope with various objections along the way. It made me more determined, and instilled a sense of faith in myself. If I set a target, I had to move toward it until I accomplished it. Now I feel that it is my job to change the sad reality in our schools, which prevents students and teachers from attaining the goals they set; a reality that teaches them conformity. … It is my job to enable, empower, and nurture and change the existing situation. Rola’s opposition to the principal’s decision in high school indicates how her leadership developed at an early age through her resistance to conventions. She opposed Arab society’s accepted rules and challenged the restrictions in her nuclear family and at school. She described the principal’s reaction to her behavior and how she coped with it: Two days later I was summoned to a sort of “trial” at school. There were representatives of the student council and the staff. They all wanted to condemn my activity but couldn’t. I explained, “I just told the students, my friends, to go home; I didn’t threaten them, and they went.” That was my first struggle … against the rules. Shiraz explained how as a school principal, she was motivated by her personal background to lead changes: We were a large family, four girls and five boys, raised in a very harsh reality; we all had to help with work in the field and at home. As the fourth girl, … I wore hand-me-downs from my sisters, and got new clothes only twice a year. … Once I didn’t understand a math lesson, when I went to the teacher, she said, “Sorry, I already explained it in class.” That instilled my belief that school should be a hothouse that rectifies such injustices, and provides everyone with optimal conditions, so that they can realize their potential and enjoy equal and empowering educational experiences. Siham also noted how her difficult childhood motivated her to implement change: My father went to jail for drug trafficking when I was a little girl. My aunt adopted me, because Mom had to work to support us. I lived with the feeling that my family had given up on me; I was dependent on

46  Women enhancing change through social justice the mercy of others and had to prove to my aunt that I was worthy. In eighth grade, I was sent to a Christian boarding school, and again had to cope with loss and misery. But that place actually empowered me and turned me into a determined woman. The women spoke about their values and the developed educational approach that guided their actions, as Carole’s words clarified: I once read a story about an Egyptian kadi [judge] who took a walk in the middle of the night with his friends. He heard someone crying, approached, and saw it was a woman. He asked, “Why are you sitting here and crying?” She answered, “Because I am married to a coward; he took my children and threw me out.” The kadi asked, “Why didn’t you go to the kadi to complain?” she answered, “A poor woman like me who doesn’t have a penny can’t reach the courts to complain to the kadi. I complained to God, and trust in him.” The kadi replied, “I am a kadi and God sent me to you.” That’s the place where I grew up, I came from there. I read Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and Nel Noddings’ “Pedagogy of Caring.” I belong to that school. Rola had also formed her own educational vision that guided her to set “uncompromising expectations and uncontrollable support” and was translated into her work at school: I seek justice; it is rooted in my mind and soul. In essence, I am a believer. I grew up without a father, I missed something. That experience gave me strength to give and contribute, but for me giving entails not compromising. I have to see them making an effort and not feeling sorry for themselves, because that is what builds strength in an adult, and incidentally—in a teacher too. It has to manifest itself in every statement and action, everywhere. … We made it our motto to move from inflexibility to flexibility, from duty to commitment, from coercion to partnership. In order to instill these values, we opted to give the children the right to choose, believing that choice is a basic human value … Choice is the basis for equity and democracy. The right to choose means giving a chance for self-expression and sharing decision-making. It also means consideration, commitment, and responsibility for the outcome. We organized frameworks for elective studies at school to demonstrate and instill humanistic and democratic values based on equality and inclusion of the students by the teacher and between the students. It appears from these narratives that SJ is an integral element in the women’s values systems and directs the programs that they push forward. This includes increasing the participation of teachers and students in all school processes, providing a personal model of devotion to the school, to the education system, and to their society by using pedagogy that empowers

Women enhancing change through social justice  47 others. Fadia explained how she expressed these principles in her work as a professional superintendent. I hold humanistic and democratic values. At home I had to prove myself and accept the authority of the men in my life—my father and older brothers. At school, I had to prove how good I was, but accept the fact that I would never have an equal opportunity. I came to fight that. I believe in equity, self-expression, and an atmosphere that legitimizes diversity, which is the heart and soul of human and educational quality. Teachers need to experience an enabling and equal atmosphere, so that they notice the difference themselves, and can then contain the students. Like Fadia, Siham clarified her perception of SJ and the qualities she attempted to impart in her responsibilities and leading role as school principal: I am always sensitive to the needs of others; I try very hard to include others. I believe deeply in sharing, listening and being available. I believe it is my responsibility to initiate empowering discourse with weak students and connect with them. In summary, through the narratives of Rola, Carole, Fadia, and Siham, SJ is shown to be a part of the women’s ethical code and value system that became part of their educational leadership praxis. This approach aligns with their drive for inclusion, accessibility, caring, and empowering pedagogy for their students and teachers. The way in which these value systems shape and underpin their activities in the education system and at school is described in the next theme. Social injustice: a call for systemic transformation The women’s narratives show how they act to lead the education system by applying a challenging discourse so that they can generate change in the existing social order. They enhanced and empowered their subordinates’ abilities so that they would have impact on the schools in the future. They began with a vision, developed deeper discourse, and imparted richer methods within the education system through a goal-driven operational strategy. Similar findings were reported in other countries by Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011). Here, women were shown to lead in five different ways: relational—“being in relation and sharing power with others” (p. 8); leadership for social justice—“they enter the field because they want to change the lives of children … to make the world a fair place” (p. 11); spiritual leadership—“[they] always talk about spirit when discussing school leadership as a source of personal strength as well as a way to understand connectedness” (p. 14); leadership for learning—“[they] support strong programs

48  Women enhancing change through social justice in staff development, to encourage innovation, and to experiment with instructional approaches” (p. 18); and finally, balanced leadership. The interviewees in our book described the resistance that they encountered and were able to surmount both in their homes and professional careers as they struggled to realize their aspiration to become women leaders. This involved many sacrifices and determination. However, they reported that the restrictions and resistance that they encountered spurred their commitment to promote greater equality and to ultimately correct the social order and policies that created achievement gaps and perceived women as having inferior abilities. For example, their narratives revealed that difficult personal childhood experiences inspired them to reach positions of power and influence to address social inequities to engender social change and minimize educational and social gaps. As principals and superintendents, they were able to improve SJ in schools, acting out of a profound awareness of several issues: equal distribution of educational capacities and corrective measures as well as support for weaker students; sensitivity and adaptation to versatility and diverse needs, and a participative leadership style delegating power so that all stakeholders become involved in achieving the school’s vision and undergo empowerment, striving for equity and equality. In their positions of power, they were able to initiate and apply the basic conditions to overcome social injustices. Dima, a Palestinian who is living under occupation, stated: Colonial and local oppressive systems are a source of injustices. Women who were treated inferior and marginalized by the oppressive system may inflict injustices on others … moreover, once the wrong individuals are placed in high positions or given power in a corrupt system, they inflict injustice on others. I had to fight a good cause to overcome injustice treatment such as gender discrimination in the workplace where there is a chaotic or/ and an oppressive authority dictating unfair treatment towards the first nation people. … Despite the practices of injustice towards me, I still felt I have a mission in terms of believing in the potentials of others; regardless whether they are Arabs or Jews. I can’t underestimate and dehumanize others because of their ethnicities … by dehumanizing others, you are dehumanizing yourself … social justice is systemic based rather than solely an individualistic practice. Similarly, Nour, a Palestinian activist living in Ramallah (West Bank), noted: What motivates me towards prevailing a sense of social justice is my hope to make the world a better place. Social justice gives me vulnerability to discover others’ potentials so as to make them independent; in alignment with their rights … and everyone has the right to be treated in terms of the notions of equity and liberation of violence. To listen to peoples’ voices is significant in order to provide help and support for them and so they can help themselves and explore their potentials.

Women enhancing change through social justice  49 In times of crisis and in the midst of political corruption and military oppression, people are fighting in the absence of a system that protects them, shelters them or provides them with the basics. When the system isn’t sufficient or efficient, equity is absent; hence social justice is breached … it becomes a myth. Women are crushed by the system that doesn’t provide them with equity and safety; that’s why part of my role is to empower these women through economic sustainability and initiating policies for women’s protection … therefore, systemic changes need to be in shape to mitigate social injustices. Middle Eastern societies are mainly characterized by unique sociocultural and political contexts that in general include a particular lifestyle, with a unique hierarchical family structure. In this context, women face challenges in developing a professional career and need to develop unique coping strategies. The narratives of these Palestinian Arab women leaders spoke about a continuous process of empowerment through their successful responses to difficulties, serious deliberations, and obstinate resistance to the status quo when they understand that it causes injustice. This included resistance to Israeli state occupation, aiming to empower their community and push back practices of injustice. Interestingly, Trish, who is a Portuguese artist, reflected: As a Portuguese born and reared up in Mozambique, I have been subject to racism. I was challenged when I was teaching art in activities school in the UK; the headmaster was from the UK. I accepted the teaching offer to teach two days a week sculpture and critical thinking. … 99% of the students were Chinese. I was replacing another teacher and in front of the kids and the staff he would question my abilities and professional capacities. Another teacher said to me, it is ok if he talks to you like this; you will get used to this. People tend to accept injustice; that’s why it increases in volume. He bullied the teachers and the students and me. It was about him practicing his power and practicing his superiority over those who were from a different ethnicity; however this did not make me lose my confidence or [fall] behind professionally. Another injustice that I have encountered was during my studies. I was a PhD student and I discovered that being treated with equity was significant … we shouldn’t accept inequity otherwise it becomes a vicious circle of oppression. Inequity is transmitted through the system. … I witnessed inequity in Mozambique; where the Mozambiques were victims of corrupt systems, i.e., the colonial Portuguese and local systems. … I was also subject to inequity. Though I was Portuguese but born and raised in Mozambique, when I returned to Portugal, I was seen as a Portuguese Mozambiquan who was rejected and treated as an outcast … injustice stems from systems who inflict inequity on the individuals; then injustice is demonstrated in a vicious circle. … I was subject to discrimination and racism because I was perceived

50  Women enhancing change through social justice as a colonialist in Mozambique and not accepted in Portugal because I was viewed as a Mozambique Portuguese who lived away from the Portuguese culture; hence was treated as a stranger when I returned to Portugal … when went back to Portugal after Mozambique became independent, I was than in grade 9. … I was subject to discrimination and treated as an outcast by the Portuguese school system who did not accept me because they viewed me as being a Mozambique … in my case both the colonial and postcolonial systems have initiated injustice and discrimination upon me. Likewise, Fiona, an educational psychologist who worked in the UK and is currently working in Cyprus, indicated the inefficiency of the system in terms of hampering the enhancement of social justice and the exposure to a discriminative socio-educational system: Victoria Climbie was a special needs toddler who died out of negligence. … I have witnessed few cases of special needs children who were injured or died due to negligence and systemic inefficiency. … The services provided by the system were minimal and it didn’t provide prompt or sufficient intervention … in this sense, the system didn’t provide suitable and competent inclusion of the special needs toddlers and children … there was a lack of systemic professional communication as far as providing services and support for the special needs children and their families … systemic synergy was missing; consequently, the ineffectiveness of the system has failed to prevail to safeguard the practices of inclusion from a social justice perspective. In an attempt to address issues relevant to equity, social justice and children’s protection and due systemic failure, new policies in the UK to protect the marginalized population, i.e., children with special needs were endorsed in the early 2000. These women superintendents elaborated on how they were challenged to develop their ability to function simultaneously in several domains, aspiring to prove their abilities as women and to succeed in each of these areas while also aiming for sufficient interventions of equitable inclusion. Similarly, Elena, a Palestinian Lebanese Cypriot who worked as an educational coordinator at an NGO, indicated that Children are living in an unjust system that needs amendment. The child is part of a corrupt and chaotic ecosystem … I see children in refugee camps suffering; in order to fix their problems and enhance equity and social development and justice, we need to scrutinize and re-examine the ecosystem that surrounds them and this necessitates introducing and activating several policies that make up the systemic matrix. This includes policies related to: child labour, early marriage, violence and many other matters.

Women enhancing change through social justice  51 The interviewees noted the multilayered challenges and resistance that they have faced in more than one arena (home and career) in their struggle to attain their roles as women leaders. They noted that for years they were requested to make sacrifices and concessions. However, they felt that it was the hardships of such situations, restrictions, and resistance that inspired their commitment to initiate the foundations of justice and equality in their organizations and to ameliorate a social order that perpetuates gaps and sees women as inferior. In addition, their narratives reflected that it was the women leaders’ personal difficulties in childhood and youth that had motivated them to undertake managerial and leading positions and to commit themselves to addressing social inequities. Their sociocultural background and its underpinning limitations also increased their awareness of the need to act proactively for social change and reduce educational and social rifts. The women educational leaders recognized their vision and mission in the deployment and demonstration of SJ in the systems under their jurisdiction. They have acted out of their deep consciousness regarding several scopes: the equal distribution of capacities and restorative support for marginalized school populations; recognition and respect for ethnic and cultural diversity, and interactive shared distribution of power to increase all stakeholders’ involvement; hence empowerment, equity, and equality. Therefore, they were able to stipulate situations to overcome social injustices.

Concluding thoughts This chapter clarified different aspects of the lives of women educational leaders and described their work as they acted as agents of change, aiming to advance and improve SJ in their places of work at the level of the system and organization. Their leadership style and methods were in line with their values and perception of responsibility, which helped them realize their social commitment to advance equity and justice in education. This is essentially transformational education, employing a pedagogy to challenge the extant social order. This type of leadership shares decision-making and knowledge with subordinates with the aim to empower others throughout the school community. A learning community is formed that allows open professional discourse, and the community is involved in goal and performance-oriented practice of an educational vision that leads the system. The interviewed women all have a deep and critical understanding of situations of oppression, exclusion, and marginality that drives them to increase SJ through education. Each woman’s particular experiences were affected by their specific context including their gender, their sociopolitical and socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicity, and culture. They drew strength and a strong motivation to succeed from overcoming overcome restrictive rules and norms in their childhood societies. The women leader’s narratives detailed particular ways to promote SJ in their institutions. For example, their desire to prevent instances of injustice and oppression,

52  Women enhancing change through social justice pointing out and correcting the absence of respect for cultural and ethnic diversity that pushes those who are “others” to the margins and working to mitigate linguistic, economic, and social gaps that hinder equal access to resources, opportunities, and achievements. They described their work to ensure equal access and suitable amendments for the needs of all students irrespective of their diverse social, cultural, and ethnic origins, and in particular for students with helping them all to achieve their maximal potential and excel. Their self-empowerment enabled them to imbue their work with values of equality and social justice, delegating power and educating both teachers and students so that they too can continue their work. It is also true that the women leaders’ work is enhanced by their feminine qualities, bringing particular tools from their experience in coping with ongoing resistance toward women, an effort that extended beyond their official job definition. Their narratives described professional experiences that reflect significant transformation in education and learning, and that adopt a postmodern leadership where all are represented, an approach noted in earlier research as far more palpable among female rather than male leaders. Beyond the school walls, the women leader interviewees raised their voices to protest practices of inequity and the absence of a culture that reflects principles of SJ where corruption dominates political systems under oppressive and colonial practices. They continued to fight against injustice, especially when it affected their own organizations. However, it is clear from the findings that SJ cannot thrive in a society without embracing the principle of equity in the distribution of education resources; there is therefore a need for changes in the neoliberal mentality that governs many world education systems, and postmodern practices need to be adopted. The questions that emerge and that will be explored in more depth in the next chapter are: What is women’s collective leadership? How can women change and seek equity?

Note 1 Part of the following narratives appeared in the following previously published paper by the first author, and reuse is granted by Journal of Education Administration editors and Emerald Publishers; see Arar, K. (2018). Arab women’s educational leadership and the implementation of social justice in schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 56(1), 18–32.

References Arar, K. (2015). Leadership for equity and social justice in Arab and Jewish schools in Israel: Leadership trajectories and pedagogical praxis. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 17(1), 162–187. Arar, K. (2018). Arab women’s educational leadership and the implementation of social justice in schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 56(1), 18–32. doi: 10.1108/jea-10-2016-0131

Women enhancing change through social justice  53 Arar, K., Beycioglu, K., & Oplatka, I. (2017). A cross-cultural view of educational leadership for social justice in Israel and Turkey: Meanings, actions and contexts. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 47(2), 192–206. Ayers, W., Quin, T., & Stovall, D. (Eds.) (2009). Handbook of Social Justice in Education (p. XIV). New York: Routledge. Berkovich, I. (2014). A socio-logical framework of social justice leadership in education. Journal of Educational Administration, 52(3), 282–309. Bjork, L. G. (2000). Introduction: Women in the superintendency-advance. Research and Theory: Educational Administration Quarterly, 36, 5–17. Blackmore, J. (1999). Troubling Women. Buckingham: Open University. Bogotch, I., & Shields, C. M. (2014). Introduction: Do promises for social justice trump paradigms of educational leadership and social (in)justice. In I. Bogotch & C. Shields (Eds.), International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Social (In) justice (pp. 1–12). Netherlands: Springer. Brooks, J., Knause, C., & Chang, H. (2015). Educational leadership against racism: Challenging policy, pedagogy, and practice. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 17(1), 1–5. Brooks, J. S., & Miles, M. (2006). From scientific management to social justice … and back again? Pedagogical shifts in the study and practice of educational leadership. International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, 10, Article 21. https://www.ucalgary.ca/iejll Brunner, C. (1999). Sacred Dreams: Women and the Superintendency. Albany: State University of New York Press. Coleman, M. (2011). Women at the Top – Challenges, Choices and Change. New York: Palgrave. Dantley, M. E. & Tillman, L.C. (2009). Social justice and moral transformative leadership. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education (2nd ed., pp. 19–34). New York: Allyn Bacon. Diem, S., & Boske, C. (2012). Introduction: Advancing leadership for social justice in a global world. In C. Boske & S. Diem (Eds.), Global Leadership for Social Justice: Taking It from the Field to Practice. London: Emerald Publishing. Fraise, J. N., & Brooks, J. (2015). Toward a theory of culturally relevant leadership for school-community, culture. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 17(1), 6–21. Gardiner, M. E., Enomoto, E., & Grogan, M. (2000). Coloring Outside the Lines: Mentoring Women into School Leadership. Albany: State University of New York Press. Garratt, D., & Forrester, G. (2012). Educational Policy Unravelled. London: Continuum. Gerst-Pepin, C., & Aiken, J. A. (2012). Social Justice Leadership for a Global World. New York: Information Age Publishing. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2011). Women and Educational Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Jean-Marie, G., Normore, A. H., & Brooks, J. (2009). Leadership for social justice: Preparing 21st century school leaders for new social order. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 4(1), 1–31. Kamler, E. (2006). The aspiring superintendents’ study group: Investigating a mentoring network for school leaders. Mentoring and Tutoring, 14(3), 297–316. Khalil, D., & DeCuir, A. (2018). This is us: Islamic feminist school leadership. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50(2), 94–112. doi: 10.1080/00220620.2018.1439904

54  Women enhancing change through social justice Mansfield, K. (2013). I love these girls – I was these girls: Women leading for social justice in a single-sex public school. Journal of School Leadership, 23(4), 640–663. Newcomb, W. S., & Welton, A. (2013). Introduction: Women leading for social justice. Journal of School Leadership, 23(4), 586–591. Papa, R. (2020). Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education. Cham: Springer. Rodriguez, G. M., & Fabionar, J. O. (2009). The impact of poverty on students and schools: Exploring the social justice leadership implications. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education (2nd ed., pp. 55–73). New York: Allyn Bacon. Sanders-Lawson, E. R., Smith-Campbell, S., & Benham, M. K. P. (2009). Holistic visioning for social justice: Black women theorizing practice. In C. Marshall & M. Oliva (Eds.), Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education (2nd ed., pp. 74–99). New York: Allyn and Bacon. Scanlan, M. (2012). A learning architecture: How school leaders can design for learning social justice. Educational Administration Quarterly, 49(2), 348–391. Shapira, T., Arar, K., & Azaiza, F. (2011). ‘They didn’t consider me and no-one even took me into account’: Women school principals in the Arab education system in Israel. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 39(1), 25–43. Shields, M. (2004). Dialogic leadership for social justice: Overcoming pathologies of silence. Educational Administration Quarterly, 40(1), 109–132. Theoharis, G., & Brooks, J.S. (2013). What Every Principal Needs to Know to Create Equitable and Excellent Schools. New York: Teacher College Press. Waite, D., & Arar, K. (2020). Problematizing the social in social justice education. In R. Papa (Ed.), Handbook on Promoting Social Justice in Education (pp. 169–192). Cham: Springer. Walker, J. (2006). Principals and counselors working for social justice: A complementary leadership team, Educational Administration Quarterly, 43(2), 221–258. Wang, F. (2016). From redistribution to recognition: How school principals perceive social justice. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 15(1), 1–20.

4 Women’s collective leadership A comprehensive transformation

Introduction There has been a dramatic transformation of women’s roles in leadership. Women have always had the capabilities and desire for leadership despite political, economic, and societal delimitations and restrictions. The women in this chapter have performed tasks and initiatives that went above and beyond the mission of traditional educational leadership. They have demonstrated collective leadership and initiated changes at individual, organizational, and community levels. These women have risen not only to empower themselves but also to empower others and make a difference as fully discussed in the previous chapters. The voices of the interviewees highlight the imprints and milestones of the transformational journey toward social justice and equity (Klenke, 2017; Kloot, 2004). While in the previous chapter we explored how the women leaders interviewed became agents of change and the ways in which they promoted SJ in the systems and organizations where they worked, in this chapter, women are shown as collective leaders who promote transformation. The chapter is presented through the lens of women’s leadership in their capacities as school principals, academics, educational coordinators, educators, social consultants, sector development and policy advisers, and edu-health advisors at government, private nonprofit groups, and NGOs. Women who contributed to this study represent the paradigm of collective leadership. Transformation is initiated, orchestrated, and enhanced by collective leaders. The pillars of transformation embody the people, organization/ institution, and community (Stringer & Blaik Hourani, 2016). This perspective is captured in Figure 4.1. Stringer and Blaik Hourani (2016) discussed that leadership in the current complex environment necessitates collective channels to create and anchor change. Trust, empowerment, support of others, and optimizing the human capacity within and beyond the organization are pivotal for transformation. Through collective leaders, a system-wide transformation is promoted by means of restructuring and revamping systems and enriching and sustaining the development of new knowledge, practices, and competencies. In order to galvanize transformation, collective leaders DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-4

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Transformation on the people's level

Transformation on the Community level

Transformation on the organizational and institutional levels

Collective Leaders as Agents of Transformation

Figure 4.1  Collective leaders enhancing transformation.

create conditions that promote a momentum for change that involves a wide array of stakeholders and community members within the organizational and public scope scales. The fundamental role of collective leaders embodies creating opportunities and avenues for change on the people, community, and organization levels. This leads to a purposeful and meaningful goal for transformation. Given Stringer and Blaik Hourani’s (2016) framework, this chapter revolves around two main tiers pertaining to (1) What transformation did women as collective leaders within their versatile capacities, enhance? and (2) What challenges and constraints did they face in their journey across instilling and promoting transformation?

Maximizing women leaders’ opportunities As a consequence of globalization and an influx in technological and sociodemographic shifts, opportunities for women leaders in various regions of the world have increased. Several dynamics and socioeconomic paradigms have produced more and new leadership opportunities for women. These opportunities have been anchored within the boundaries of an innovative and competent workforce that can promote transformation (Klenke, 2017). Kloot (2004) and Klenke (2017) added that women’s exercising leadership is critically important for enhancing development, innovation, building capacities, changing systems, and putting policies in shape. Nonetheless, objectifying women in certain contexts have delimited women from maximizing their capacities in the workforce. Throughout history women have witnessed a masculine-patriarchal oriented management culture, with a minimal experience of feminine management values or gender related contextual perceptions of work

Women’s collective leadership  57 environment that women are situated in. Gender issues became more visible in times of globalization. The latter premise has suggested nominating change agents to provide support and encouragement for women within the parameters of more transparent organizations that place processes, structures, policies, and systems to endorse working women and maximize their capabilities in the workforce, society, and community (Klenke, 2017; Kloot, 2004). Women leaders are likely to initiate, construct, and support strong programs to enhance educational transformation and to promote innovation through collective leadership. Women leaders focus on the importance of building capacities to transmit organizational and community changes (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). By prioritizing collaborative efforts for change, women leaders empower their educational institutions through the growth and development of educators and stakeholders. In the same vein, women leaders practice collective and collaborative leadership to embrace and propel vision and decision making. Women leaders’ attributes that help them make transformational change in a collective manner are linked to a balanced leadership model that triangulates effectively, leading the people, the organization, and the community. This leads to a significant impact in practicing leadership, initiating change, and energizing educational transformation (Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011). As noted by Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011), numerous women leaders have competencies to work in a collective manner and to exercise directive leadership and change. However, despite their capacities to demonstrate successful collective leadership, they do face challenges due to the lack of adequate services and support systems. Therefore, they practice self-empowerment in instilling changes in themselves and in others. The results show that as women leaders who are strong, assertive, confident, and collaborative, they constitute the nuclei for change. The paths of women leaders’ collaborative style are identified by Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011). These paths are identified by means of communication, association, collaboration, and transformational shifts. It is through these paths that women in educational leadership can conceptualize the change work ahead of them and how to interrelatedly and collectively engage the people, the organization and the community. This engagement across the three levels then empowers women leaders to meet status quo challenges. Collective leadership practices that are demonstrated by women’s leadership are described by Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) through stimulation, nurturing, constructive input and dissent, feedback, and ideas from both internal and external arena of the organization that extend to the wider community. Thus, women leadership can be viewed as a vehicle for both community and organizational flourishing, described by Grogan and Shakeshaft (2011) as “relational leadership, social justice leadership, and leadership for learning” (p. 75).

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Who are collective leaders? Collective leadership is described as a team working together toward a shared organizational goal and vision. Preskil and Brookfield (2008), O’Neill and Brinkerhoff (2017), and Gurr (2017) outlined how collective leadership denotes the team’s work toward building accountability and trust, as well as shifting from the mindset of the leader in a command-and-control model to being a solution resolver who promotes shared learning, reflection, visioning and goal setting, mutual accountability, and authentic engagement. These notions are based on the premise that everyone who can lead should lead. O’Neill and Brinkerhoff (2017) described collective leaders as community-builders, initiators, coaches of human capacity, and instigators of social development. As such, they work with all stakeholders to solidify and increase commitment to the public progress and reform through building diverse capacities and establishing partnerships and networks. As such, their roles need to extend across vertical and horizontal community and public levels. On the organizational level, collective leaders are in charge of introducing integrated and interdisciplinary systems. Table 4.1 shows a visual representation of O’Neill and Brinkerhoff’s (2017) features and implications of collective leadership. Fullan (2010) and Harris (2010) suggested that the role of the collective leader is to ensure that the organization develop relationships that result in impact and change within and beyond the walls of the organization For Pearce et al. (2003) an Stewart (2006), these results were described as beneficial for improved decision making and organizational effectiveness, increased self-direction and motivation for development, and the realization of potential. These benefits thus lead to further engagement and investment in the wider scope of community and the public sector. Furthermore, Senge, Hamilton, and Kania (2015) indicated that collective leaders focus on sustainability for improvement. Kuenkel and Schaefer (2013) perceived collective leaders as enabling transformation in terms of building and revitalizing systems and creating conditions that stimulate, mediate, and materialize change at its widest scope, such as the communal Table 4.1  Features, implications, and praxis of collective leadership Features of Collective Leadership View of organizations Structure Decision-making Presumptions about human capacities Beliefs of how successful deeds is created

Implications and Praxis Organizations as interdisciplinary and integrated systems Connected networks and partnerships Shared or rotated People are innately able and are trusted to do the right thing Success is the product of different attributes of mindset and attributes of the many

Women’s collective leadership  59 and public sectors. Meehan and Reinelt (2012) emphasized that collective leadership be employed in community development, educational transformation, and socioeconomic and educational sustainability. In addition, Laloux (2014) described collective leadership as the core of human consciousness, especially in its connotations of wholeness and evolutionary purposes for the socio-communal welfare. Both Meehan and Reinelt (2012) and Laloux (2014) highlighted how nonprofit organizations and private organizations that have philanthropic ethos have stressed the pivotal role that collective leadership plays, which employs a cross-sector approach that targets integrated and interdisciplinary changes that overarch several public sectors.

Collective leadership: Transformation on the people’s front The narratives of these women indicate that despite their ability to undergo personal transitions in order to climb the career ladder, their advancement was more akin to mountain climbing. They made their path through agency, collective commitment, interpersonal relations, and collective leadership, which helped them propel organizational and community changes. In line with these findings, Hallinger and Heck (2010) as well as Leithwood and Sun (2012) noted that there are various challenges that need to be addressed in times of organizational change. Within this vein, leader-centrism arguments have spurred movement toward shared leadership, distributed practice, building human capacities, and learning communities (Bush, 2011; Bush & Middlewood, 2013; Harris & Jones, 2017). Therefore, creating change requires a new professional vision in terms of functioning based on empowerment and support of others. From this perspective of promoting changes at the people’s level, Leithwood and Beatty (2009), Harris (2010), and Harris and Jones (2017) indicated that the leaders’ responsibility is to hold the mosaic of the organization together to maximize the human capacity building within the organization and across various stakeholders. However, York-Barr and Duke (2004) and Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) saw that transformation by means of building capacities acts as a direct and indirect medium of and for change. On the praxis level, “developing the people” is interpreted through the development of better interpersonal relationships and the comprehension of the “Other,” leading life-long learning and continuous learning and development, pursuing ways to promote individual and team development, initiating ways to build and sustain a learning community, and being aware of the impact of change on people, the community, and the public. Subsequently, building human capacities that is initiated at the micro-organizational level elevates change through to the public level (Evans-Andris, 2010; Fullan, 2010; Stringer & Blaik Hourani, 2016). Ultimately, this will lead to empowerment of various individuals, each according to their anticipated aspirations, abilities, and roles.

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Collective leadership: Deconstructing and ameliorating organizations for transformation The preceding narrative exposes the social and professional relationship web that facilitated women leaders’ contribution in the private, public, and professional domains. Collective leaders face multilayered constraints and delimitations. Hallinger and Heck (2010) and Leithwood and Sun (2012) emphasized that there are various challenges that need to be addressed in times of organizational change. First, notions and implications about change management are fundamental, and achieving system-wide transformation depends upon all stakeholders communicating and networking to propel change forward (Blaik Hourani & Stringer, 2015; Bush & Middlewood, 2013; Harris, 2010). Second, within the context of organizational change, Ibrahim and Al-Mashhandany (2012) discussed that prior to introducing change, leaders need to acknowledge the need for (1) setting new structures, (2) assessing national and public aims pertained to the changes anticipated, and (3) creating strategies to deploy the change, which tends to create discomfort among the staff and relevant stakeholders who are part of the transformation. In addition, Leithwood and Sun (2012) and Sánchez-Núñez et al. (2015) discuss that undertaking organizational transformation necessitates comprehending and deconstructing the organizational structure, enhancing two-way communication, constructing models for organizational self-assessment, and promoting visionary and missionary alignment of organizational changes to the wider public sector changes.

Collective leadership: Reaching out for community transformation The broad spectrum of community transformation indicates that collective leaders need to grasp that successful change, in times of global dynamics, requires a focus on the momentum for change (Arar et al., 2020; Gurr et al., 2011). Beycioglu and Pashiardis (2015), Stringer and Hourani (2016), and O’Neill and Brinkerhoff (2017) discussed that leading changes that overarch the community draws the attention toward the following simultaneous elements: (1) keeping effective communication with stakeholders; (2) collaborating with the community; (3) developing meaningful partnerships with external agencies and authorities in order to promote development; (4) liaising with local and global agencies; (5) supporting organizations and ministries for the well-being of the people; and (6) understanding the demographic needs in times of crisis and change. Within the aforementioned parameters, the knowledge and competencies that collective leaders require encompass knowledge of the significance of current concerns and needs in the community from a socioeconomic, psychological, and educational perspective. It is imperative to use local and global community resources and capacities and to work with local and global organizations and ministries to increase opportunities for collaboration (Beycioglu & Pashiardis, 2015; Stringer & Blaik Hourani, 2016).

Women’s collective leadership  61

Constraints facing collective leaders Given the perspectives of transformation, Arar et al. (2020), Lahmar (2020), and Mahfouz (2020) indicated that mounting political pressure and tension have slowed down the mission of organizational and institutional changes at the micro and macro levels. Accordingly, they advocated that collective leaders on the micro and macro management and leadership levels must exert more progressive actions and exercise sensitivity to the competing pressures that hinder the enhancement of systems that endorse social justice, equity, and sustainability. The authors reiterated that addressing the peoples’ needs requires progressive corrective measures to amend the socio-educational ills that have been intensely witnessed. The amendments included a range of social movements and the building of alternative institutions and more importantly a new model of leadership that features collective practices, transformation, and the capability to build alliances. Thus, leadership denotes three pivotal scopes of leading the people, the organization, and the community in terms of building capacities (Beinin, 2014; Dauvergne & LeBaron, 2014; Ismail & Kamat, 2018; Senge et al., 2015). However, it is worth noting that in the late 1980s we have witnessed governmental systemic failure to restore and present sustainable solutions. This has exerted more pressure on collective leaders in terms of the emerging socioeconomic and educational needs (Bruff, 2014; Lewis & Schuller, 2017; Panitch & Gindin, 2008). During this turbulent situation, given that leadership practices are culturally situated, educational and community leadership needs to be socioculturally contextualized and requires culture-specific tendencies and approaches (Miller, 2017). Furthermore, due to the crackdown of systems, women have become initiators of a covert revolution. They have gathered their prominent efforts as collective leaders in order to respond to calls of urgency and amend, revamp, and revitalize in times of transformation (Kloot, 2004; Klenke, 2017).

Trilogy of/for transformation The women in this chapter have demonstrated collective leadership attributes to enhance various scopes of transformation on the people’s level, as well as on the organizational and the community level. The interviewees featured influence multifaceted transformation. As leaders, they were versatile in terms of their social and cultural backgrounds, professional qualifications, and professional contributions.

Transformation from a people’s perspective: a holistic approach for building capacities Through their collective leadership attributes, women have demonstrated accomplishments pertaining to building human capacities. This ranges

62  Women’s collective leadership from building capacities for students, teachers, parents, people in refugee camps, special needs students, managers, and leaders. Moreover, the capacities are holistic in nature since the women leaders are in various professional frontlines which have contributed toward socio-educational development through their roles as counselors, social psychologists, educational coordinators, public health specialists, academics, educational managers, and leaders. Women as collective leaders have enhanced the well-being of individuals and promoted ethnic cohesion and socioeconomic sustainability. In fact, the interviewees have presented a tapestry of transformation that overarches various sectors of their versatile communities. For example, Elena indicated that refugee kids suffer from interrupted and discontinued education because of war trauma and the harsh emotional and psychological distress. Due to losing family members, they had to work to support their families. She described her educational and community role in taking part in organizing and supervising remedial classes through conducting training programs in line with the teachers’ and students’ needs. Elena added that the schools in refugee camps are ill equipped and the changes that are anticipated are drastic, given the learning environment and the lack of basic facilities available. Hence, developing capacities in the refugee camps on the educational pedagogical level becomes eminently significant. Given her education-community role, Elena conducted professional development to encourage the teachers to develop self-reflective and self-assessment practices. Accordingly, educational transformation was witnessed in practice. Elena stated that building capacities is a comprehensive process, and she expressed her belief in self-learning, especially since the community in refugee camps is illiterate or semi-illiterate. This necessitated her involvement in providing learning kits to children to facilitate independent learning. Furthermore, part of her role was to supervise the teachers who go frequently to the refugee camps to monitor the learning. She said that she witnessed cases of girls being married early (aged 12–14) and child labor for boys who were 12–15 years old. These children are part of a social system which has rigid traditions that are hard to break. Within this realm, Elena voiced: I see myself as a human-capacity developer and a socio-economic sustainability agent that aims at progressive changes. … I have contributed towards several models of training: (a) training the coaches, who help the teachers and (b) training the coaches to train other coaches … I am a mediator of/ for change … I have triggered change through the self-learning program and the Psycho-Social Support (PSS) and Social-Emotional-Learning (SEL … I want to add a new dimension of learning that is featured by the neuro-psychology cognitive approach and social-constructivist approach. My goal within the scope of change is related to 1) drama therapy and its relevance to “Theater of the Oppressed” and 2) a technique called the “Forum Theater,” where people perform a political, economic or a social crisis in order to reflect on it and provide solutions and resolutions.

Women’s collective leadership  63 In the area of special needs, Fiona explained: The service I led was responsible for supporting a wide range of special educational needs. It had a strong focus on including children in primary and secondary state schools, either within special educational units or mainstream classes. This necessitated training for school staff and stakeholders. I designed and organized training opportunities, as did those teams I led. Sara described her role in the arena of building human capacities in terms of establishing enrichment programs at the higher education institutional level. She started directing enrichment programs for giftedness and creativity through a unit called Mawhiba (which means talents in Arabic). The enrichment programs aimed at improving the youths’ skills in critical thinking, time management, teamwork, tolerance, self-confidence, problem solving, and life-long learning skills. In the health-education sector, Nour discussed her contribution toward human capacity building programs. She noted: The Israeli military forces destroyed everything in the health and education systems during their attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. I worked with the Palestinian Health Ministry to develop reconstruction projects. … I worked with several Palestinian NGOs and local healthcare organizations. I have built capacities in the area of management information system in both the health and education sectors … I needed to allocate and train workforces in order to build functional systems. From a school principalship perspective, Alia described her accomplishment, as far as building human capacities. She indicated: Despite the limited budget, I had to build teachers capacities in preschool and cycle-1 … building capacities was mainly within the realm of active-board skills and construction of assessments. I have employed professional learning community in order to enhance professional development and reflective practices. Dima elaborated on her role in terms of forming teams and task forces for psychological support and therapy in Palestinian refugee camps, which helped provide sociopsychological support for the victims of trauma and survivors of the massacre that took place in 2001 in Palestinian camps. Dima was counselling and training social workers and psychologists who helped the traumatized people in Jenin (West Bank) due to the Israeli massacres that took place in 2001 and also the women who were subject to domestic violence. Dima reflected, “I am a Palestinian blind woman fighting occupation and this gives robustness to the sustainable therapy I provide.”

64  Women’s collective leadership In the area of special education, Hiba explained her journey of building human capacities. She described her role as a director in terms of introducing the concept of inclusion. Hiba took part in a building capacity project that was conducted in collaboration with the Lebanese Ministry of Education (MoE), United Nations Development Porgramme (UNDP), and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The aim of the project that she was involved in was to pilot private school inclusion. This necessitated the collaboration with other potential schools who wished to employ educational inclusion and share ideas relevant to the curricular, pedagogical, and managerial operations and structures for an effective educational inclusion program. Hiba noted that building capacities for special needs came under the umbrella of her role and her belief in the welfare of the individuals and the community within the realms of continuous and sustainable education. All of these voices from women educational leaders reflect numerous forms of building capacities and a contribution toward organizational change. This is outlined in the next section. The journey of transformation on the government and private institutional levels Various women have vocalized their impact on organizational transformation. Fiona, within her role as the head of early intervention, described that in the late 1970s educational inclusion in the UK was patchy. Some mainstream schools and community groups weren’t confident in managing children with significant educational needs. However, as education support teams, such as those she had led, became trusted, schools’ confidence increased. Over time, demand grew, resources became scarcer, and it was recognized that services and departments supporting education and children’s social care worked in silos. Patterns of service delivery needed to urgently adapt. Fiona described how she had monitored systemic integration in terms of structural organization, operations, and building capacity. Within her service area, she needed to build trust in the new vision, leadership patterns, and ways of working and to find ways for staff to believe they could work effectively within new structures and systems. This meant adopting a change management model that first addressed their concerns about everyday operational matters before moving to the bigger picture of organizational change. Hence, Fiona had to employ an adaptive approach that managed the distress encountered with change. Within the same scope and in relation to institutional transformation in the field of special education, Hiba explained her initiative to introduce the first school inclusion practice during the late 1990s, called “Next Step.” This educational novelty in Lebanon resulted in a fundamental systemic change in terms of embracing special needs students at the higher education–vocational level. Hiba worked with various teams on establishing a bridging and sustainable academic system that embodied suitable higher education curriculum and pedagogies for special education students.

Women’s collective leadership  65 From a higher educational perspective, Sara also described her role in institutional changes. Within her professional responsibilities, Sara observed the need for change and pinpointed the gaps in the existing system. She took on board suggestions and ideas proposed by colleagues to establish clear and robust guidelines to revamp programs at the university. Accordingly, systemic changes were introduced. Upon initializing the change, some members jumped onboard and displayed initiative to improve. However, some resented the change. As such, she had to make the staff reflect on their fears and concerns about the new programs and the systemic changes. In the same vein, Nour described herself as an agent for organizational construction: Constructing health and education responses in the midst of war crisis and state of emergency isn’t easy. I had to collaborate with the Palestinian MoH and MoE. The MoH and MoE infrastructure was a wreck; these ministries became dysfunctional and un-operational … we worked with several Palestinian NGOs and Palestinian local edu-health organizations … systemic corruption hampered the reconstruction of the Palestinian MoH and MoE infrastructure. Within my role, I represented the West Bank on the curriculum development committee. I took part in the making of a road map in order to build the infrastructure and to monitor the transition of systems pertaining to the health and education sectors … I felt I was an agent of micro-macro-organizational changes … I was the core constituent of infrastructural construction and transformation, in times of occupation and local governmental corruption. Similarly, Yusra voiced her belief in a systems-change approach: Our struggles are caused by the same underlying structures of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and colonization … all of our work should address those structures to ensure we are changing the system and not only providing a band-aid approach that maintains the status quo … I believe in creating a ripple effect to maximize impact. At the school leadership level, Alia shared her thoughts and challenges in times of the economic crisis in Lebanon. Alia portrayed the organizational changes she oversaw regarding planning and establishing a venue for teachers’ instructional organization, which included setting standards for lesson plans, criteria and framework for students’ assessments, and performance standards for faculty appraisal. Alia stated: Creating a positive school culture through building taskforces was one of my achievements to promote pedagogical effectiveness and school-community collaboration in order to meet the schools’ needs. The changes I have introduced in my school were a result of a collective effort.

66  Women’s collective leadership In summation, women as collective leaders have noted a wide range of organizational changes that they have accomplished; nevertheless their endeavors have also embodied policy inauguration. Policy initiator: Means for systemic changes, equity, and social justice The women interviewed situated their experiences within the scope of policy. Fiona described her contributions in enhancing educational policies that are relevant to new ways and patterns for provisions. This led to the implementation of a consultation model of working across the “educational psychology service.” Consequently, policies constructed have improved the quality and quantity of service delivery and have contributed toward the development of a range of integrated specialist provisions in mainstream schools, which were highly regarded. Within the dimension of special education policies, Hiba indicated that she was an instigator of the decree of educational inclusion in the schools in Lebanon. She stated: The first case we had is a Down Syndrome. At that time, there was no decree to mandate educational inclusion in the schools in Lebanon. Later on, a decree was passed … but I took the initiative to accept and introduce inclusion. When the Lebanese MoE announced the decree, I had already enrolled special-needs-students at my school. As a school director, I have contributed towards the enforcement of an inclusion policy at schools prior to the government policy initiation. In addition, Alia explained her policy imprints within the principalship role. Alia described her contributions in constructing assessment and academic promotion policies. At the higher education level, Nour elaborated: I worked with a higher education institution in Palestine. I was at the institution of community and public health trainer and researcher. This was a combination of educational socio-civil welfare work. I worked on the policies and regulations on Women’s health and socio-educational rights. On the language policy level, Sanaa was a pioneer in introducing bilingualism. The journey of triggering the introduction of French as a second language at the preschool level in Melbourne, Australia was narrated by Farah (Sanaa’s daughter) on behalf of her mother Sanaa, who died in 2018. Farah stated: My mum is a Lebanese Australian who migrated to Australia in the late 1970s due to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War; as an immigrant, she established her pre-school in Melbourne … she believed in cultural

Women’s collective leadership  67 exchange … she was keen on teaching French in addition to English. My mum fought a lengthy bureaucratic struggle to introduce French as a second language at the preschool level … Nevertheless, her perseverance and belief in educational innovation made her succeed to start the first bilingual English/French preschool in Melbourne. Her success story initiated the rethinking of language offerings at the preschool level. Accordingly, her initiative led to the eventual endorsement of bilingualism in preschools across Victoria. In addition to policy initiation, women’s reflections depicted another spectrum of collective leadership that is characterized by their being community builders. This is demonstrated in the following section: Women as community builders: substituting and complementing the governmental system From a community perspective, Elena saw herself as a catalyst for enhancing social development. Elena captured her role in terms of her attempts to reach out to children. Elena mentioned that she sees the child within his or her social community and ecosystem. This includes the child’s family, peers, community, siblings, policy makers, and systemic procedures and operations. Elena stated: “Children live in a bubble of harsh circumstances. I try to support the children through deconstructing their ecological system; accordingly providing the help needed.” Nour also described her active role in community building and developing exchange programs that brought Palestinian youth into solidarity and cohesion. She facilitated opportunities for Palestinian youth from inside Palestine to come together with youth in the diaspora to ensure the preservation of national and cultural identity. Nour had secured grants as a mechanism and gateway to promote socio economic sustainability and support community-based organizations in Palestine. She added: “Due to political reasons the NGO I worked for banned any sort of support for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Therefore, it was hard to maneuver the educational and humanitarian actions in Palestine.” This ban constrained the community capacity building. Within this scope, Nour expressed: I had to focus on the rationale that emphasized on the fact that humanitarian intervention was badly needed for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza … I fought to detach politics from humanitarian emergency calls … I fought to approve projects because people’s health and wellbeing were at stake. I needed to provide advocacy briefings to be submitted to win the approval for pursuing community-building. Fiona and Yusra also highlighted their contribution to community work. Yusra, through her work with Road to Refuge in Melbourne, expressed:

68  Women’s collective leadership My contributions are at the intersection of public health, refugee rights, and public policy. My role involved ensuring that the quality of services provided to people seeking asylum was up to the standard, as well as secure that the delivery of services is culturally sensitive and appropriate. Moreover, public policy consulting, providing advice and support to state and federal government, particularly around disability support in schools and mental health in schools was part of my role as a human rights policy advocate and advisor. Fiona, who is currently situated in Cyprus as an associate priest but was previously an educational psychologist, noted: In order to better support those in need within the community through our churches, I have initiated a series of local area networks. These have brought together a range of NGOs, clergy, and church representatives within an area to build relationships, share challenges and opportunities, and explore how together we might work more collaboratively to support those in need. There has been a focus on finding ways to enable those in need to contribute as well as receive—whether they have cancer, Alzheimer’s … or are seeking asylum or refuge here. I particularly try to increase awareness of the status and circumstances of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants and those who have been trafficked. Government systems to support those in need have been overwhelmed as a result of the pandemic and the ensuing economic downturn. Many Cypriots have no work and welfare payments are delayed. There is considerable need for food distribution. During lockdown a number of our churches, often in partnership with local NGOs, distributed food bags and hot meals. I believe our efforts have been successful in meeting need, breaking down barriers towards those who are “other,” encouraging an ethos of volunteering, and complimenting support provided by NGOs, other faith groups and by the government. Another shape of community building was featured in terms of ethnic coexistence that was acknowledged by the women interviewees. Women as community builders: ethnic coexistence and social cohesion A crucial element in community building is social cohesion and harmony across various ethnic groups. Social cohesion can be enhanced through various paths; nevertheless, from a socio-educational perspective, Yusra reflected: Within the realm of co-existence, we give the refugees the chance to voice their lived experience so they can share their stories at scale … in this way, we can saturate the narrative in Australia with the voices of the people who are most impacted and drown out the racism,

Women’s collective leadership  69 islamophobic, xenophobic, and homogenous narrative that currently exists in the Australian media and politics. Giving the refugees the opportunity to share their stories on their terms, amplifying refugee voices across a range of platforms and medium and influencing institutions where stories are shared e.g. arts and cultural institutions, civil society organizations, and the media enhances ethnic coexistence and the acceptance of the “Other.” Khadija anchored her thoughts regarding interdisciplinary literature within the paradigm of cultural studies and peace education. Witnessing 17 years of the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, Khadija reflected: My work discusses the dilemma of producing Lebanese unitary history textbooks where the representation of the 1975 Civil War and modern history of Lebanon since 1943 continues to be problematic and a source of religio-ethnic and political clashes. Up till this point in time, the history textbook in Lebanon continues to portray national segregation. The youth are living in sectarian ghettos enclosed within their own fanaticism and monoethnic affiliation […] regarding history teaching, I advocate a unitary history that determines areas of disagreement, accounts, empathy and reflections stemming from social history. In a multi-ethnic country like Lebanon, where 17 different ethnicities are living, resolutions through educational means need to be done in order to bring the Lebanese into coexistence. The struggle for ethnic cohesion in Lebanon goes beyond the political and proxy wars. Education for coexistence and integration needs to be resurrected. All the cited women interviewees voiced their imprints on the community advancement that embraces diversified features of/for transformation. Nonetheless, they acknowledged the constraints that delimited them.

Constraints collective leaders encountered During the journey of amalgamating change, women collective leaders faced numerous and multidimensional challenges. Throughout their stories, they described chaos, corruption, and the absence of robust systems. For example, Elena explained that her objective was to promote social development amid multiple constraints and challenges. These challenges featured fundamental changes that were needed within the ecosystem to support children. This implied systemic changes that would be required within the socio-educational and health services scopes. Such changes required the construction of public policies that would safeguard the children’s well-being and pave the way for a robust socio-educational ecosystem. Accordingly, Elena stated: “We can’t move forward in social development without a radical systemic change.”

70  Women’s collective leadership Within the same dimension of systemic challenges that women leaders face, Nour related: Challenges I faced in fulfilling my mission in the area of community-building and public service is related to systemic deficiencies and processes, lack of structure, fraud actions and corruption … people are/ were losing faith in the governmental systems … we are still at a status quo as far as socio-educational development … we still witness: violence, inequity, social injustice and marginalization … if we weren’t believers of civic welfare and social development, things would have been worse and the sufferings would have been more … systemic corruption is draining our communities. In addition, the international community needs to depoliticize the human aid; people can’t be punished because of political actions and political agendas. A separation of politics and philanthropy need to be made, otherwise people’s suffrage will not be abolished. Systemic constraints were also voiced by Yusra, who stated: “there’s an over-reliance on non-profits that takes away from the role of government in providing welfare services,” Other limitations were expressed in relation to the change and the resulting resentment which featured perplexity and numerous hurdles. Fiona explained the difficulties she had faced during the journey of educational transformation: Understandably there were lots of concerns and fears among staff about introducing new systems integrating education and social care services for children across our local authority area. Professionals were fearful about making key decisions that affected children’s lives in a field/fields they weren’t familiar with. They were fearful of the required changes that implied attitudinal and perceptual shifts in order to accommodate the new roles and responsibilities they were allocated. They were afraid of losing their individual expertise, autonomy and space. Furthermore, in reference to difficulties encountered in times of educational changes, Sara added: When I introduced systemic and processes changes in my division, several members of my team resisted the change because it required more effort and thinking to implement … they didn’t like the element of quality control that I have introduced; which endorsed new systems and processes I have introduced. Few members expressed their disagreement and refusal to follow. Another difficulty faced by the interviewees was a prevailing proprietorship work environment, which led to a corporate attitude in terms of budgeting.

Women’s collective leadership  71 Alia noted that the challenge she had encountered as a private school principal were related to the clashes between the two school proprietors who had different perspectives on how to run the school and what transformation should be prioritized. Alia elaborated: The lack of synergy between the two proprietors impacted the school’s improvement, budgeting plans and operations … covid-19 and the economic crisis in Lebanon were added complexities; nevertheless, a schism in the proprietors’ decision making and guidelines continued on the expense of the school development and operations … each proprietor has a different financial agenda and prioritizes school expenses differently; bringing revenues for the school has the upper hand over school improvement. How limitations initiated by the corporate spirit impacted nonprofit community work was portrayed by Yusra: I really struggle in terms of running a non-profit advocacy organization. … in the capitalist world that we live in now, there has been a push to professionalize non-profitable organizations. While this is good in some ways because it means we are being paid for our labor, it also brings more of a “corporate” attitude to non-profits which makes it feel like a business as opposed to a fight for social justice and social welfare projects. In summation, women leaders have faced several constraints that have made their mission of educational transformation harder. These voiced constraints were situated within the scope of the (1) absence of robust systems, (2) novelty and abruptness of change introduced, and (3) nature of corporate and proprietorship work environment.

Concluding thoughts Women engaged in this chapter acknowledged their leadership attributes, although they didn’t perceive themselves as leaders in the traditional sense but rather viewed themselves as collective leaders. These women were visionary, inspirational, and motivational. They described themselves as coaches, problem-solvers, and resilient. Indeed, the women interviewees’ contingency leadership skills and their ability to be productive under stressful circumstances due to war, occupation, displacement, governmental corruption, capitalist mentality, and economic crises were highlighted. The women’s voices stipulated that their leadership is pivotal for galvanizing development, innovation, building capacities, changing systems, and putting policies in shape. Women leaders’ self-perception, as conveyed in this chapter, was situated within the spectrum of social community building and the development of

72  Women’s collective leadership human capacities that took the upper hand in demonstrating their collective leadership. Women interviewees have embraced an end goal of multidimensional transformation that takes place through formal and informal means. The trilogy of transformation they have demonstrated featured the people, the community, and the organization. This transformation is characterized by a bottom-up collective leadership which aimed at deconstructing, revamping, and reforming organizations and systems. Women leaders have empowered their teams and created channels for collaboration, partnerships, and innovation which have led to social development and community welfare. They have compensated for the failure of governmental systems in terms of the educational, health, social, and psychosocial services. They have provided their communities with the missing links that were anticipated to be on offer through public and governmental sectors and services. Consequently, women leaders in this chapter have succeeded in establishing institutional and governmental partnerships, immediacy, and contingency approaches in terms of being supplementary agents of transformation in times of corruption and inefficient government systems. Though the women leaders represent an almost phoenix-like transformation in the midst of the hardships and challenges, their journey wasn’t free of tensions and dilemmas. Their voices call for further attention to the challenges they have faced. Recommendations include the need to harmonize organizational and communal mission and vision as well as a required synergy between the agendas of various organizational partners, for example NGOs and local authorities. This will optimize resolutions in times of conflicts of interest that arise due to political tension and political agendas that cause delimitations on the actions and motions of progress, with respect to the micro/macro–organizational developmental plans and human capacity building. A shared vision and mission can also pave the way for contingency planning, especially needed in times of budget cuts and infrastructural crises. In this chapter, women’s collective leadership has been shown to galvanize transformational change. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain: What is needed to consolidate women’s collective leadership in order to exert more progressive actions in response to multifaceted urgency calls and changes? What sort of integrated and interdisciplinary and contextualized systemic changes are required to support women as collective leaders? What modes of power do women demonstrate to promote systemic educational transformation and elucidate transformational education? These are the questions that are taken up in the next chapter.

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74  Women’s collective leadership Lahmar, F. (2020). How leaders of outstanding Muslim schools in England interpret Islamic educational values in a neoliberal climate: British values and market competition. In K. Arar, D. Örücü, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict (pp. 183–198). London: Routledge. Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness. Brussels: Nelson Parker. Leithwood, K., & Beatty, B. (2009). Leadership for emotionally hot climates. International Studies in Educational Administration, 37, 91–103. Leithwood, K., & Sun, J. (2012). The nature and effects of transformational school leadership: A meta-analytic review of unpublished research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48(3), 387–423. Lewis, D., & Schuller, M. (2017). Engagements with a productively unstable category: Anthropologists and nongovernmental organisations. Current Anthropology, 58(5), 634–651. Mahfouz, J. (2020). Neoliberalism: The straw that broke the back of Lebanon’s education system. In K. Arar, D. Örücü, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), Neoliberalism and Education Systems in Conflict (pp. 91–107). London: Routledge. Meehan, D., & Reinelt, C. (2012). Leadership and Networks: New Ways of Developing Leadership in a Highly Connected World: Leadership for a New Era Series. Leadership Learning Community. Miller, P. (2017). Cultures of educational leadership: Researching and theorising common issues in different world contexts. In P. Miller (Ed.), Cultures of Educational Leadership: Global and Intercultural Perspectives (pp. 1–23). London: Palgrave Macmillan. O’Neill, C., & Brinkerhoff, M. (2017). Five Elements of Collective Leadership for Early Childhood Professionals. St. Paul, MN: Readleaf Press. Panitch, L., & Gindin, S. (2008). Finance and American empire. In L. Panitch & M. Konings (Eds.), American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance (pp. 17–47). London: Macmillan. Preskil, S., & Brookfield, S. D. (2008). Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for social justice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sánchez-Núñez, M., Patti, J., & Holzer, A. (2015). Effectiveness of a leadership development program that incorporates social and emotional intelligence of aspiring school leaders. Journal of Educational Issues, 1, 65–84. Senge, P. Hamilton, H., & Kania, J. (2015). The dawn of system leadership. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 30, 27–33. Stringer, P., & Blaik Hourani, Rida (2016). Transformation of roles and responsibilities of principals in times of change. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(2), 224–246. York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255–315.

5 Women and power dynamics A covert revolution

Introduction Women educational leaders in developing nations play a crucial role in the global efforts to eradicate poverty in all its forms by 2030, the key aim of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Regarding gender equality and empowerment for all women and girls (Goal 5), this chapter builds on our understanding of women’s collective leadership and explores how giving equitable access to women in leadership positions and building their capacity does not only benefit the women themselves but can also transform communities and societies (Wakahiu & Keller, 2011). This focus is in line with the SDG’s target endorsed in the UN Economic and Social Council (2017), which states that nations need to “Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision making in political, economic, and public life” (Gender quality and women’s empowerment, p. 66). Gender-based discrimination and the lack of gender equity is a universal outrage that stems from several factors including poverty, conflict, ethnic clashes, climate change, and the absence of social justice deployment (The Irish Consortium on Gender-Based Violence, 2016). While some progress has been made to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion, women across the globe—and in particular in developing countries—continue to be subject to patriarchal gender discrimination (Arar, 2018; Moyo et al., 2020; Muzvidziwa, 2013). Hence, the eradication of gender-based discrimination and inequity remain a global challenge in the 21st century. Considering this global challenge, this chapter shares stories of women leaders who navigated patriarchal sociocultural norms in order to foster gender equity while also improving the education offerings in their communities. Currently, “there is a paucity of data on the representation and experience of women educational leaders internationally, particularly in developing countries” (Lumby & Azaola, 2011, p. 75). The women educational leaders in this chapter worked in public and low-fee private schools, higher education, and the wider education community in a variety of contexts in the Global South. Thanks to their unique leadership styles, organically created support systems, and passion for education and the betterment of DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-5

76  Women and power dynamics their nations, as leaders they covertly challenged inherited cultural beliefs and conventional paths of school leadership and transformed their communities. To better support women leaders, it is essential to comprehend the cultural challenges these interviewees faced.

Cultural challenges faced by women The sociocultural milieu continues to impact the lives of women in West Africa, the Middle East, and African countries, also known as the MENA region (The Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, 2009; Potokri, 2015). As such, gender stereotypes remain one of the momentous reasons that women are under-represented in leadership positions (Diko, 2014; The Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, 2009), and women continue to be victims of discrimination in the workforce (Al-Hussein, 2011; Arar, 2018). Scholars such as Mestry and Schmidt (2012), Arar (2017), and Al-Hussein (2011) noted that gender inequities are particularly flagrant in the field of education. Research in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that women have customarily been unable to access leadership roles and positions due to the predominant patriarchal societies (Bush & Heystek, 2006; Moorosi et al., 2018). When women are in positions of power, they often witness and experience microaggressions and sexism (Moorosi et al., 2018). In Ghana, Segkulu and Gyimah (2016) maintained that “the participation of women in the administration of educational institutions is low” (p. 64). Segkulu and Gyimah argued that culture played a key role in the lack of opportunity for women to attain leadership positions. The women were perceived as being less educated and less capable. Because motherhood is culturally and historically embedded in the African cultures, women were typically not perceived as professionals (Diko, 2014). Moreover, women frequently lacked the self-esteem and self-confidence to apply for leadership positions (Arar, 2018; Arar & Shapira, 2012; Greyling & Steyn, 2015; Inandi, 2009, Oplatka, 2006). Despite these numerous cultural challenges, Lumby and Azaola (2014) contended that women were born to be leaders because of their natural dispositions.

Dispositions of women as educational leaders Women are leaders because they embody unique dispositions. Lumby and Azaola (2014) affirmed that women lead in their homes, and Greyling and Steyn (2015) referred to women as the “home and economic manager[s]” (p. 6611). These authors argued that women are more efficient and transformational as educational leaders when compared to men because they are sensitive to the needs of children, teachers, and parents. They understood the complex difficulties of motherhood and often take on a mothering stance, whether they have had children of their own or have helped bring up children of their family or community members. In their capacity

Women and power dynamics  77 as leaders, women were found to be empathetic and able to build genuine and positive relationships with teachers, staff, and community members (Arar, 2017). They were more democratic and participatory than men (Greyling & Steyn, 2015). Women were also found to be better communicators than their male counterparts, which enabled them to be change agents while also completing duties in an ethical manner (Themane et al., 2017). In addition, women were skilled at handling and resolving conflict. They covertly transformed mindsets and communities (Greyling & Steyn, 2015; Mestry & Schmidt, 2012; Oplatka & Arar, 2016). Having more women in educational leadership is therefore essential in the empowerment of girls, who are often held back from schooling to help their family, get married, and start a family of their own (Moorosi et al., 2018). Additionally, Wakahiu and Keller (2011) asserted that women educational leaders in developing nations and in the MENA region have a crucial role to play in order to reach the SDGs by 2030 and provide a quality education for all while also fostering the empowerment of girls and women around the globe.

Women and educational leadership Women should not only have access to leadership positions, but they should also receive the support they need and deserve once in the position (Lumby & Azaola, 2014). To better help women in leadership, one must first recognize and understand the differences in leadership patterns and praxis between men and women. Rosener (1990) and Arar (2017) observed that women’s style of leadership is based on shared decisions as well as democratic and participatory practices when compared to male counterparts. These leadership attributes featured inclusiveness and a desire to motivate others, whereas male leaders emphasized individualism, rule, and duty in their leadership pattern. Whereas men preferred an “alpha-style” approach typical to top-down and autonomic leadership, women preferred a “beta-style” approach based on shared ideas and social interactive communication. In their leadership styles, men often demonstrated attributes that were described as competitive, controlling, assertive, opportunistic, and manipulative. Women leaders’ traits were described as more ambitious, creative, and trusting. Women have what is known as a horizontal leadership style whereby they share decision making; prioritize the well-being of their teachers, staff, and students; and involve the community (Arar & Shapira, 2012; Naidoo & Perumal, 2014). Earley and Weindling (2004) maintained that women tend to be interactive, relational, predisposed to power sharing, focused, authentic, nurturing, and spiritual. Scholars such as Naidoo and Perumal (2014) suggested that women’s leadership styles can also vary according to circumstances. For example, despite sharing decision-making with teachers and community members, women leaders can also be autocratic and directive when needed. However, despite their innate disposition and unique leadership traits, there is still a stigma when it comes to women leaders (Arar & Shapira, 2012; Naidoo & Perumal,

78  Women and power dynamics 2014). Hence, women leaders need to be assessed and recognized by their work—not by their gender or the cultural beliefs of their communities. In fact, women’s dispositions and unique leadership styles have altered inequitable practices and built robust school–community relationships, which have both been shown to be key components of successful schools (Clark-Louque et al., 2019; DeMatthews, 2018; Epstein et al., 2018; Green, 2017; Oplatka & Arar, 2016).

Women in educational leadership: empowering practices “Education is an important tool for the development of an individual, society and the nation at large” (Edet & Ekegre, 2015, p. 1), and principals play a central part in educating the future generations of students (Grissom & Harrington, 2010; Marzano et al., 2005). In fact, after classroom teaching, leadership has been found to be the second most important factor influencing students’ outcomes (Bush and Glover, 2016). Educational leaders not only empower teachers and students but also influence student learning (Leithwood & Sun, 2012; Pollock & Hauseman; 2016). Effective educational leaders are the ones who build cultures of learning, and these cultures of learning positively impact student outcomes (Amedome, 2018; Donkor, 2015; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). In Africa, principals of public schools are usually chosen because of their years of professional experience and political, religious, or tribal affiliations rather than the skills they need to lead schools (Donkor, 2015). In most MENA countries, school leaders and managers are appointed based on their qualifications and training, although sometimes nepotism has been shown to play a role in hiring practices (Blaik Hourani & Stringer, 2015). Consequently, schools are managed most often by leaders who attain positions through authority, seniority, and language rather than competency (Bush & Oduro, 2006; Moorosi & Bush, 2011). Additionally, West Africa and the MENA regions are rooted in patriarchal cultures (Arar, 2018; Bush, 2014; Bush & Glover, 2016; Moorosi et al., 2018; Ngcobo & Tikly, 2010). Many assume male leaders are more suited to leadership and are more effective than women (Bush, 2014; Bush & Glover, 2016; Mestry & Schmidt, 2012). As such, women understand that they will encounter resistance once in leadership positions (Bush, 2014; Bush & Glover, 2016; Moorosi et al., 2018; Ngcobo & Tikly, 2010). When women do attain leadership positions, they face numerous obstacles and challenges. One of the tensions that has been noted in a number of studies is that when women leaders enact feminine behaviors, these are often deemed “invisible,” yet masculine behaviors are often deemed “unfeminine” (Arar & Oplatka, 2013; Debebe, 2011). However, Greyling and Steyn (2015) noted that when women were given opportunities to lead, they often excelled as school leaders and managers because they were innate care givers and community builders and able to empower others on both an individual and societal level (Epstein et al., 2018).

Women and power dynamics  79

Community-focused leadership School–community partnerships are crucial support systems for principals to fulfill their roles and foster educational transformation. Several authors have written about the importance of engaging communities in schools as these communities offer a foundation to improve student and neighborhood outcomes (Clark-Louque et al., 2019; DeMatthews, 2018; Epstein et al., 2018; Green, 2017; Oplatka & Arar, 2016). Green (2017) coined the term community equity literacy (CEL), which comprises five elements: (1) understanding community history, (2) working from asset- and structural-based perspectives about community, (3) recognizing and leveraging community assets, (4) navigating the community power structure, and (5) advocating for community and school equity. Building on CEL, Clark-Louque et al. (2019) offer a cultural proficiency for family engagement framework that assists educators to understand how individuals interact with other individuals irrespective of the cultural groups to which they belong. This framework aims at serving the common good in an increasingly multicultural world. The community involvement framework (Clark-Louque et al., 2019) recognizes that family and community engagement is crucial to the students’ success and well-being. The framework comprises 7 Cs—collaboration, communication, caring/compassion, culture, community, connectedness, collective responsibility, and courageous engagement. The 7 Cs are concepts that help leaders create and maintain robust school–community partnerships. A description of the 7 Cs is provided in the following paragraphs (Clark-Louque et al., 2019). Collaboration: In this dimension family and community members feel safe to participate in the school’s meetings, decision making, and school reform. Culturally proficient leaders concentrate their efforts on promoting cultures of collaboration among their families and community members. Communication: Culturally proficient leaders focus on communicating regularly and effectively with their families and the community at large. Caring: Culturally proficient leaders care for all their stakeholders, and that is why they prioritize building strong relationships among students, staff, families, and community members. Culture: Culturally proficient leaders understand that culture is pervasive and includes the individual, organizational, regional, and national cultures. As such, these leaders always seek to learn about their constituents’ cultures by dialoguing with them, asking them to join committees, communicating often, and genuinely caring about their stakeholders. Community: Culturally proficient leaders understand who they serve demographically. These leaders are engaged in the community so that they can better understand and serve their students and families. Connectedness: Connectedness promotes students’ academic achievement, emotional well-being, and attendance. Culturally proficient leaders

80  Women and power dynamics intentionally engage with families in order to create intentionally inviting school cultures for all community members. Collective Responsibility: Collective responsibility refers to the fact that students, teachers, staff, leaders, families, community members, and board members all work together toward their common goal of raising students’ achievement and improving their well-being. Courageous Engagement: Culturally proficient leaders model collaboration and high expectations for themselves and others, even in challenging situations. The 7 Cs are meant to “encourage, educate, and empower educators” (Clark-Louque et al., 2019, p. 69). School-community partnerships are necessary to support principals and propel educational transformation. The women leaders in this chapter created networks amongst themselves that helped them to improve their schools while also assisting them to navigate their country’s cultural norms.

Women leaders within patriarchal societies: navigating cultural norms The narratives shared in this chapter show that women leaders in developing societies can negotiate and navigate the cultural norms. In line with the narratives presented, Hofstede (2011) argued that “culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others” (p. 3). This collective programming impacts thinking patterns, and those patterns can over time crystalize in the society’s institutions (Hofstede et al., 2010). To better comprehend and absorb the experiences of women leaders in patriarchal societies, Hofstede et al.’s (2010) framework of national culture is worth exploring in more detail. This model is composed of six dimensions (6D): 1 2 3

4 5

6

Power distance index (PDI). In this dimension, the less powerful members of a group accept and expect that power is shared unequally. In societies with high PDI scores, people consent to hierarchy (p. 9). Individualism versus collectivism (IDV). In collectivistic cultures, people put the needs of the group before their individual needs (p. 11). Masculinity versus femininity (MAS). Masculine society favors achievement, competitiveness, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards over feminine traits such as cooperation, modesty, caring, and quality of life (p. 12). Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI). This category refers to people being uncomfortable with uncertainty (p. 10). Long-term orientation versus short-term normative orientation (LTO). Long-term orientation designates a society that concentrates on the future. Short-term orientation societies pay attention to the present or past, and they attach great value to traditions (p. 13). Indulgence versus restraint (IND). Indulgence denotes a society that enjoys having life and having fun (p. 15).

Women and power dynamics  81 The 6D model is useful to better understand how countries (rather than individuals) differ from one another in relation to the cultural dimensions. Specifically, the 6D model facilitates understanding of the influence of cultural norms and values on women leaders and how women leaders negotiate and navigate through those attitudinal patterns. Understanding where women’s leadership experiences fall in each of these dimensions helped guide the interpretation of their challenges or successes in this chapter.

Voices of women educational leaders Utilizing Hofstede et al.’s (2010) 6D model to analyze the stories shared by women leaders, several key insights pertaining to power distance, collectivism, femininity, uncertainty, and avoidance emerged. However, despite significant challenges, women leaders demonstrated how they were able to perform their roles and responsibilities and initiate important educational changes. Each of Hofstede et al.’s (2010) dimensions were used to describe the women leaders’ covert revolution. Power distance index (PDI): the dilemma of accepting male–female hierarchy on the trail of change This dimension reveals the degree to which the less powerful individuals of a society accept and anticipate that power is distributed unfairly. The fundamental issue is how a society handles inequalities among people. People tend not to question hierarchy and accept it accordingly. Women across the three West African countries affirmed how challenging it to perform dual roles as being a wife and a school leader because of cultural expectations. Numerous women voiced having to balance their work responsibilities and home life since their husbands were not involved. Mary, from Liberia, illustrated these difficulties when she expressed: I was alone. I not only was struggling financially, but also psychologically. I always felt that I was his property and that I needed to be home to cook for him, so it made being at school late difficult. I was always torn between him and my work, my passion for children, and my school. Balancing work and home life was challenging for most of the women interviewed in this chapter. Referring to gender expectations, Doris, a Liberian principal, stated: My mega challenge at first was my husband because he thought I needed to be home to prepare his meals so he would call me and asked why I was still on campus when it was time for his dinner. Angela had a similar experience, but she also recalled the moment her husband’s attitude changed. She explained:

82  Women and power dynamics When the first class graduated, my husband came and saw the children embracing me, thanking me, and the community praising me. To my surprise, my husband approached me and thanked me too. From that time on, things were fine, and he supported me as a principal. I think it is because he saw the impact I had on youth and the community. I think he was proud of me in the end, but he was hard on me at first. For Elena, a Palestinian Lebanese Cypriot educational coordinator, the balance between work and home was particularly difficult without other familial support: Being a single mother has been challenging and if it was not for my love of self-learning and stamina, I wouldn’t have been able to stand on my feet … I had to do further studies in order to succeed professionally and keep my job and support my three boys. Although these women felt inferior at times, they were determined to prove their worth and show that they could manage without the help of men. As Gertrude from Burkina Faso further explained: Often we do not have the opportunity to work outside the home, so we may feel less valued than men. As a woman leader, I need to constantly prove myself to men without asking them for help. Finding internal motivation and self-reliance was noted several times by the interviewees. For example, Haya, a Palestinian working in higher education stated: “I don’t accept anyone to put me down … success is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a self- perception … I succeeded because I want to.” Similarly, Dorcas from Ghana summarized this sentiment when she affirmed: “Women have to value themselves. Unfortunately, many women still feel that they need men in order to be valued. But we do not, look at us we do the job!” In addition to having to overcome challenges in the home, once in leadership positions many women met new barriers within their schools and communities. Milena, in Liberia, expressed the attitudinal problem that confronted her as a women leader: “It is not easy to be a female principal because at times the male and female teachers, some of the community members, and even the chief can be disrespectful.” A similar experience was recounted by Moufida, who was working in higher education: At a private University in Abu Dhabi, I was the only women in the department among six men who wanted to break my spirit. Male colleagues wanted to be superior and I was underestimated professionally because I was a woman … I wanted to report what was going on to human resources, but reporting requested eyewitnesses, which I couldn’t provide. The system didn’t support me or protect me. … I continued my good fight.

Women and power dynamics  83 For many women leaders it was a feeling that their qualifications and competence were being questioned by others. As Florentine, a Ghanaian principal, explained: “The men in the school and community often look at you as if you do not have the qualifications needed to do the job because you are a woman.” Moreover, Julienne, a public-school leader in Burkina Faso, explained the difficulty males face when they must work under a woman’s administration: Male teachers and community members do not like it when a woman tells them what they should do. They think that women, especially if they are younger than the men, are not leaders and that males are stronger hence better leaders. Men look at us like we cannot do the job … that is until we do the job better than them! The fact that many of the interviewees were often the first women leaders in their schools and communities was often highlighted as a significant challenge. As Fatima from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) outlined: “When primary public schools in the UAE were feminized [previously boys’ schools had only male principals], the male teachers and vice-principals showed a negative attitude towards my leadership practices because I was a woman.” In addition, participants felt the tension not only with men but also with women. For example, Florentine from Ghana noted her first interactions with two of her female teachers: When I first arrived at the school, there were two female teachers who would not listen to a word I said. It looked like they felt jealous or threatened at first because they may have wanted the position. Then, as they knew me, they joined my side. While interviewing women leaders from public schools, it became clear that those who followed other successful woman leaders had less challenges with teachers and the community than those who followed a man. One reason they highlighted may be that teachers and community members had time to adapt to the women’s leadership styles. Also, the school culture may have already changed because of the previous leadership. The women interviewed working in low-fee private schools, however, were often the first principals of their schools because they were all the founders. As a result of being the first principal, they did not experience issues related to power distance. They did, however, experience push-back from the teachers and community members. As Julienne from Burkina Faso recalled: “No one thought I could lead the school; they watched my every move as to see if I would fail, how, and when.” Despite the challenges related to power distance, these women leaders aspired to disrupt hierarchical and patriarchal ideals by pursuing their careers in various leadership roles. While Leilah from Liberia wanted “to leave a mark as a school leader before retirement,” others aspired to hold

84  Women and power dynamics important positions at the district office, get their master’s or doctoral degrees to become lecturers, or open their own schools. For the women portrayed in this chapter, soliciting help from their female colleagues was key to their success. Individualism versus collectivism (IDV): a path employed for support and change In collectivistic societies, people tend to naturally collaborate, gather, and support each other in times of difficulty. The women leaders that were interviewed talked about the collectivistic nature as a source of support. Specifically, the principals reported having several networks, professional associations, and communities of support. Ghanaian women spoke highly about professional organizations and NGOs that had either supported them or offered them network opportunities to develop their leadership skills. For example, the Ghanaian National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) provides professional support for private schools. Another professional support system is the Ghanaian Early Childhood Association (GECA), which assists schools that serve children from birth to six years old. In Burkina Faso, Wendkuuni mentioned her involvement with the Independent Schools Association. In addition to the support of professional associations, women managed to balance their personal and professional lives because they sought support from family members or other helpers. Some of the women hired help to assist them with their “wife homework” or chores. They also sought the help of relatives or their spouse. Women created their own domestic support systems to accommodate their professional challenges and to create a wider scheme of systemic support that was utilized for enhancing transformation in their school. Florentine, leader in a public school in Ghana, said: When my husband did not use to help me, I hired someone to help me clean and cook. My husband preferred my cooking, so he asked me to cook. So, we began to compromise. I told him I would wake up even earlier and cook for him if he would help me with other chores. Little by little we arrived at a rhythm and a plan. He now helps me regularly. It took time and convincing, but we are there and that allows me to be a principal and a wife, mom, aunt, etc. Another Ghanaian leader, Samy, chose to hire someone to help her so that, in her words, “I can focus on my work and the children more.” Veronique in Burkina Faso opted to “ask for help to my family members.” Across the interviews with the women principals in low-fee private schools, they talked about the support received from family members. Leilah in Liberia stated: “It is hard. I had to drag my husband but now he helps me financially or he buys things for the school.” Khadija, a Lebanese Australian, shared Leilah’s sentiment when she indicated:

Women and power dynamics  85 Bringing the spouse on board to help and assist in the house chores is a perception and social construct. Women have a role as far as identifying a division of labor at home and work to identify individualistic/ personal versus collective home and family responsibilities. Support is needed but women need to determine their agenda for the roles and responsibilities they need to perform and accomplish. Family support was also sought for help in providing resources for their schools. A woman leader in Burkina shared how one of her family members, a welder, built chairs and tables for the school. Other principals in low-fee private schools highlighted the support they had received from friends and/or community members from church. In all countries, the women talked about God and the support He provided them though their churches. Maria-A, in Liberia, explained that a church member gave her money when she needed it most. She said: This was when my husband did not believe in me still, a church member gave me the money. I needed to start my school in the garage. Then when the school started to grow, my husband also started to help me … so this church member helped me financially, in payers, but he also helped my husband to see my capabilities. Since the women interviewed lived in collectivistic societies, using a group text mobile application enabled them to connect with peers and be updated and informed as well as share support and experiences. It was common for leaders in Ghana to belong to several WhatsApp groups. Women leaders also noted belonging to WhatsApp groups helped them assist their teachers. They made social media groups for all private and public-school leaders in their community, and groups specifically for public-school leaders in their district. However, this resource depended on the context. In Liberia and Burkina Faso, the leaders did not have smart phones and thus did not have access to WhatsApp as a source of support. The women, however, leveraged the collectivistic proclivity by visiting each other’s schools to learn from colleagues and talk about their challenges as women leaders. These informal institutional supports and partnerships among various schools were noted in several interviews. Margarette from Burkina Faso shared: I take my moto[rized vehicle] and go visit my colleagues’ schools so we can talk about our challenges. For example, when my community member gave me troubles and called me incompetent because I was a woman, I went to my friend’s school and we talked, prayed together, stood there for each other. Sometimes, we just need to be with someone with similar challenges because we know they understand what we go through because the next time, they come to me for similar issues.

86  Women and power dynamics For Fatima, from the UAE, spending time in her colleagues’ schools enabled her to witness the development and implementation of new initiatives and school reforms in her country. She indicated: I needed to observe other principals in other successful schools, so I can learn from them and improve my school … collaborating with other school managers in my school zone was significant so we can learn from each other and also have a voice to express collectively our school needs in times of educational reforms and school transformation … collaborating with other schools has empowered me professionally. Despite the initial challenges with teachers, parents, and community members, the women leaders received support from family members, helpers, associations, colleagues, peers, and other educational professionals. The collectivistic society supported the women leaders to succeed in both their careers and personal lives. Many of the interviewees found support in their church and God. In challenging situations, many noted a sentiment of “this too shall pass, and our God is here with us.” Masculinity versus femininity (MAS): women’s leadership is an emotional and social asset In feminine societies, there is a tendency toward cooperation, modesty, caring, and quality of life (Hofstede et al., 2010). When questioned about their perceptions and thoughts about leadership and leadership styles, the interviewees reflected on the various traits they exemplified. Time and time again, women talked about “motherly love.” For example, Marie from Burkina Faso said: “We women are moms to all: our colleagues, community, and children, we are caring.” The women leaders also talked about being strong, courageous, passionate, compassionate, good communicators, strict when needed, goal oriented, and good listeners. Other attributes included being welcoming to all and having a strong will power and inner motivation. The women educational leaders also highlighted their passion for children. It was this love that pushed them to stay in positions of leadership and face various cultural challenges. These women saw themselves as “nation builders.” Working in higher education in Egypt, Moufida noted that women academics played a pivotal role in building the nation as far as enlightening other women about their civil rights and how to preserve their pride and reject gender oppression. Women noted that they believed themselves to be different from male leaders and often relied on their intuition. Margarette from Burkina Faso stated: “God conceived us differently, we are just made differently in all aspects.” Additionally, Precious in Ghana declared that she was “sensitive to cultural and contextual difference.” In terms of leadership styles, women described their leadership as being inclusive, democratic, and

Women and power dynamics  87 collaborative. In Liberia, Doris summarized the sentiment of the groups when she said: “I use all styles, for me it is based on the situation.” Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI): two features of uncertainty Uncertainty avoidance was acknowledged in two different ways. First, the women themselves voiced their uncertainty about their abilities to be principals, and they stated that their hesitance was because of the cultural stigma around women in leadership. For example, in all public schools in Ghana, the women leaders reported not opting to pursue a leadership role because they were not confident about their abilities. Instead, colleagues and members of the Ghana Education Service (GES) staff recommended them for their positions. Dorcas said: “I did not believe that I could be a principal but my head teacher wanted me to become a leader and assured me that I was qualified to do the job, so she recommended me for it.” These women often did not seek leadership positions. Instead, family members or colleagues suggested that they applied for such jobs. Fatima in the UAE illustrated this point when she said: “My family wanted me to study education and be a school principal because such a profession ensures less mingling with men, and it is more tailored for woman … so it was a gender related option.” Similarly, Khadija reflected: I studied sociology [and] anthropology and I wanted to be a social worker, but I ended up being a schoolteacher because in the midst of the civil war in Lebanon jobs in the field of social work were unavailable, so I ended up becoming a teacher by default. Eventually, I enjoyed what I was doing and pursued a successful career out of it. However, for the women leaders, once in the leadership positions they gained more confidence and witnessed their professional success, so they were able to perform professionally and started to define their own career expectations. The women in this chapter wanted to pursue their studies in leadership and attend master’s and doctoral programs. Second, in all cases, families and community members reflected uncertainty toward the women leaders at first by being skeptical about their capabilities to lead the schools. Initially, male family members would discourage the women from leadership positions or not provide support. In some cases, community members would make overt comments. For example, a village chief in Ghana said to another community member, speaking about Margarette, the new school leader: “What is this little woman going to do? What can she carry? And how is she going to lead a school with 450 students? A small woman like that.” When Margarette recalled this day, she said: “I was hurt, but I knew my work would speak for itself, and it did. Now the village chief does everything I ask him to do, and he comes to visit all the time, see he is there now!” Margarette’s story exemplified how these

88  Women and power dynamics women leaders challenged inherent cultural beliefs and traditional ways of thinking of school leadership to transform school communities. Fatima also faced the uncertainty of her school community as a new principal: When I became a school principal for a boy’s public school in the UAE, parents weren’t very happy, and they thought I wouldn’t be able to manage and discipline the boy-students. After few years of piloting feminizing boys’ primary schools, this piloting project was consolidated as part of the school reforms agenda and it proved to be a success story … this has led to changes beyond education. Given the global call to promote gender equity in all aspects of social, economic, and public life, the question becomes how we can better support these professionals given that they have a dual set of responsibilities at work and home (Greyling & Steyn, 2015). Based on the voices of the women leader’s interviewees, we make the following two recommendations for policy makers. First, there is a need for additional capacity building for women principals because of their dual role as leaders at work and home. The gender-specific capacity building could be tailored to include topics such as managing and leading people, navigating cultural values, and achieving work–life balance (Debebe, 2011; Potokri, 2015; Wakahiu & Keller, 2011). Successful women leaders could be invited to reflect on and voice their experiences, become coaches, and explain how they surmounted cultural barriers. Additionally, it would be beneficial to offer ongoing professional development to all existing and prospective leaders, community members, and students on implicit bias—specifically, gender bias. Second, training could be delivered using WhatsApp since it is readily used by many leaders in developing countries. WhatsApp and other communication tools are an effective and cost-efficient way to create meaningful school–community partnerships (Brion, 2018; Clark-Louque et al., 2019; DeMatthews, 2018; Epstein et al., 2018; Green, 2017). In addition, a professional support system or association could be created for women leaders so that they have additional paths to share and optimize resources, overcome barriers, and create solutions. This association would also play the role of a support group.

Concluding thoughts The interviewees in this chapter had to navigate cultural dynamics created by patriarchal and hierarchical systems as educational leaders. However, these challenging experiences enabled the women to rely on and exercise their own leadership style and change how women’s educational leadership was perceived by their families, colleagues, and community members. As summed up by Julienne from Burkina Faso, “People progressively saw what I

Women and power dynamics  89 could do and that I would not give up. Men and others slowly changed their minds about my ability to lead when they saw that I improved the school.” The collectivistic culture allowed the women principals to organically seek and find the support they needed. They learned to seek help from their husbands and families, from their churches, as well as from other community and educational organizations. As educational leaders they also sought help and support from their colleagues and other women leaders. The propensity to learn from peers was facilitated by existing networks and associations. Specific leadership traits attributed to being a woman were also noted by the interviewees. The women leaders were able to overcome the uncertainty they felt about their unique skills and capabilities and address the uncertainties expressed by their teachers and community members. Mary illustrated the sentiment of the group when she shared: “Little by little I gained confidence in myself, and others saw what I was capable of and how I improved the school.” These leaders covertly questioned cultural norms by simply doing their job well, making improvements in their schools, and helping students perform better. Following this channel allowed the women leaders to gain the respect of teachers, parents, and community members. Using unique leadership styles that were derived from their experiences as women, they were able to change social schemes and explicit cultural norms. They also affirmed their positions as professional members of societies. Ultimately, from the stories shared by the women leaders interviewed, it is clear they played an important role in eliminating gender inequities in their schools, communities, and beyond. Through their work as school principals, they were slowly changing the mindsets of others, such as educated males, elders, other women, and community members. Thus, to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in every society—whether traditional and/or developed or not—policy makers, practitioners, and directors of leadership preparation programs ought to ask themselves the following questions, which we explore in the next chapters: How I can support women leaders to navigate opportunities that are embedded in their societies? How can we as a system to better support women leaders? What do I/we need to stop doing? What do I/we need to start doing? What do I/ we need to continue doing? It is through reflection on these questions that we will all facilitate the creation of meaningful action plans that will yield maximum impact at the school, system, and national levels. The following chapter will move from the exploration of women’s informal and formal educational leadership to consider the role and disposition of women’s entrepreneurship and more specifically, women’s educational entrepreneurship. As discussed in previous chapters, women leaders, especially those in developing countries, face numerous challenges and limitations because of tacit and explicit sociocultural norms, gender discrimination and stereotyping, as well as geographical and positional displacement. The next chapter highlights how these women leaders often started their leadership work, such as a new private school, without funding, any prior training, or advance preparation.

90  Women and power dynamics

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6 A new wave of women’s educational leadership

Introduction Whereas previous chapters examined the development of women educational leaders’ identity, the challenges they faced, and how they had to work to overcome these challenges, the focus of this chapter aims to identify women’s educational entrepreneurship practices, which include financial literacy and financial management skills. As evidenced in the stories of the women leaders, women’s educational leadership often entails juggling multiple roles in both the private and public spheres, which include families, jobs, and communities. Collective leadership is also an emerging trend in women’s leadership that has been highlighted. In collective leadership, there is a sense of accountability, shared responsibility, and decision making, as well as authentic engagement. All members of the collective work together to create the vision and share a commitment to achieve it. Collective leadership assumes that everyone can and should lead and that women should lead from where they stand. However, there continues to be an underrepresentation of women in educational leadership and management from school to other public institutions and organizations, particularly in developing countries (Sperandio, 2007). Yet, as the women in this chapter show, women educational leaders are not only effective but essential to transformational change at the home, community, and system levels. The women educational leaders interviewed have faced several different challenges. Not only have they had to manage emergencies at the personal and professional level, but they have had to deal with physical displacement because of wars and conflicts, as well as positional displacement whereby sociocultural values and constraints tend to favor men over women in leadership roles (Bush & Glover, 2016; Mestry & Schmidt, 2012). As a response to some of these challenges, many of the women educational leaders interviewed described starting small businesses or projects to survive and, ultimately, thrive. In many cases, their entrepreneurship was unplanned, and they had to learn and develop entrepreneurial skills while also launching and sustaining their initiative. For example, Line is a Syrian who moved to Turkey. Although she had initially intended to complete her PhD, she was unable to follow this path due to the language barriers and financial DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-6

94  A new wave of women’s educational leadership issues. Instead, she launched an online training platform to support Syrian refugees across Turkey to learn how to teach their children Arabic. Being displaced geographically, she faced numerous challenges including new laws, requirements, and being away from friends and families. However, she persevered: Everyone I know was so supportive and waiting to utilize this platform. I thought I can rely on voluntary work but that is not professional. It took a lot of time and effort [until] I found a partner to invest in this nonprofit initiative. How to secure funding and support for projects as well as manage financial issues such as salaries, record-keeping, fundraising, and budgeting emerged as key entrepreneurial skills that the women educational leaders interviewed agreed that they needed more training on. Across the stories of the women interviewed, all started their entrepreneurial projects without any prior training or advanced preparation yet worked hard to find solutions that would work specifically for their context and community. They also relied on their community and family for financial and emotional support. Whereas we recognize this also may be the case for many men, women educational leaders in this book tended to have less experience with and access to financial decision making, financial literacy, or entrepreneurial skills, especially when most of their efforts have been dedicated to the domestic or private sphere. Despite current women’s economic empowerment interventions, there remain several obstacles facing women entrepreneurs. As Siba (2019) outlined in her policy brief for the Brookings Institute, whereas there is evidence that some interventions focusing on access to financial capital and business skills worked well for male-led enterprises, women entrepreneurs “face inherently different constraints including psychological and cultural factors” (p. 2). Additionally, women entrepreneurs lacked access to financial and human capital, demonstrated risk aversion, and have not caught up in key entrepreneurial skills. As entrepreneurs, the women leaders in this chapter also struggled to access networks, social platforms, and community groups that enabled them to share their experiences, learn from others, and gain rich opportunities for mentoring and coaching.

Women’s entrepreneurial skills and practices One of the key entrepreneurial skills and practices necessary for women leaders is a shift in mindset to increase motivation and initiative (Siba, 2019). Effective training includes a focus on instilling aspirations, providing examples of successful initiatives, and outlining job opportunities. In Togo, an initiative was organized in collaboration with World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab. This initiative offered psychology-based training that featured “mindset” training for both male and female business owners.

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  95 The training included soft skills such as “self-starting behaviors, innovation, identifying and exploiting new opportunities, goal setting, planning, and feedback cycles, and overcoming obstacles” (Siba, 2019, p. 2). This type of training yielded a positive increase in women’s personal initiative regardless of their education level and was shown to also lead to more women seeking further education, lower fertility rates, and a higher likelihood of women entering the job market. Another key area of focus to support women entrepreneurs was a focus on challenging gender identity roles. Many women entrepreneurs in developing countries are responsible for balancing their businesses alongside their households (Siba, 2019). This is a critically binding constraint, as is access to familial savings and investment accounts, shared household responsibilities, safe workplaces, and free childcare. When it comes to educational entrepreneurship, where women leaders develop and work also matters when it comes to financial literacy and entrepreneurial expertise. In the face of ongoing school budget cuts globally, increasing student numbers, and educational policies that demand more and more from schools, the milieu and neoliberal context in which school leaders and teachers work is requiring and fostering greater need for entrepreneurial skills (Miller, 2018). Whereas state funding often supports no-fee schools, research studies (Mestry, 2018; Stacey, 2013; OECD, 2017) are showing school leaders and governing bodies of all types of schools (public and private) experience great difficulty in preparing budgets and reports and managing fundraising that enable them to effectively manage their school’s finances. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2017) reported, school funding policies take “into account the complexity of educational processes, the diversity of educational goals, the range of different governance contexts across school systems and the importance of social and institutional arrangements in developing adequate school funding policies” (p. 17). For school leaders, this adds significant complexity and tensions that require key entrepreneurial skills and attributes, such as financial management, communication, and a “can do attitude” (Miller, 2018, p. 76). As DeVita (2005) noted: More than ever, in today’s climate of heightened expectations, principals are in the hot seat to improve teaching and learning. They need to be educational visionaries, instructional and curriculum leaders, assessment experts, disciplinarians, community builders, public relations experts, budget analysts, facility managers, special programs administrators, and expert overseers of legal, contractual, and policy mandates and initiatives. They are expected to broker the often-conflicting interests of parents, teachers, students, district office officials, unions, and state and federal agencies, and they need to be sensitive to the widening range of student needs. (qtd. in Miller, 2018, p. 76)

96  A new wave of women’s educational leadership Additionally, school leaders must learn to deal with limited budgets, meet high student achievement expectations, market and promote their schools in a competitive field, keep teachers and students well resourced, and find ways to manage the various stakeholders (parents, community, state, etc.). Ultimately, all school leaders engage in entrepreneurial school leadership, and the advancement and amalgamation of entrepreneurial skills and practices is essential to the progress of their schools.

Why women educational entrepreneurship? Neoliberal values are imprinted onto educational spaces and practices, and by consequence, have fundamentally reshaped schools and public institutions (Arar et al., 2020). Countries across the globe continue to struggle with the complex dynamic of decreased funding by central governments as well as increased expectations, accountability, privatization, competition, fundraising, and number of invested stakeholders (Miller, 2018). To meet these multifaceted demands, the work of school leaders and other public institution leaders requires and fosters entrepreneurial leadership. This was certainly true for several the women educational leaders interviewed in this book. For Alia, the principal of a private school in Lebanon, it was because school funds were scarce that she had to work on fundraising projects to meet the development needs of her school. However, it was a steep learning curve. Similarly, Khadija noted that when she worked at the American Community School (ACS) in Beirut, it was during the civil war in Lebanon. At that stage and due to the political tension that took place in Lebanon, since ACS was affiliated with the American Department of Education, the U.S. government decided to cut its budget. Therefore teachers, the school principal, and the school managers had to develop a financial rescue plan that would keep the school running. In fact, teachers had to find alternative and creative financial solutions to meet key school expenses, which included stationery, teaching materials, and classroom maintenance. Due to the numerous challenges and constraints facing school leaders globally, there is an increased interest in the scholarship of entrepreneurship, how to encourage educational entrepreneurs, and a proliferation of studies related to women entrepreneurship, which the aim to explore the challenges inherent in the activities of women entrepreneurs. Specifically, Cardella et al. (2020) explored in their systematic review all studies between 1950 and 2019 related to this topic. The main themes that emerged were the significance of entrepreneurial education, social entrepreneurship, and the sociocultural scope of reference (e.g., culture, family, institutional support) as tools to overcome the gender gap. They also explored how women entrepreneurship contributed to the economic growth of the country—especially in developing economies—and considered the role women entrepreneurs played in social inclusion, combating poverty, and discrimination. These themes were all found in the stories shared by the

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  97 women educational leaders in this book. For example, Nour highlighted the importance of her work as director of Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) in Palestine as “creating opportunities for women’s socio-economic sustainability.” She would work with other NGOs to help women create small businesses so that they could then financially support their families and fund their children’s education. As highlighted in the work of Sperandio (2007), in Bangladesh, women educational entrepreneurs in private schools were often a group of knowledgeable women who enjoyed the backing and resourceful support of their families. As such, the opportunities for individual women to undertake this type of entrepreneurship were not common due to the increased costs of starting and managing private schools, and the lack of understanding of the ways and skills in which private schools can be cost effective and offer high-quality education. Although governments and other related authorities provided avenues to instill and nurture entrepreneurial skills among women, school ownership as a commercial venture was rarely promoted despite its potential to increase the financial situation of women and their families (Chowdhury, 1998; Chowdhury & Naher, 1993). Nevertheless, educational and government authorities provided an important service to the local communities (Sperandio, 2007). For women educational leaders working in public education, there was also limited involvement in financial tasks since school funding was typically provided by the federal or central government, local government or third sector organizations like nonprofits. However, as noted earlier in this chapter, this is changing because of budget cuts and fiscal restraints. Thus, when women educational leaders embarked on entrepreneurial activities like developing extracurricular activities and funding unique opportunities for students, they were often unprepared for the complexity of fundraising or how to collaborate with multiple stakeholders in meeting different demands and challenges.

Defining educational entrepreneurism It is important to identify what we mean by educational entrepreneurship in this chapter. Whereas the term is often related to the business and management field, with the rise of market culture in education, a result of the current neoliberal era, “[s]chools are more like businesses and their leaders are more like business leaders—for better or worse” (Hentschke, 2009, p. 149). Not only do school leaders play a crucial role in creating the culture of learning in their schools that can have an impact on teachers and students, they are also important role models (Bush & Glover, 2016; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Whether we like it or not, school leaders are obliged to be more market-oriented in their thoughts and ways than at any time before. Therefore, having an entrepreneurship mentality and skills can have a great impact on students and staff in terms of creating resourceful schools and a better equipped place for teaching and learning (Miller, 2018). Miller (2018) concluded in his study of 16 countries across

98  A new wave of women’s educational leadership five continents that male and female school leaders had different entrepreneurial approaches. Miller (2018) identified that “national culture” and “national context” affect and shape work environment. Therefore, the attitudes of school leaders who embrace entrepreneurialism are an essential skill and a response to changes in school funding arrangements and the changing role of education in national educational policy agenda. To help us define entrepreneurship in this chapter, we turned to Woods and his colleagues’ (2007) study of school leaders in England. They described entrepreneurship as the “predisposition to and practice of achieving valued ends by creating, taking or pursuing opportunities for change and innovation and finding new resources or utilising in new ways existing resources (financial, material and human)” (p. 237). Specifically, we found their four types of entrepreneurship useful to understand the work of the women educational entrepreneurs we interviewed adapted from Woods and colleagues (2007, p. 237): (1) Business entrepreneurialism, which is the values and practices of the private business sector; (2) social entrepreneurialism, which refers to actions outside the traditional public sector; (3) public entrepreneurialism, which includes the development of innovative solutions to provide high quality services or products; and (4) culture entrepreneurialism, which refers to creating opportunities to innovate to sustain certain norms and values in the social environment. The aforementioned types of entrepreneurship include both the development and effort in trying new ideas, as well as initiatives that achieve success. While some might assume (wrongly) that the answer to increased women’s educational entrepreneurship is simply to encourage more women to start their own companies and/or initiatives, we expand our definition to advocate for women to be more creative, innovative, opportunity-oriented, and proactive in all aspects relevant to their lives, which includes the domestic sphere. Although all four types of entrepreneurship can be traced in the women leaders we interviewed, in this chapter we focus specifically on the rise of social entrepreneurship in education. School leaders operate within educational and social contexts where many important and life-changing events are often beyond their control, some of which directly impact and/or challenge their own performance and their school performance (Miller, 2018). Yet, there is a useful body of literature that can help guide the development of effective entrepreneurship. For example, Robles and Zárraga-Rodríguez (2015) offered 20 competencies that are important and influential for aspiring and current women educational entrepreneurs, which include risk assumption, innovation, communication, and change management. These competencies fit in well with our unfolding view of women entrepreneurship. As described by Sperandio (2007), in Bangladesh women have taken advantage of the increased opportunities to both lead and manage educational institutions and to own them. This has led to the opportunity for several secondary school educated women in rural areas to be engaged in work outside the home. Such work opportunities have provided women with the opportunity

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  99 to use their entrepreneurial skills and revolutionize Bangladeshi village communities. Their entrepreneurial leadership roles also challenged the stereotypical images of the male teacher. hence providing women teachers with status, financial independence, and political recognition. Most of the literature on women in senior management positions has shown that women’s path to leadership is not carefully designed but often arises based on opportunity (Thearle, 1999). For many women educational leaders, entrepreneurial skills develop as a necessity of their jobs. School leadership is pursued because there is an open position, and schools are started to meet a community or familial need. When it comes to women entrepreneurs, Cardella et al. (2020) list different contributions they can make to their communities, such as providing new jobs, reducing poverty, and addressing social exclusion. However, despite their newfound entrepreneurial status and the fact that women educational leaders represent a growing category of entrepreneurship worldwide, many consider themselves incapable of launching their own projects due to different personal and social factors (Kyrgidou & Petridou, 2013). Additionally, women entrepreneurs reported that they were still expected to occupy dual roles as both workers and household managers (Siba, 2019). These challenges are also highlighted in the stories of women in this book, yet we posit that women entrepreneurs contribute significantly to their communities and society at large by raising their children on entrepreneurial skills and dispositions, humanizing different products through their use of empathy, and ultimately, embedding entrepreneurial skills in everything they do including cooking, meeting their children’s needs, and beyond.

Entrepreneurship and education The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2006) defined entrepreneurship education as “a collection of formalized teachings that informs, trains, and educates anyone interested in participating in socioeconomic development through a project to promote entrepreneurship awareness, business creation, or small business development.” Earlier this century, entrepreneurship education and training (EET) programs proliferated due to their ability and potential to enhance and promote entrepreneurial skills and attitudes. Despite the increase in such programs, international knowledge about the impact of these programs remains thin. In fact, many of these programs are limited to secondary schools, higher education, and workplace training. Figure 6.2 outlines where entrepreneurship and training programs were positioned in the educational landscape.

Entrepreneurship in higher education One of the spaces that offers women critical entrepreneurial skills in developing countries is in higher education institutions. Women professors

100  A new wave of women’s educational leadership specifically play a significant role in modeling and enhancing the socioeconomic sustainability of their female students. This was evidenced in the interviews of three academics introduced earlier in the book, Haya, Trish, and Moufida. Haya, an academic in Qatar and a special needs therapist, saw her contribution as supporting the public good and offering her female students an opportunity to see an open-minded and independent woman who has travelled and lived on her own: As a woman, I was a role model for other females. I wanted the females to get out of the role of being victims and performing taken-for-granted female related gender roles … I was a role model in terms of correcting their misperceptions of a liberal and open-minded women. … For them, I was a phenomenon. In order to change someone’s perception, you need to share ideas and dialogue. Trish also saw her role as an academic in the UAE as much bigger than what was written in her job description. As an art teacher, she also saw her role to empower her female students by listening to their ideas, providing space for them to exchange concepts, and supervising the artwork they produced and designed. She offered the example of two students who were inspired by her art classes to do their own fashion designs and open their own brand of clothes: Art classes helped students build their self-esteem, gave them the chance to build their self-awareness, explore their capacities within the scope of art … I have created a platform of economic sustainability and this will make them independent financially; hence more powerful and independent socio-economically. Financial independence for female students was also important for Moufida. In her work as a professor in the English department in an Egyptian government institution, she saw herself as an “agent of change.” She advised her female students on ways to become socioeconomically independent and promoted empowerment through entrepreneurship. Like the other women leaders, she was a role model for her students as a single independent woman who challenged cultural gender norms I talk about “Al Khulaa” in Islam; which denotes the right of divorcing the husband. I shed light on a campaign titled “because I am a man I have to support” because “Liaani Rajul aalyah An Adaam.” Because we don’t have gender studies department, I address gender issues under the English Department umbrella. I integrate readings on feminism in my courses. … I feel that the gender struggle in the Arab world will continue if we don’t vocalize our concerns and issues through literary and scholarly work. We need to collaborate with government to come out with an interwoven policies and systems to enhance women’s

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  101 empowerment, gender equity and eradicate violence, abuse and honor crimes. We need to make our voice loud and listen to others in order to make a change. It is the activism and support of female students from women like Haya, Trish, and Moufida in higher education that will go a long way toward changing the landscape of entrepreneurship in areas like the Middle East and North Africa. However, the relationship between entrepreneurship and education is not limited to only the teaching of entrepreneurial skills, building communities of support, and role modeling of women leaders. There are several entrepreneurial activities conducted by educators across the globe that are forming a new wave of women’s leadership characterized by the principles of social justice (Atit, 2007). For example, there is a growing movement in women launching education-based entrepreneurial initiatives.

The rise of social entrepreneurship in education As noted earlier, social entrepreneurship embodies action and drive that are situated outside the traditional public sector. Entrepreneurship is expected to mobilize ideas, practices, and resources. The dynamics of mobilization is initiated from the private sector in order to stretch educational, social, and community services to the public realm. In the United States, education entrepreneurship has been positioned as an antidote to the “enormous difficulties inherent in trying to turn around established [school] organizations” (Hess, 2008, p. 1). Entrepreneurs usually tend to take risky decisions, accepting full responsibility for the outcomes and results regardless of whether these results are positive or negative. They are self-reliant and highly promising. They are identified as mobilizers and generators of innovative ideas who think outside the box and work beyond their territory. One term that has been used to describe this new brand of educator who bridges the classroom and marketplace as an entrepreneur is “teacherpreneur” (Berry, 2013; Berry et al., 2013). The teacherpreneur takes the skills they have gleaned from their experience in the classroom and translates them into the business world. According to Berry (2013), “teacherpreneurs are classroom experts who teach students regularly, but also have time, space, and reward to spread their ideas and practices to colleagues as well as administrators, policymakers, parents, and community leaders” (p. 27). The work of teacherpreneurs can affect multiple realms of education; they can be involved in educational leadership, write curriculum documents, contribute to research studies, facilitate professional development sessions, develop projects, establish purposeful platforms, and even reform system policy (Cuthbertson, 2014). However, Berry (2013) proposed that “teacherpreneurism is not so much about establishing a new income stream for individuals as it is about promoting and spreading a new culture of collective innovation and creativity

102  A new wave of women’s educational leadership in the education sector, which has woefully (and ironically) lacked it” (p. 28). He argued that teachers should lead reforms and execute bold new ideas. He makes the case for a bold brand of teacher leadership that surfaces the evidence as to why classroom practitioners must lead, describes how teachers learn to lead in transformative ways, and outlines high-leverage strategies to scale up teacherpreneurism. For Berry (2013), educators in general and teachers more specifically should also be encouraged to launch business entrepreneurial projects. Since teachers work hard on developing teaching aids and new ideas to facilitate teaching and learning, these tools and innovations could be developed further not only to support teachers elsewhere but also to engender financial benefits for the developers while also retaining them in their teaching positions. When it comes to the burgeoning field of teacherpreneurship in North America, Sawyer et al. (2020) provided a number of examples in their study, for example the popular website Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT). Founded in 2006 by a New York public school teacher, Paul Edelman, with more than 70% of teachers in the USA, Canada, and Australia reported as users, TpT was named “the most innovative education company in the world” (Holland, 2019). According to Sawyer et al. (2020), On the TpT website, anyone can post self-created curriculum materials including manipulatives, worksheets, games, and posters for free or for a self-designated fee. Individuals who create mathematical resources on TpT, from a single worksheet to a set of task cards, can be called online mathematics teacherpreneurs. TpT is an open-source platform created by teachers, for teachers to access the community, content, and tools they need. As stated on its website, “Teachers Pay Teachers is the World’s most popular online marketplace for original educational resources.” In essence, TpT provides a space for teachers to exchange (buy and sell) instructional materials, with a catalogue of over 5 million pieces of educator-created content. With women making up the majority of educators globally, this platform provides a significant income stream for some women teacherpreneurs. Whether TpT is a platform used by women teacherpreneurs in developing countries is an area for further exploration, as is a critical analysis of TpT in relation to diversity of thought or representation of various global perspectives (Shelton et al., 2020). Another online space that is making waves for global teacherpreneurs is the social media platform Twitter. Although “edutwitter” is often used as a place to share and exchange ideas, it has also been gaining traction as a site to also promote and sell teaching materials. In the same study, Sawyer et al. (2020) contended that “[m]any teachers used the social media tools to help identify who they were as an educator.” The ever-changing social media marketplace is thus being used to not only influence how teachers see themselves, but also their future selves. With so many teachers trying to keep up with others to be as “good” as what they saw online, the space is ripe for teacherpreneurs

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  103 to offer tools and resources that help educators be more successful in their work and lives. Despite the financial gains offered by social entrepreneurship, the work of a teacherpreneurship is time consuming and can often become almost another full-time occupation, which has consequences for teachers’ work in schools and/or their personal time. There have also been concerns raised about the “cult of the guru” and the role of curation of followership (Eacott, 2020). In opposition to the traditional modes of spreading ideas through scholarly publications, news reports, and professional magazines, the caliber and quality of what is shared through social entrepreneurship is being replaced by presence and profile building. While these concerns are valid and worth consideration, teacherpreneurship is also providing a welcome space for people who may not have had the time, resources, or access to the traditional business route. This welcoming space holds powerful potential for women educational leaders and women educational entrepreneurs.

Women and social entrepreneurship With the rise of social entrepreneurism, it is interesting to explore the impact for women leaders in this book. Although many of these initiatives may also fall into the category of business entrepreneurship, which relates to the application and advancement of the values, principles, and practices of the private business sector, we also see their connection to social entrepreneurialism which mobilizes ideas, practices, and resources. Specifically, five women were interviewed about their journey of launching their own social entrepreneurial initiatives. Each woman was successful in her endeavor but they experienced different challenges and constraints during their entrepreneurial journeys. Rahaf is a Jordanian teacher who has worked in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the USA; Rama is an Egyptian accountant who has worked in Jordan, Qatar, and the UK; Gertrude is a principal from Burkina Faso; Maria-A is a low-fee private school principal in Liberia; and Amal is a Saudi HR manager who has volunteered in Qatar, China, the UK, and Germany. All five women are married, and most are mothers. Rahaf first started her catering project in 2009 to support her family since her husband was not working. She then moved her aim toward launching her own catering company. Despite teaching full time, she was able to support her business by working on the weekends and had the support of her mother and sisters. Like many teacherpreneurs, Rahaf capitalized on her instructional skills by incorporating them into her business. As she highlighted, “When I prepare an order for a kid’s party, I include some of the educational ideas I used to provide my students with. Parents would call me back telling me about their children’s reaction.” This unique element was not easily replicable, however. When Rahaf had to travel and asked her family to step in to help, she noted, “Yes, my sisters could provide the same recipe, however, they can’t provide the same educational ideas which was an added value to the project!” After 12 years building her catering business, Rahaf is now thinking of relaunching the project in the USA. Her

104  A new wave of women’s educational leadership idea is to “teach young ladies how to cook traditional recipes to learn about their identities and their culture.” The cultural context of this project naturally plays a significant role in Rahaf’s success, and it will be interesting to see how she adapts the project in a North American context. Rama used to work in the finance department of different companies, but each company shared a similar focus as they all involved running schools and educational projects. As part of her job, Rama used to attend the meetings and review the financial educational plans. Although she had a solid understanding of what it would take to launch a new school, Rama was reluctant to start her own because she thought she was not capable of leading and managing a school. As she reported, “I am confident of leading teams and taking financial decisions but am not sure if I will be able to choose the right curriculum and supervise the academic affairs.” In order to build her confidence while launching her school, she registered in many educational courses to learn more about the instructional process. However, her launch also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic challenge: I know that everyone was shocked, personally, I couldn’t sleep! Where to start? [I had] teachers who were not able to use technology, or the students who don’t have devices and their parents can’t read or write. I decided to prepare kits for each student and ask the teachers to teach them via phone [un]til we found sponsors to provide them with devices and taught the students what to do. Reflecting on her experience, Rama noted that she was proud of what her school has achieved and how she managed the constraints. Not only did they survive the challenge of a pandemic, but the school also had an influence on the community. During the pandemic, students were encouraged to help their neighbors: “The students started checking their friends’ wellbeing and shared ideas on how to support them. They told me about an idea to fund medical equipment, and I approved it immediately.” Like Rama, Gertrude, Maria, and Maria-A are principals of low-fee private schools that they opened. Gertrude faced several challenges when opening her school in Burkina Faso: “When I first opened the school in my garage, I recall hearing people gossiping about my choices and how I will not make it without the help of a man.” However, Gertrude believed in her vision and created her own support system through friends and community members to meet her challenges. Similarly, Maria-A found financial and emotional support for the opening of her low-fee private school from a church member when she needed it most: This was when my husband did not believe in me still, a church member gave me the money I needed to start my school in the garage. Then when the school started to grow, my husband also started to help me … so this church member helped me financially, in payers, but he also helped my husband to see my capabilities.

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  105 Finally, although Amal used to work as an HR manager in a big company, she has also started a variety of educational initiatives, one of which was selling used books. As Amal highlighted: “I know that many students need books, different types of books.” She saw an opportunity and decided to fill the gap. “We connect buyers with sellers, and we read for young children when they come to our booth. We teach them how to appreciate having a book to read and how to encourage others to read via storytelling.” Amal explained that she selected this book project to help students and their families to promote reading among their communities. She also launched a book club and bookstores that provide vouchers and promotions for students. Like many of the women interviewed, it is more than a business for Amal: “It is about the process. They advised me to sell the books via an e-platform, but I want people to come and meet each other and see how they can share books.” Giving back and making a difference in her community were embedded in her educational entrepreneurship goals. Although each of the women showcased in this chapter overcame the challenges and barriers she faced as women educational entrepreneurs, there were numerous personal and social factors that had an impact on their experience. As mothers, the women had to balance their responsibilities at home alongside their entrepreneurial initiatives; all required the support of their families and spouses. As Amal said, “I was lucky to have a supportive husband, it is not easy! You know in GCC everyone blames the woman if she leaves her children. Even my own mother didn’t support me.” For Rahaf, the catering business was initially supported since it was born out of necessity since her husband was not working. However, her desire to continue to build the business was challenged over time. As she noted, “At the beginning everyone was supporting me till my husband found a job, then many of them started blaming me! Including my children!” Finally, Rama reported on the risk and sacrifice her family faced as she embarked on her entrepreneurial venture to successfully start a school: “It was a huge pressure to spend the money on this project and being afraid to fail.” As an accountant by training, she was surprised by all the elements that she was responsible for and how much she had to learn after launching the school. For the women leaders, it was clear that effective educational entrepreneurship took much more than simply good luck. Knowledge of the key competencies (Robles & Zárraga-Rodríguez, 2015) that support women entrepreneurs is critical, such as risk taking, innovative, effective communication, and understanding change management. Educational entrepreneurship also requires women leaders to be visionary, dedicated, and determined; harness a supportive community; and develop a collective leadership approach.

Collective leadership in women entrepreneurship As introduced earlier in the book, women educational leaders are not isolated entities. As such, their work often includes their community wherein

106  A new wave of women’s educational leadership women support other women and lean on the support of their family. The entrepreneurial ventures of women educational leaders interviewed in this book also proved to have a positive impact on their communities. Whereas Rahaf was supported in her catering business by her mother and sisters, Rama encouraged students in her school to check in on their neighbors and share innovative ideas. Amal’s book project was developed to promote reading and support access to books in her community. Capturing these stories of collective leadership and community impact are an important element in supporting women’s educational entrepreneurship. WomenED is a powerful example of a global grassroots movement that aims to connect ambitious and inspirational women leaders in education and provide them with a voice in education. First launched in 2015 on Twitter by women leaders in England, WomenED has now grown to have 30 networks across 19 countries. The mission of womenED is “for more women in education to have the choice to progress on their leadership journey.” As noted on the movement’s website, Even though women dominate the workforce across all sectors of education, there are still gender and racial inequalities in terms of the numbers of women in senior leadership, the large gender pay gap and the number of women who want to stay in education yet whose requests for flexible working are not met. (para 2) More global and local platforms such as WomenED need to be developed and advocated for to better support women educational entrepreneurs in their journeys. Having said this, it is important to mention that there is a need to reach and identify women educational initiatives such as the Arab Mom’s Club platform where women try to support and encourage mom-entrepreneurship1 and other competencies.

Concluding thoughts As highlighted in this chapter, women leaders represent a new wave of educational leadership that includes educational entrepreneurship. Women as educational leaders create financial paths for educational, school, and institutional sustainability. As highlighted in the stories of women educational leaders in this book, women educational entrepreneurs make a significant contribution to their families as well as their communities. However, they face several challenges that are particularly complex in developing countries, such as difficulty accessing financial support for their entrepreneurial initiatives, sociocultural biases against women leaders, low self-esteem, and a lack of access to entrepreneurial education, role models, and mentors. However, for women educational entrepreneurs in more restrictive systems and cultures the use of social media and open-source platforms offers powerful potential for support and networking. As revealed through the stories of the women entrepreneurs in this chapter, effective and successful

A new wave of women’s educational leadership  107 endeavors require meaningful support and guidance. As such, to capitalize on this underrepresented group of women education entrepreneurs and teacherpreneurs, governments and policymakers need to facilitate access to entrepreneurship resources as well as develop platforms for women leaders to share their experiences, ideas, and opportunities and to mentor one another. Financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills should be embedded within educational systems in the early years and in curricula more broadly, especially in underdeveloped nations. Communities of support for women leaders need to be celebrated and advocated for so that women can better learn how to transfer their ideas and contributions into projects within the educational sector and support one another. Finally, innovative initiatives by women leaders should not only be supported and resourced, but a sustained mentorship program should be developed so that multipurpose educational projects can reach their potential and make a difference to the women entrepreneurs, their communities, and the wider society. To further support this new wave of women’s educational leadership, more work must be done on a local and global scale. Specifically, we are left with two key questions: How do we further support women’s education entrepreneurial contributions and skills in their local communities and beyond? What can be further developed to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries? How can we encourage women’s ecological leadership? These questions and others will be addressed in the next chapter.

Note 1 https://momsclubonline.com/

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A new wave of women’s educational leadership  109 research/empowering-women-entrepreneurs-in-developing-countries/; https:// slate.com/technology/2020/08/teachers-paying-teachers-racist-materials.html Siba, E. (2019). Empowering women entrepreneurs in developing countries: Why current programs fall short. A Policy Brief for the Brookings Institute, February 2019. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Empoweringwomen-entreprenuers-in-developing-countries-190215.pdf Sperandio, J. (2007). Women leading and owning schools in Bangladesh: Opportunities in public, informal, and private education. Journal of Women in Educational Leadership, 5(1), 7–20. http://search.proquest.com/ docview/61805522?accountid=17215%5Cnhttp://limo.libis.be/resolver?url_ ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&genre=article& s i d = P r o Q : P r o Q : e r i c s h e l l & a t i t l e = Wo m e n + L e a d i n g + a n d + O w n i n g + Schools+in+Bangladesh:+Opportu Stacey, P. (2013). Government support for open educational resources: Policy, funding, and strategies. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2), 67–80. doi:10.19173/irrodl.v14i2.1537 Thearle, C. (1999, April 1). Women in senior management positions in international schools. The International Schools Journal, 18, 2; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 38. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization/International Labour Organisation, Global. (2006). Towards an entrepreneurial culture for the twenty-first century, definitions, pp. 21–22. Available at https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/48223/pf0000147057 Woods, P. A., Woods, G. J., & Gunter, H. (2007) Academies schools: sponsors, specialisms and varieties of entrepreneurial leadership. Journal of Education Policy, 22(2), 263–285.

7 Beyond education Empowerment model

Introduction The previous chapters demonstrated that women’s educational leadership has many definitions as the emergence of educational leaders is usually situational, sometimes contingent and temporary, and in few instances permanent. Women who are acknowledged as having leadership potential may be selected by the group, and sometimes the role may be inherited or assumed by default. Previous studies explored educational leadership in various contexts (Oplatka & Tamir, 2009; Robinson et al., 2017). However, Lopez (2020) highlighted that “educational leadership still remains predominantly heteronormative, nonspiritual, middle-class, white, and masculine which produces hegemonic epistemologies” (p. 16). While education is essential in ensuring equity and sustainability, educational systems and practices should not only provide quality educational programs and opportunities but also spaces for educators to empower marginalized communities. In her book, Lopez (2020) contended that, Decolonizing approaches create space for students and educators to draw on their histories, anchor themselves in their stories, and use this knowledge for their educational advancement, and by doing so disrupt the colonial project of schooling that seeks to erase the knowledge of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and police and control them. (p. 34) Most of the global women educational leadership (WEL) preparation or development programs have been carried out by male leaders. Recently, women leaders have urged that these programs avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and instead design WEL programs based on women’s specific needs and experience (Fuller & Berry, 2019; Oplatka & Tamir, 2009). There are several reasons to design preparation and development programs for women. First, some scholars have argued that femininity is linked “with ‘ethics of care’; pro-environmental attitudes; more socially conscious, altruistic behavior; and credibility” (Segovia-Pérez et al., 2019, DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-7

Beyond education  111 p. 2). Second, women’s leadership has been associated with transformational leadership (Blackmore, 1993; Grogan & Shakeshaft, 2011; Klenke, 2017). Of course, there is no evidence that this phenomenon is solely limited to women’s leadership practices. In fact, studies have shown that some women have taken on a more autocratic and directive form of leadership rather than fostering transformational change (Sawalhi, 2019). Several reasons were presented for why this occurred, such as the women having low confidence in their leadership abilities, a desire to prove themself, or the fact that they are not taken as seriously as men. Finally, it may be because this was the only model of leadership they saw. Generally, many development programs focus on women’s educational leadership to help women to understand the nature of challenges they face. Programs such as Harvard’s WEL program and Cambridge’s rising women leaders’ program help women examine the role of gender and race, gain essential communication and negotiation skills, create networks of women leaders between and across sectors, and explore self-care. In this book we would add that empowerment starts from a deep understanding of the self—historically, biologically, culturally, and politically. Only when the self is understood can we then lead and empower others in our communities (Guajardo et al., 2011, 2015). Although there are other types and forms of WEL programs, of which many might not be known locally or across the globe, these programs generally focus on certified degrees which aim to provide participants with skills rather than work to transform the systems, cultures, and environments surrounding the participants in an ecological approach (Fuller & Berry, 2019).

A new model for women’s educational leadership As mentioned in previous chapters, interviewees in this book highlighted the importance of encouragement for themselves and others to do things they could never do before, support in the form of ideas and guidance in seeing the opportunities within difficult situations. These factors contributed to their sense of empowerment. They also mentioned the importance of being a role model, sharing feedback, and serving as a mentor and/or coach. To help us understand the interviewees' experiences, we searched previous studies to see how women’s leadership models had evolved over years. Literature showed that the two main barriers women face in their leadership and managerial journey are “lack of training and self-confidence.” Cantor and Bernay in the early 1990s provided the following elements: Leadership = Competent Self + Creative Aggression + Woman Power. They described this formula: The “Competent Self” implies a strong sense of self and the ability to see possibilities instead of obstacles. Knowing who one is at all times allows one to not be defined by situations, other people, and events.

112  Beyond education Creative Aggression includes initiative, leading others, and speaking out. Although seen as apparently exclusive, Woman Power does combine the best of both masculine and feminine qualities-combining strength and force with nurturance. It encompasses the ability to make a difference in society for the greater good … “the ability to get things done.” (cited in DenMark, 1993, p. 348) Although this model was presented in the early 1990s and was focusing on women’s leadership in general, it is essential to see how it started with self as “Knowing who one is at all times allows one to not be defined by situations, other people, and events.” Women leaders all face different situations and need to continually reflect and reassess on their own strengths and resources. Creative aggression remains a unique way of understanding the critical role of creativity in leadership. Finally, Cantor and Bernay (1992) highlighted the importance of “woman power.” Rather than neglecting the strengths of masculine or feminine, they tried to take the best of both by “combining strength and force with nurturance.” In this book, we prefer to use influence rather than force. The women in this book have shown how they were able to go beyond traditional roles to start practicing significant leadership across other sectors (see Chapter 6). Thus, there is a need to redefine what we mean by education and to instill values and practices related to continuous teaching and learning across all sectors, including long-life learning and wide-life learning. In Chapter 2, we focused on women’s identity formation in general and women’s leadership identity in more detail. We examined the challenges they faced, including displacement in different forms and types. All the stories and narratives presented showed how women’s self-awareness and designing of solutions to meet what was required in each new situation was inspiring to others and the women leaders soon found themselves as role models. By getting other women to help or support them in their endeavours, many interviewees became mentors. They became a listening ear for other women leaders’ stories and reflections. Some of them were able to transform their families, cultures, and systems, whereas others were more focused on sustaining their own projects and achievements. Four key domains emerged from the women leaders’ stories in this book: self-empowerment, role modelling, mentoring (leading others and capacity building), and ecological leadership (leading communities and promoting sustainability). These domains are presented in Figure 7.1. Before we explain each domain in this model, it is important to emphasize that this model is based on women’s self-awareness and how they design their own values and norms, which influences behaviors. As outlined in Chapter 2, Guajardo et al. (2015) offered RASPPA—intertwined relations, assets, stories, place, politic, and action—as a useful acronym to represent the voices of women educational leaders. In the same vein, April

Beyond education  113

Selfempowerment

Ecological leadership

Role modelling

Mentorship

Figure 7.1  The four key domains of the women’s leadership model.

and Schörger (2017) clarified that authentic leaders start from “owning one’s personal experiences, including one’s thoughts, emotions, needs, desires, or beliefs. In short, leaders must lead in ways which honor their core values, beliefs, strengths, as well as their weaknesses” (p. 33). Having said this, we need to recognize that everyone’s worldview is unique, and much will depend on different factors and constraints, including race, gender, socioeconomic status, family, religion, politics, and society (April & Schörger, 2017). To better understand the different selves, we borrow from a figure presented by Arar et al. (2022), where the introspective is prioritized. How we think about our own ideas are related to “who and what we are.” April and Schörger (2017, p. 33) also argued that “self-knowledge (curiosity, cognitive flexibility, boundary interrogation) is the leading enabler.” As shown in Figure 7.2, self-awareness is developed by engaging in relationships and reflecting on our own practices and behaviors. Guajardo and Guajardo (2013) noted that, “we enter community in a way that honors community member stories, rather than through the classical approach of moving into a community to extract information” (p. 161). This also offers the space for creating knowledge and meaning making. It also provides the space for individual and collective knowledge creation and meaning making. This cycle of relationships helps foster self-awareness and promote it to self-empowerment and to enhance the community-learning exchange (CLE).

Self-empowerment As Miller and Hutton (2014) argued, educational leadership is “situated within an individual but emerges from how they engage with and manage, negotiate and navigate factors in … internal and external environments”

114  Beyond education The Public Screening

The Political Self

The Cultural Self

Setting the Environment

The Historical Self

The Biological Self

Figure 7.2  Self-knowledge cycle.

(p. 14). This stipulates that effective and successful leadership practices are individually constructed; hence one’s efforts (including women leaders), intentions, and inclinations are at the root of personal and professional transformation. It is through this process that change happens. All women leaders in this book noted that they had to start with self-confidence, the ability to understand their context, design the values system, and then identify priorities and purpose. Professional development is necessary to support women leaders to learn how to think like a designer in relation to the needs in their culture. Sawalhi et al. (2020) offered a useful diagram of effective professional development for women leaders (Figure 7.3). Whereas the element “optimistic” encourages women leaders to design with a positive outlook, “empathic” stresses the importance of understanding other people’s perspectives and to think in context. For example, women look at the bigger picture and understand the general context of the design before working on it. “Collaborative” refers to women designers sharing their opinions with others to improve the overall design. This falls into the realm of experiential learning process where women are encouraged to try, develop, and keep trying until they reach the needed design. The “think as a designer” process was linked to growth mindset and aimed to enable participants to better understand themselves as well as define their behaviors and their values. Developing their own personalities indicates the need to consider themselves as a project or an institution which needs personal branding, networking, communicating effectively, negotiating efficiently, and taking care of themselves. Overseeing their own actions and sharing their own stories helped them to map their gifts, ideas, hopes, and wishes. This mapping embodies ideological, relational, and demographic skills which lead them to be considered as role models to others.

Beyond education  115

Figure 7.3  Think as a designer. (adapted from Sawalhi et al., 2020).

Role modeling Female role models can motivate girls and women in male-typical professional and work domains such as STEM, athletics, and managerial political leadership (Latu et al., 2019). This might develop several dynamics such as sense of belonging, and self-confidence. Women leader role models can help women to reflect of their depositions and how to react and proact in challenging situations, and how to stand out. In turn, women may model those behaviors and thus be empowered.

Mentoring (empowering others) Learning how to learn within the scope of relationships is essential for effective leadership (Guajardo et al., 2015). Creating a safe space is fundamental to improving learning and development. As such, it is critically important to have honest conversations and storytelling as part of women’s educational leadership. Arar (2019) highlighted some of the key reasons behind why some women were deterred from managerial and leadership positions, such as “lack of female role models, and lack of managerial experience and mentoring skills” (p. 3). Mentoring is practiced in several ways and forms. In a recent study, #WomenEd clarified that face to face and social media provided different venues and opportunities to encourage women leadership approaches. Fuller and Berry noted the importance of women connecting with like-minded others. The women in this study appreciated the safe and positive environment that supported equity in their education workplace. The community support was found in both the online space (via blogs and comments, in tweets and by direct messaging) and in the face-to-face meetings. It was shown that women were supported, which reduced the sense of isolation due to the geography and experiences such as the experience of balancing care responsibilities alongside a career. It was argued that many current connections had been underestimated by educational systemic reforms. Instead, the developing relationships in #WomenED were described by participants as deepening friendships. Mentoring could also be seen as part of a motherhood relationship due to the nurturing nature that women tended to share with others. In this

116  Beyond education way, motherhood could be utilized and recognized rather than being seen as an obstacle that hindered women’s work and role conflict as part of the ecological system.

Women’s ecological leadership Women’s leadership acts as a ripple effect for change; it stretches out toward community and the public sphere of development. Changes and development are activated initially from within the formal and informal institutions where entrepreneurship and sustainability are modeled and sought. Women are not solo entities; they are part of a set of systems. The core of the women’s leadership model for change that is suggested stems from propelling change within a mode and form of an interdisciplinary and integrated ecosystem that mobilizes transformative and transformational leadership practices. Shields, Dollarhide, and Young (2018) argued that two distinct notions, transformational and transformative, are often conflated and deployed as though they were identical: Transformational leadership focuses on the four major organizational dimensions of setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program, while Transformative Leadership has been more broadly and explicitly focused on addressing inequity and promoting justice in education. (p. 2) However, Lopez (2020) provided a four-step process to consider in transformative practices “learning, unlearning, rereading, and reframing.” (p. 36). Lopez (202) clarified that colonialism is embedded in the structures of education and dominance of hegemonic discourses. For new approaches to become embedded and sustained, and have the desired impact, some knowledge and ways of thinking and socialization will have to be unlearned, new concepts and theorizing learned, situations and understandings be reread, and practices changed (p. 36). Leadership endorsed in this book addresses (1) transformational leadership featured by the people, community, and organization, where each of these pillars works as an intra and inter effect to encompass the wider scope of the public system; and (2) transformative leadership that aims to foster equity and eradicate social injustices at several spheres, including education. The theory of transformative leadership embraces systemic change and necessitates advocacy. Transformative leadership was initially introduced as an educational leadership theory that emphasizes constructing a milieu that promotes socially just learning environments. Transformative leadership theory encompasses “an exercise of power and authority that begins with questions of justice, democracy, and the dialectic between individual accountability and social responsibility” (Weiner, 2003, p. 89).

Beyond education  117 In agreement, Shields (2010) indicated that, “transformative leadership begins with questions of justice and democracy; it critiques inequitable practices and offers the promise not only of greater individual achievement but of a better life lived in common with others” (p. 2). Within the scope of education, transformational leadership has revolved around four major institutional dimensions: setting strategic planning directions that underpin vision and mission, developing human capacities, restructuring the organization and its operations, involving the community, as well as managing and revamping the instructional program for innovation (Leithwood, 2010). In comparison, transformative leadership has been more widely and primarily focused on resolving issues pertaining to inequity and enhancing justice in education, taking on board principles of critical pedagogy. Transformative leadership draws on the person as a whole and includes external systems, which requires a deep understanding and consideration of the realities of the individuals and societies (Shields et al., 2018). According to van Oord (2013), “scholars have recognized and clarified the ‘conceptual murkiness’ between the terms: scholars have in recent years successfully endeavored to define and theorize transformative leadership as distinctively separate from the transformational approach” (pp. 421–422). Transformative leadership is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equality, and a democratic society. Furman (2012) stated that leadership for social justice is ction-oriented and transformative, committed and persistent, inclusive and democratic, relational and caring, reflective and oriented toward socially-just pedagogy” (p. 195). This book highlights the distinctive implications of both transformative and transformational leadership. Given the dual yet related notions of transformative and transformational education, Shields (2010) discussed areas that capture the focus of transformative leadership. These areas are not sequential or hierarchical; they are contextually situated and equally significant for change. According to Shields (2016), transformative leadership areas embody a directive for genuine equitable change and the urge to deconstruct frameworks of knowledge and practices that mobilize inequity and injustice. This will help in enhancing emancipation, democracy, equity, social justice, and moral courage on public and global levels. At the core of transformative leadership praxis is self-reflection and self-exploration. Transformative leaders must be aware of their nonnegotiables as well as their personal and systemic constraints and limitations. They must know their paths and what guides them and grounds them. Interestingly, Starratt (2005) referred to this grounding as spirituality, or a “way of being present to the most profound realities of one’s world” (p. 67). In addition to self-realization, self-awareness, and self-exploration, scholars also talk about the emotional needs of transformative leaders to nourish their own souls and the souls of others (Bader et al., 2010; Blaik Hourani et al., 2020).

118  Beyond education There is a crucial intertwined connection between oneself and one’s contexts. Cranton (2006) emphasized the importance of the spiritual connections—with oneself, one’s contexts, and others’ contexts. As described by Dantley (2005) and Blaik Hourani et al. (2020), it takes stamina, strength, and courage to initiate and pursue transformation of an organization or a society, regardless of setbacks, constraints, and systemic limitations. Women in their capacities practice collective transformational leadership as well as transformative leadership at various micro/macro scopes within formal and informal institutional levels. Their leadership starts in the family—an informal micro institution—and can lead to the macro level of public and governmental institutions. The current world is dynamic and has multicultural versatility. Women play multiple roles in their leadership practices. In a comprehensive ecological system, these practices can lead to multi-dimensional changes at the inner (self) level and move outward. Both transformative and transformational leadership are involved in these changes. Women are situated within four intertwined systems that include the self, social, professional, and public arenas. Women’s roles and achievements throughout their professional journeys of self-empowerment and empowering others require a constant reworking and reconstruction of a leadership model that reflects the synergy across the four systems. Collective transformational and transformative leadership requires self-empowerment, inclusion, equity, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and social justice. Bronfenbrenner (1993), Toh et al. (2014), and Shields et al. (2018) described an ecological system that includes six different yet integrated subsystems: (1) the individual system, (2) microsystem, (3) mesosystem, (4) exosystems, (5) macrosystem, and (6) chronosystem. At the individual level, self-empowerment, as well as one’s personal attributes, values, epistemological beliefs, and learning dispositions, are positioned. The microsystem embodies cultural beliefs and interaction with others at a small social scale. The mesosystem portrays the organizational attributes, for example institutional culture and profile, leadership and managerial practices, structural shape, and operation. The exosystems comprise influences practiced and imposed by the members in the organization (e.g., the community partners within the organization make up the ecology). The macrosystem represents the national or global trends. Inter–intra influences are activated through an unmeasurable period of time featured by the chronosystem. Among each of the ecological subsystems, there is an inter-ripple effect with an aim toward (1) a wider and deeper scope of self–inward and external–outward changes; (2) construction of organizational–community collaboration and partnerships; (3) synergy between and among micro and macro organizations on the private and public levels; (4) cohesion between private and public organizational goals; and (5) construction of vision and mission to promote a well-balanced reformative agenda that takes into consideration and maintains an equilibrium between the self and the

Beyond education  119 organizational and communal aspirations and needs in order to reach endgoals situated within the spectrum of social justice, entrepreneurship and sustainability. The individual’s self-empowerment is at the initial progression of any change that takes place throughout the interactive mobility of the various sub-systems of the overall ecological system. Ecological leadership practices elucidate the interactive dynamics that influence and underpin sustainability, management, and both self and societal development (Olsson et al., 2004). For example, and in reference to Bronfenbrenner’s (1993) ecological system and model of human development, the five subsystems of changes (micro, meso, exo, macro, and chrono) can mold and guide human capacity building. Each subsystem is an important component to the overall transformative and transformational change process. For example, the chronosystem is pivotal to promoting both personal and systemic changes. The ecological system’s inter–intra cohesion is the core nucleus that triangulates the individual, systemic needs and innovations and the states’ reformative agenda. No system is prioritized as the initiator of change; rather the five sub-ecological systems make up the wide ecosystem and are all at the same power level. To mobilize the various sub-ecological systems toward overall holistic change requires a careful and robust needs analysis at the individual and community levels to harmonize the potential. Ecological leadership practices maximize formal and informal interactions, collaborations, and partnerships across vertical and horizontal levels of the system to initiate, activate, and mobilize actions, entrepreneurship, and sustainability within the realm of transformative and transformational leadership. These practices include social justice and systemic changes that delineate, address, and override the binary of self and the system. Moreover, ecological leadership leverages all resources available and subsequently creates new resources and avenues to form a collaborative capital to mitigate challenge and move ahead innovatively with a special focus on scalability and sustainability, through constructing structures for self-nurturing, building professional human capital, and building learning communities, networks, and partnerships (Shields et al., 2018; Toh et al., 2014; Wheatley, 2006). Situating ecological leadership within transformative and transformational practices, Fullan (2004) considered leadership for sustainability as having moral public purpose, whereby these practices need to “move beyond standard plateau and close achievement gap; treat people with respect; improve the environment and engage in macro perspective of big picture and societal goals” (p. 6). Hopkins and Higham (2007) stated that moral purpose to enhance diversified educational pathways and empowering others and improving communities must be at the heart of all system leadership practices. Moreover, “leadership practices need to go beyond systemic and policies forms and shapes; thus act as ‘critical connections’ within and across the subsystems to bring social innovations, justices and sustainability” (Wheatley, 2006, p. 45).

120  Beyond education Women leaders are fundamental to holistic systemic change. Additionally, a comprehensive understanding of each system’s context, its demands, and its change potential needs to be determined. To bring together meaningful and purposeful change, a movement away from the system agenda toward the individual is necessary. Empowerment, capacity building, and innovation are required, as depicted in Figure 7.4:

Next steps for the model As outlined previously within each of the four domains of the proposed women’s educational leadership model—self-empowerment, role modeling, mentorship, and ecological leadership—includes various trajectories. These are captured in Figure 7.5.

The seven stages of initiation and implementation The effectiveness of the women’s leadership empowerment model depends on its initiation and implementation through seven key stages: The first stage is envisioning, which refers to the creation of a new vision that takes into consideration all needs and requirements of the (1) individual system, (2) microsystem, (3) mesosystem, (4) exosystem, and (5) macrosystem. The second stage is discovering and surveying institutional and organizational stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities. Through reflective practices, introspection, and self-assessment, current and potential capabilities are traced to enhance self and outwardly organizational changes. At this stage, the individual is at the core of the change process. The third stage involves constructing an action plan. This plan must include short-term and long-term robust goals of and for change at the individual and institutional levels. Individual inner-self capacities are optimized to promote outward change at the public and organizational level. The fourth stage is determining anticipated results. This stage examines the likelihood of the changes and the role of the individual to make these changes. Future results are also recorded at this stage. The fifth stage focuses on allocating resources for change. This stage emphasizes identifying roles and responsibilities of stakeholders. It determines partnerships, collaboration avenues, and anticipated challenges that may be encountered on all levels, which includes budgeting, socioeconomic challenges, and other sociocultural and political contextual challenges and constraints. The sixth stage

Individual building capacities and innovations

State and public comprehensive change

Figure 7.4  Directions for building individual capacities and change.

Beyond education  121 Accepting women’s deployment of multiple roles Encourging, accepting, facilitating and supporting women’s multiple roles

Building confidence Communication skills Self-exploration Self-reflections

Self -Empowerment

Ecological Leadership

Role Modelling

Mentorship

Enhancing entrepreneurship and sustainability as part of women’s roles, responsibilities within the scopes of education and community building

Building capacities within the scope of emotional intelligence and develop women’s building capacities in transformational and transformative leadership skills.

Figure 7.5  Women’s leadership empowerment model.

is actioning, which is about creating and initiating an action plan which includes planning the implementation process. Finally, the seventh stage is sustainability. This stage is focused on monitoring and evaluating the progress of the implementation process. A summary of these seven stages is outlined in Figure 7.6.

Assessing the implementation process During and after the implementation process, assessment of the model is pivotal. Specifically, a backwards-design process is recommended, with a cycle of key actions as outlined in Figure 7.7. For the implementation of a successful change model, several points need to be considered. First, the evolution of system leadership relies on women’s self-empowerment, which includes the interconnectedness of self-exploration, self-empowerment, and self-improvement. Deepening collaboration (rather than competition) within and across the organization is also fundamental. Ecological leadership will lead to a change across the subsystems, which are steadily and regularly impacting and influencing the entire system. Changes at the micro-organizational level will thus lead to macro-organizational change at both the private and the public levels.

122  Beyond education

Envisioning

Creating a new vision that takes on board all five features of the pre-dispositions of systemic needs and requirements Creating a mission

Surveying stakeholders

Exploring current and potential capacities Determining the human capacities needs

Constructing action plan

Determining anticipated results

Setting robust short- and long-term goals Taking on board the data of inter and intra systemic contexts, needs and requirements Constructing evidenced key indicators human capacities infiltrated in the system Determining partnerships, collaboration avenues Exploring anticipated challenges on all levels

Allocating resources Creating and initiating action plan Actioning Sustaining

Monitoring the implementation process and its progress Evaluating the process and the final results

Figure 7.6  Model stages & implications.

Deconstruct goals

Re-direct the human capacities

Propose an adjusted contextualized plan

Construct baseline feedback strategy

Reframe goals

Craft amendment action plan

Figure 7.7  Assessment cycle for model implementation.

Beyond education  123

Concluding thoughts Across the globe, there have been numerous efforts to support and encourage women’s educational leadership. However, there remains a significant demand to provide a platform for women leaders to share best practices and initiatives. Without a coherent approach, each country or organization continues to reinvent the wheel and develop programs from scratch. There are several reasons for this; some of these reasons are a result of language barriers, context, or the incompatibility of using Western practices to address women's needs in Islamic or Eastern contexts. Effective models must be embedded with ways to empower women leaders to deal with uncertainty and challenging contexts. Additionally, any women’s leadership model should include ways to build and sustain learning communities for women to exchange best practices as well as embrace their differences and gifts. Educational systems are essential in not only providing instructional opportunities but also offering women key role models across the sector or sectors who can encourage women to lead from where they stand. Furthermore, governments need to recognize the foundational educational role women play in their communities as mothers, wives, sisters, and colleagues. This acknowledgement will lead to more sustainable outcomes. This chapter offers a new model for women’s educational leadership which includes four nonhierarchical domains: self-empowerment, role modeling, mentorship, and ecological leadership. Cohesion and interconnectedness across the domains are pivotal in ensuring transformative and transformational changes anchored in equity, social justice, entrepreneurship, and sustainability. In any leadership model, it is important to understand the relationship between women’s contexts and their professional demonstration and praxis. Women educational leaders play a fundamental role in voicing their multilayered contexts and helping systems better understand their personal and professional needs. And we still ask: How can we hear, see, and observe their stories of overcoming the socioculturally constructed constraints they have faced differently? How can we avoid providing a onesize-fits-all approach? In the next chapter we will outline the main issues presented in this book, including the model presented, and summarize the core arguments, including conclusions and further questions to be posed and social and community missions to be accomplished.

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124  Beyond education Arar, K., Örücü, D., & Mahfouz, J. (2022). Social in/justice and double marginality in educational leadership: Trajectories of three female school principals from the Middle East. In V. Showunmi, P. Moorosi, C. Shakeshaft, & I. Oplatka (Eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook in Gender Educational Leadership and Management. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. Bader, B., Horman, J., & Lapointe, C. (2010). Fostering community and civic engagement in low income multicultural schools through transformative leadership. Exceptionality Education International, 20, 25–37. Blaik Hourani, Rida, Litz, D., & Parkman, S. (2020). Emotional intelligence and school leaders: Evidence from Abu Dhabi. Educational Management and Leadership. doi:10.1177/1741143220913552 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993). Ecological models of human development. In M. Gauvain & M. Cole (Eds.), Readings on the Development of Children (pp. 37–43). New York: Freeman. Cantor, D. W., & Bernay, T. (1992). Women in Power. The Secrets of Leadership. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Cranton, P. (2006). Fostering authentic relationships in the transformative classroom. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 109, 5–13. Dantley, M. (2005). Faith-based leadership: Ancient rhythms or new management. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 18, 3–19. Denmark, F. L. (1993). Women, leadership and empowerment. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 17, 343–356. Fullan, M. (2004). Systems Thinkers in Action: Moving beyond the Standards Plateau: Teachers Transforming Teaching. London: Department for Education and Skills. Fuller, K., & Berry, J. (2019). #WomenEd: A Movement for Women Leaders in Education. Furman, G. (2012). Social justice leadership as praxis: Developing capacities through preparation programs. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48(2), 191–229. Grogan, M., & Shakeshaft, C. (2011) Women and Educational Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Guajardo, J. (2011). Teacher motivation: Theoretical framework and situational analysis: Save the Children country offices and recommended strategies. Oxfam. www.oxfamnovib.nl/Redactie/Downloads/English/SPEF/281-24%20 Teacher%20Motivation%20Report.pdf Guajardo, F., & Guajardo, M. (2013). The power of plática. Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing and Service Learning, 13, 159–164. Guajardo, M. A., Guajardo, F., Janson, C., & Militello, M. (2015). Reframing Community Partnerships in Education: Uniting the Power of Place and Wisdom of People. London: Routledge. Hopkins, D., & Higham, R. (2007). System leadership: Mapping the landscape. School Leadership and Management, 27(2), 147–166. Latu, I. M., Mast, M. S., Bombari, D., Lammers, J., & Hoyt, C. L. (2019). Empowering mimicry: Female leader role models empower women in leadership tasks through body posture mimicry. Sex Roles, 80(1–2), 11–24. doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0911-y Leithwood, K. (2010). Transformational school leadership. In E. Baker, B. McGaw, & P. Peterson (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd ed., Vol. 5, pp. 158–164). Oxford, England: Elsevier. Lopez, A. E. (2020). Decolonizing Educational Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-62380-7

Beyond education  125 Miller, P., & Hutton, D. (2014). Leading from “within”: Towards a comparative view of how school leaders’ personal values and beliefs influence how they lead in England and Jamaica. In S. Harris & J. Mixon (Eds.), Building Cultural Community through Global Educational Leadership (pp. 70–90). Ypsilanti: NCPEA Publications. Olsson, P., Folke, C., & Berkes, F. (2004). Adaptive co-management for building social-ecological resilience. Environmental Management, 34, 75–90. Oplatka, I., & Tamir, V. (2009). “I don’t want to be a school head”: Women deputy heads’ insightful constructions of career advancement and retention. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 37(2), 216–238. doi: 10.1177/1741143208100299 Robinson, K., Shakeshaft, K., Grogan, M., et al. (2017). Necessary but not sufficient: The continuing inequality between men and women in educational leadership, Findings from the AASA Mid-Decade Survey. Frontiers in Education 2(12). doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00012 Sawalhi, R. (2019). Teacher Leadership in Government Schools in Qatar : Opportunities and challenges. University of Warwick. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/138040/1/ WRAP_Theses_Sawalhi_2019.pdf Sawalhi, R., Hawari, G., & Altengi, M. (2020). Al tharwa al naema: Towards women’s leadership development. https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/ opinion-and-blog/al-tharwa-al-naema-towards-womens-leadership-development Segovia-Pérez, M., Laguna-Sánchez, P., & de la Fuente-Cabrero, C. (2019). Education for sustainable leadership: Fostering women’s empowerment at the University Level. Sustainability (Switzerland), 11(20). doi:10.3390/su11205555 Shields, C. M. (2010). Transformative leadership: Working for equity in diverse contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46, 558–589. doi:10.1177/00131 61X10375609 Shields, C. M. (2016). Transformative Leadership: Primer. New York: Peter Lang. Shields, C. M., Dollarhide, C. T., & Young, A. A. (2018). Transformative leadership in school counseling: An emerging paradigm for equity and excellence. Professional School Counseling, 21(1b), 1–11. doi:10.1177/2156759X18773581 Siba, E. (2019, February). Empowering women entrepreneurs in developing countries: Why current programs fall short. Brookings Institute. https:// www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Empowering-womenentreprenuers-in-developing-countries-190215.pdf Starratt, R. J. (2005). The spirituality of presence for educational leaders. In C. M. Shields, M. M. Edwards, & A. Sayani (Eds.), Inspiring practice: Spirituality and Educational Leadership (pp. 67–84). Lancaster, PA: Proactive. Toh, Y., Jamaludin, A., Hung, W. L. D., Meng-Huat Chua, P. (2014). Ecological leadership: going beyond system leadership for diffusing school-based innovations in the crucible of change for 21st century learning. Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 23(4), 835–850. doi:10.1007/s40299-014-0211-4 Van Oord, L. (2013). Towards transformative leadership in education. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 16, 419–434. doi:10.1080/1 3603124.2013.776116 Weiner, E. J. (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the democratization of power: Toward a theory of transformative leadership. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35, 89–106. Wheatley, M. (2006). Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

8 Women’s educational leadership Concluding thoughts

This book’s chapters address women’s leadership in enhancing transformation as collective leaders and draw a multicultural tapestry that portrays versatile and diversified entries that capture women’s voices in terms of instigating a covert revolution characterized by multi-perspective changes on the people, organizational, and community levels. Accordingly, this book stipulates a binary transformation that overarches the self and the public, therefore constructing and monitoring policies that create robust systemic changes. Education in this book is conceptualized through the narratives of the women leaders and is portrayed as being much more than formal schooling administration. Rather, it embraces all spaces and places, including the home where self-exploration can lead to micro and macro transformation. Despite representing various ethnocultural groups, the women showcased in these pages are a clear source of influence in their homes and families, as well as in their work and communities. Their stories show how leadership can be practiced and shaped from a young age and can have a significant impact on other women’s social and economic status as well as dual empowerment in terms of the intrinsic-self and extrinsic-others. The stories shared by the women leaders in this book exposed the numerous barriers they encounter in their leadership practices and showcased the ways in which they triumph, work collectively, and empower others in educational processes and times of crises. Over the previous seven chapters, the authors have aimed to contribute to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted and contextual realities of underrepresented women educational leaders from developing countries and underprivileged social strata, and to highlight the role equity, diversity, and inclusion play in their work to create livable and human-oriented communities and revamp functional systems and processes. Throughout this book’s chapters, we have shed light on a covert revolution occurring in developing countries (Australia, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and West Africa) and have used a perspective that falls outside the traditional feminist lens and gender binary. Stories of inspiring and influential women leaders have been woven into the literature to highlight how formal and informal women’s leadership practices develop DOI: 10.4324/9781003360063-8

Women’s educational leadership  127 to suit individual and communal contexts and needs. In addressing women’s narratives, we explored formal and informal women’s educational leadership practices that optimize and humanize educational leadership in a way that invests in women leaders’ uniqueness, skills, talents, and emerging innovations. In contrast to the more traditional scholarship approach, which tends to focus on women in Anglo-phonic and developing societies contexts, we have traced the qualities, challenges, resilience, and coping strategies that are captured in the leadership of women in underrepresented global cultural contexts. Ultimately, we proposed a women’s leadership empowerment model that encompasses four stages: self-empowerment, role modeling, mentoring, and ecological leadership. By centering the voices of women leaders throughout each chapter, we have aimed to humanize women’s educational leadership, celebrate the contributions of the women leaders that we were fortunate to learn with and from, and highlight the important role of social justice in their work. Within the challenges that women leaders voiced, this book was written as an open invitation to educational researchers, leaders, policy makers, and practicing educators around the world in order to dismantle Eurocentric gender scholarship and orientalist feminism that developed mainly in the global North, in an attempt to eliminate and overcome male-centric sociopolitical structures and exclusionary practices that contributed to women’s suppression and misrepresentation (Fuller, 2022). Women in different societies and mainly in the global South simultaneously experienced both the oppression of Western colonialism and patriarchal social structures from home which have hindered them from equitable participation in public sphere. Therefore, resisting colonialism not only as colonized regime and subject but also as a women was part of these women’s two facets of struggles, voiced struggles against colonialism and silent struggles against oppression from home (Showunmi & Tomlin, 2022). While the Eurocentric waves of feminism revolved mainly around structural injustices of misrepresentations and stressed the binary concept of man versus women, women in developed societies and in the midst of inequitable systems needed to resist and maneuver the colonizers and patriarchy using different strategies. Hence, using Western feminist epistemology and activism represents denial of the struggle of women in developing societies. This is due to the practices of imperialism, both political and cultural, the West represents and has demonstrated. Thus, women’s fight for liberation from the patriarchy misrepresents their colonized counterparts. Also, it has been presumed that the issues that White Western women combat apply to all women, even women of color. As a result, issues pertaining to race (racism), ethnicity, and intersectionalities have been neglected. Consequently, this has hindered feminists from thinking about how racism and patriarchy interact. Western feminism also stresses the binary concept of man versus woman, leaving out racism and how it plays its role in the oppression of women of color, while the concept of “third world” women sees colonized women as singular and monolithic, stemming from the assumptions that

128  Women’s educational leadership all third-world women have the same needs and experiences (Arar, 2018; Arar et al., forthcoming). Therefore, Western feminists generally see them as existing outside of the social structures that frame their oppression. More specifically, this concept of the third-world woman implies the classical model of power—men versus women. Generally speaking, Western feminism does not take into account the sociopolitical contexts—non-Western women are robbed of their historical, cultural, and political agency, while being used as proof of various cases of powerless women without accounting for their individual experiences (e.g., Fuller, 2022; Showunmi & Tomlin, 2022). Also, this speaks to the idea of “sisterhood,” which from a White Western feminist viewpoint implies a false sense of common experiences and goals. In the context of Western feminism, Asian, Black, and Latinx women are rarely included in the discourse. In our book we aimed at celebrating an open invitation to overcome the gender binary epistemology that manifested the Eurocentric epistemology of understanding women leaders, while suggesting a postcolonial lens and simultaneously adding gender to the postcolonial epistemology that features understanding women’s leadership in both dismantling double colonialization and establishing empowerment capacity building in the community and society. In reimagining and envisaging women’s leadership in different cultural contexts and from a critical and postcolonial lens, our argument is that equity and empowerment start at home. Thus, before understanding the challenges and the gifts women in different societies bring to the role, it is best to check yourself, your ontology, and your epistemology in recognizing your and their struggle including the multifaceted fight with the oppressor and colonizer. Regardless of whether gender equity is welcomed or not, it asks something more than a description of sociocultural inequities and injustices practiced both by their culture and by colonial dictation and manipulation. If we hold that premise, then educational leadership is both personal and contextual. Therefore, we need to explore the women’s journey articulated by their voice and narrative, in paving the way to both the leadership position and the change they brought to their communities. Our focus on the propositions “unraveling and demystifying” is our way of acknowledging the necessity for active intellectual debates on the many injustices around the world. Following the logic of Dewey on democracy and learning, what happens within schools need to be transitioned to the care, concern, recognition, and respect beyond schools into communities, towns, villages, cities, and states around the world (Dewey, 1916). Therefore, the book celebrates the women’s roles and achievements throughout their professional journey of self-empowerment and empowering others in the midst of a neoliberal era that features traumas resulting from displacement, wars, inequities, and social injustices. The book identifies a leadership model that is situated within a range of intersecting theoretical frameworks that revolve around collective leadership, transformation theories, and community partnerships in order to elevate education into the sphere of comprehensiveness, inclusion, equity, sustainability,

Women’s educational leadership  129 and social justice. Based on a narrative approach that reflects women’s voices, this book opens the door for educators and policy makers to explore new insights of transformation given the 21st-century crossroads, where cultural, ethnic, political, social, and economic planks display stressful demands that require multidimensional and multiple responses in a progressive and dynamic manner in order to humanize education as an integrated and interdisciplinary ecosystem. Our intent was to demonstrate why women leadership need to be reconstructed locally in ways that lead local members of their communities to recognize their efforts to empower others and build equity with dignity. Our preposition “beyond” also allows us to frame the many struggles of women into leadership, both historically, culturally, and nationally, as stemming from the diversified narratives presented in the book chapters exploring many journeys toward grounded women leadership for social justice. As we clarified in the introduction, we shared life stories and narratives of women who practiced educational leadership from where they stand across MENA, Europe, West Africa, and Australia. We tried to voice their experiences and insights from a fresh and different lens to recognize their contributions to encourage other researchers and practitioners to uncover women’s educational leadership opportunities utilizing our own positionality, professional and life experience, and epistemology. If researchers admit that epistemology requires complex observation of the human, social, cultural, and institutional levels; contravenes critical lenses; and aspires to provide understanding, listening, and commitment to creating a shared space between diversified peoples and cultures, we need to highlight that exploring this within women’s sphere requires deeper understanding. Women’s educational leadership is an essential component if we are to meet the Sustainable Development Goals that aim to extinguish global poverty in all its forms by 2030 and promote gender equity in all areas of social, economic, and public life. As the stories of geodynamics and displacement of the women leaders in this book highlight, there is a correlation between the concepts of empowerment, autonomy, freedom of choice, self-exploration, and self-realization. A global adherence to what works and what matters in education includes an emphasis on women’s capabilities and empowerment as necessary and vital agents in the fight to address injustices and inequity. Also, it should be understood that social justice is, first, a political discourse; second, actions and interventions that seek to expand people’s opportunities to close disparities between oppressed peoples of the world and those who have been advantaged by circumstances alone; and, third, counter-narratives for action. We position women’s struggle for social justice in opposition to dominant discourses, many of which are buttressed by our own institutions, our academic disciplines, academic titles, and status as research professors. What we are asserting is that the same platforms that are privileged have to be seen also as pathways to disruptions of the status quo. There is still a long road ahead of us when it comes to women’s educational leadership, and a lot of critical work is yet to be done. Whereas there

130  Women’s educational leadership has been a marked increase in women holding management positions in schools and school districts in North America, in many countries, especially in global South and Eastern contexts, women are given less opportunities than men to serve in powerful educational positions, and men continue to have the upper hand in key educational positions. Additionally, despite a growing scholarship on educational management, administration, and leadership situated in American and other Anglophonic contexts, there remains scant literature focusing specifically on the strategies employed by women in developing countries to overcome cultural and ethnic-related barriers or obstacles involved in school leadership, and the critical influence and delimitations of these women leaders on education and society. In addition, many authors are exploring Indigenous women’s educational leadership (Clark et al., 2021; Wilkinson et al., 2021). Readers, educators, and scholars might relate to one or all of the women leaders highlighted in this book, or the book might trigger the acknowledgment of the contribution of women leadership practices around you, but what’s equally significant is the impact of this book in terms of galvanizing versatile paths to further initiate and create systemic changes for women leaders who advocate for social activism and collective well-being. In fact, the book emphasizes the need to adopt a more holistic, ecological perspective in the study of gender and educational leadership, in different cultural, political, and governance structures, especially in the current time of multifaceted global crisis including political crisis, health crisis, waves of migrants and refugees, and the state of racism, all of which impose huge challenges on women, children, and underprivileged people facing neoliberal regimes and hegemony (Pak & Ravitch, 2021, p. xi). We need more critical, insightful, and engaged perspectives to analyze the women leadership in turbulent realities caused by current and impending crises. A cross-sectional understanding of these models bears in mind how educational leader ontology and epistemology can foster relational and relevant education leadership contributing to whole-child growth, community cohesion, and development. In sum, as arising from the book’s insights, this book enables researchers to devise new research purposes and questions in a wide variety of sociocultural contexts in understanding women’s leadership and agency. Furthermore, scholars may want to consider using the chapters presented to study women’s leadership in navigating ecosystems in times of global crisis and uncertainty. Likewise, diversification of our knowledge about women in leadership positions in different cultures and communities is enriched by researchers coming into their studies with a much broader repertoire of epistemologies, conceptual frameworks, and methodologies (Capper, 2019; Courtney et al., 2021). This book, though, contributes to the diversification of the field's knowledge production and encourages researchers to adopt a critical lens and new methodologies aiming at deeper understanding and thinking going forward in both understanding and interrupting educational leadership scholarship, policy, and practice.

Women’s educational leadership  131

References Arar, K. (2018). The challenges involved when Aran women forge a path to educational leadership: Context, personal cost, and coping. Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 47, 1–17. Arar, K., Guajardo, M., & Bogotch, I. (forthcoming). The “beyond” spaces of social justice leadership. In P. Woods, A. Roberts, M. Tian, & H. Young (Eds.), Handbook of Leadership in Education. New York: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Capper, C. A. (2019). Organizational Theory for Equity and Diversity – Leading Integrated Socially Just Education. London: Routledge. Clark, T., Dodson, S., Guivarra, N., & Widders Hunt, Y. (2021). “We’re not treated equally as Indigenous people or as women”: The perspectives and experiences of Indigenous women in Australian public relations. Public Relations Inquiry, 10(2), 163–183. Courtney, S., Gunter, H., Niesch, R., & Trujilio, T. (2021). Understanding Educational Leadership: Critical Perspectives and Approaches. London: Bloomsbury. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: MacMillan. Fuller, K. (2022). Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary Educational Leadership. London: Routledge. Pak, K., & Ravitch, M. S. (2021). Leadership in a hurting world—Rupture, reckoning, and reimagining. In K. Pak & S. M. Ravitch (Eds.), Critical Leadership Praxis for Educational and Social Change (pp. xi–xiv). New York: Teachers College Press. Showunmi, V., & Tomlin, C. (2022). Understanding and Managing Sophisticated and Everyday Racism: Implications for Education and Work. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield. Wilkinson, J., Purvee, A., & MacDonald, K. (2021). Gender and educational leadership. In S. J. Courtney, H. M. Gunter, R. Niesche, & T. Trujillo (Eds.), Understanding Educational Leadership: Critical Perspectives and Approaches (1st ed., pp. 255–268). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Index

Abu-Rabia-Queder, S. 25 Al-Hussein, E. B. 25, 76 Al-Mashhandany, A. A. 60 Altengi, M. 114 American Community School (ACS) 8, 96 April, K. A. 112 Arar, K. 7, 25, 32, 43, 52n1, 61, 76, 77, 113, 115 Asher, S. R. 22 Audousset-Coulier, S. 23 Azaiza, F. 25, 32 Azaola, C. 76 Banks, J. A. 28 Bansel, P. 27 Bauman, Z. 28 Beatty, B. 59 Bernay, T. 111, 112 Berry, B. 101, 102 Best, S. 28 Beycioglu, K. 60 Bhabha, H. 26 Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) 110 Blackmore, J. 1, 3 Blaik Hourani, Rida 55, 56, 60, 118 Brinkerhoff, M. 58, 60 Brion, Corinne 11–12 Bronfenbrenner, U. 118, 119 Brookfield, S. D. 58 Brooks, J. S. 40 Brown, L. M. 13 Brunner, C. 3, 4, 41 building human capacities 61–64; community builders see community builders; government and private institutional levels 64–66; policy initiator 66–67

Cantor, D. W. 111, 112 Cardella, G. M. 96, 99 CARE see Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Champagne, F. A. 22 Clark-Louque, A. R. 79 Coleman, M. 32, 42 collective responsibility 79–80 community builders: ethnic coexistence and social cohesion 68–69; governmental system 67–68 community equity literacy (CEL) 79 community-focused leadership 79–80 community learning exchange (CLE) 29, 113 Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) 8, 11 connectedness 31, 47, 79–80 conspiracy of silence 3 Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) 16, 31, 97 Cranton, P. 118 cult of the guru 103 Cultural Imperialism 28–29 Danoff-Burg, S. 22 Dantley, M. 118 Davies, B. 27 Devidal, P. 27 DeVita, M. C. 95 Dick, L. K. 102 Dollarhide, C. T. 116 Duke, K. 59 Dychtwald, M. 25 Earley, P. 77 educational entrepreneurism 97–99 educational psychology 14, 16, 50, 66 EET see entrepreneurship education and training

Index  133 entrepreneurship education and training (EET) 99 equity with dignity 129 Esteban-Guitart, M. 22 Eurocentric epistemology 128 Europe 129–130 Fabionar, J. O. 5 feminism 3, 100, 127–128 Fitzgerald, T. 23, 26 Forrester, G. 40 Franks, B. 22 Fullan, M. 58, 59, 119 Fuller, K. 26 Furman, G. 117 Garratt, D. 40 GCC see Gulf Cooperation Council gender-based discrimination 75 Gender Innovation Lab 94 Ghana Education Service (GES) 87 Ghanaian Early Childhood Association (GECA) 84 Ghanaian National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) 84 Gilat, I. 21 Gilligan, C. 13 Giroux, H. 28 Green, D. 21 Green, T. L. 79 Greyling, S. C. M. 76, 78 Grogan, M. 3–5, 22, 25, 42, 43, 47, 57 Guajardo, F. J. 29, 112, 113 Guajardo, M. A. 29, 112, 113 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) 30 Gunter, H. 98 Gurr, D. 58 Gyimah, K. 76 Hallinger, P. 59, 60 Hamilton, H. 58 Hargreaves, A. 59 Harris, A. 58, 59 Hawari, G. 114 Heck, R. 59, 60 Henry, E. 23, 23 Hernández-Sánchez, B. R. 96, 99 Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. 32 Higgins, E. T. 22 Higham, R. 119 Hofstede, G. 80, 81 Hollweck, Trista 10–11 Holzer, A. 60 Hopkins, D. 119

Hourani, Rida Blaik 8–10 Hughes-Hassell, S. 28 Hutton, D. 113 Ibrahim, A. M. M. 60 individualism versus collectivism (IDV) 80, 84–86 indulgence versus restraint (IND) 80 Islamic feminism 3 Jankowski, K. 22 Janson, C. 29, 112 Jones, M. S. 59 Journal of Professional Capital and Community (JPCC) 8 Kania, J. 58 Keller, D. 77 Khan, S. 31 Klenke, K. 25 Komives, S. R. 22 Kuenkel, P. 58 Kupferberg, I. 21 Lahmar, F. 61 Laloux, F. 59 Larson, C. 25 Leithwood, K. 59, 60 Litz, D. 118 Longerbeam, S. 22 long-term orientation versus short-term normative orientation (LTO) 80 Lopez, A. E. 110, 116 Lumby, J. 76 Mahfouz, J. 61, 113 Mainella, F. C. 22 Mangen, C. 23 Mansfield, K. 41 masculinity 2, 24, 80, 86 masculinity versus femininity (MAS) 80, 86–87 McDonald, K. L. 22 Meehan, D. 59 MENA 3, 6, 8, 14, 76–78, 129–130 Mestry, R. 75 Miles, M. 40 Militello, M. 29, 112 Miller, P. 97, 98, 113 Minkov, M. 81 Moghadam, V. 25 Naidoo, B. 77 neoliberalism 21

134 Index Newcomb, W. S. 5 Next Step 64 North, A. 1, 26 OECD see Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development O’Neill, C. 58, 60 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 95 Örücü, D. 61, 113 Osteen, L. 22 Out of Place 27 Owen, J. E. 22 Parkman, S. 118 Pashiardis, P. 60 Patti, J. 60 Perumal, J. 77 political-social-economic context 5 Poon, A. 22 power distance index (PDI) 80–84 Preskil, S. 58 Primecz, H. 12 Pringle, J. 23, 23 private sphere 5–6, 94 public sphere 1, 5–6, 12, 93, 116, 127 RASPPA see relationships, assets, stories, place, politic, and action Reinelt, C. 59 relationships, assets, stories, place, politic, and action (RASPPA) 29 Robles, L. 98 Rodriguez, G. M. 5 Romani, L. 12 Rosener, J. B. 77 Sackmann, S. 12 Sadeghi, S. 31 Said, E. 28 Sánchez García, J. C. 96, 99 Sánchez-Núñez, M. 60 Sawalhi, R. 7–8, 114 Sawyer, A. G. 102 Schaefer, K. 58 Schmidt, M. 75 Schörger, C. 113 Segkulu, L. 76 Senge, P. 58 Shakeshaft, C. 3, 5, 22, 42, 43, 47, 57 Shapira, T. 25, 32 Shields, C. M. 116, 117, 118 Siba, E. 94

social entrepreneurship: rise of 101–102; women leaders 103–105 social justice (SJ): a call for systemic transformation 47–51; educational leadership and 41; principles 40; socio-educational fight against the conventions 44–47; systemic transformation 47–51; tracking social justice trajectories 43–44; types of 40–41; women leaders 41–43 Sperandio, J. 97, 98 Stake, R. 12 Starratt, R. J. 117 Steyn, G. M. 76, 78 Stringer, P. 55, 56, 60 Stripling, B. 28 Sun, J. 59, 60 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 12, 75, 129 Sutherland, P. 102 systems-change approach 65 Takahashi, H. 22 teacherpreneurs 101–102 Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) 102 third Muslim feminist wave 41 third world 127–128 Toh, Y. 118 Torrance, D. 25 TpT see Teachers Pay Teachers uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) 80, 87–88 UNDP see United Nations Development Porgramme UN Economic and Social Council 75 UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 99 UNESCO see UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UNHCR see UN High Commissioner for refugees UN High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) 24 UNICEF see United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 64 United Nations Development Porgramme (UNDP) 64 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 75 Unterhalter, E. 1, 26, 27

Index  135 Van Oord, L. 117 Wakahiu, J. 77 Weindling, D. 77 #WELRead 8, 11 Welton, A. 5 Wilkinson, J. 61 Womanhood 22 women: building capacities see building human capacities; collective leadership 55, 56, 58, 58–59; as community builders 67–69; community transformation 60; constraints and challenges 69–71; constraints faces 61; cultural challenges faced by 76; deconstruction and amelioration 60; distinctive space 27–29; education 26–27; as educational leaders 76–77; and educational leadership 4–6, 13–17, 21, 77–78; educational leadership and management posts 3; educational policies 66–67; identity and self-exploration 22; leaders and displacement 24–25; leadership efforts 3; leadership identity 22–23, 23; leadership practise at home 32– 34; motherhood 32–34; opportunities 59–57; people’s transition front 59; profiles of 2; self-empowerment and expanding empowerment 31–32; selfexploration, and empowerment 29– 31, 129–130; social and employment mobility 1; trilogy 61; voices of 81–88

WomenED 106 women’s educational leadership 93–94, 110, 111; and agency 130; Anglo-phonic and developing societies 127; collective leadership 105– 106; ecological leadership 116–120; educational entrepreneurism 97–99; educational entrepreneurship 96–97; entrepreneurial skill and practices 94–96; entrepreneurship education 99; equity with dignity 129; Eurocentric waves of feminism 127; higher education 99–101; management positions 130; mentoring 115–116; model for 111–113; role modeling 115; roles and achievements 128– 129; self-empowerment 113– 115; social entrepreneurship see social entrepreneurship; Western feminism 128 women’s leadership empowerment model 120–123, 121 Woods, G. J. 98 Woods, P. A. 98 York-Barr, J. 59 Young, A. A. 116 Zárraga-Rodríguez, M. 98