Leadership Research Summary:
• This study explores the metaphors and images used by different generations of women to describe women’s leadership in higher education (HE) and the impact these perceptions have on their careers and career ambitions. It also explores how such metaphors and images can position them as “other,” silence their voices in the dominant masculinist discourse, and marginalize them. The emphasis in the gender and higher education literature has been on identifying the barriers that impede women’s progress in academic organizations, including images of continuing hegemonic masculine leadership, and their promotion to leadership positions. These models position women leaders who are assertive as troublemakers, and women as “the problem” either because of their attitudes or perceived domestic and family responsibilities. And while women leaders are often not gender conscious, they are frequently doing gender in their senior roles.
• The metaphors and images that portray women’s leadership are often of hidden work, supporting more senior males, or “ivory basement” leadership. Combined, they suggest a deficit model that positions women as lacking for top jobs, and institutions therefore needing to “fix the women” generally through leadership development programmes, sponsorship and mentoring. The article examines the metaphors and images used to describe women’s leadership across two generations. Older women often saw their leadership as conforming to male leadership models, as fitting in, and not challenging or unsettling their male colleagues. However, a younger generation of leaders or prospective leaders had a very different set of metaphors for their leadership. They saw themselves as unsupported by what they described as the current mediocre, institutional leaders, weighed down by inexorable organizational restructure, and merely in survival mode. Hence, they refused to accept the masculinist leadership model which they perceived as ineffectual, outdated and not meeting their needs.
• The study suggests that the prevailing culture in higher education leadership and the metaphors and images used to describe successful leadership narrows the options for women leaders. While older women were prepared to accept current masculinist leadership, younger women had contempt for the way it marginalized them while at the same time encouraging them to lift their game and had a different set of metaphors and images to portray what successful leadership should look like.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
• The narrative for older women provides us with images about conforming to masculinist leadership, of fitting in, and not challenging or unsettling their male colleagues. Time and again the women VCs talked about their experiences of fitting in to dominant masculine leadership styles both in order to get on and to survive once promoted. The ongoing energy required to achieve some membership status of belonging to COP of masculinities suggested that alternative (other) leadership was not necessarily supported or encouraged. At the same time their pervading tone in the images and metaphors used was that they rarely openly challenged the masculinist culture. Several rejected any responsibility for women coming through by adamantly denying their role as “gender politicians”. The precarious nature of their success is reflected in the metaphors they used such as needing to stay under the radar regarding such controversial issues, that they were merely practicing legitimate peripheral participation, in other words. One or two women used the metaphor of being much more comfortable “in their own skin” once they had made it to the top and even changed how they dressed to reflect their femininity, gaining confidence to abandon the dark suited uniform expected by COP of masculinities.
• Most worrying is our observation about the images these women used to describe how they needed to work hard at navigating and negotiating gendered leadership cultures in order to perform acceptable leadership, because men in these positions defended their entitlement and privilege (Fox, 2017). This image of conformity as the price of success was stark. Moreover, they were not resentful about this extra emotional labor required, which their male peers (generally) avoided. Almost without exception these womens’ images were about discrimination as a woman in a man’s world. Interestingly these stories often emerged following them saying something like “I’ve never really had a problem but…” as though they had normalized misogynist cultures and that the metaphor they often used of needing to fit in was part and parcel of getting on. Some even adopted a “maggie thatcher” leadership image, being more masculinist than many of their male peers. They wanted to be seen not just as good as the men at their own (leadership) game but better, whatever the personal cost, which included (more often than not) broken relationships and childless lives.
• Often both the older and younger women provided images of higher education leadership COP of femininities which offered a different model of leadership and therefore represented more effective leadership communities. They described femininities leadership culture as “feels very different,” “leadership is very different as a female,” “it was a lot different,” “very noticeably different,” “women manage and lead differently,” and “so totally different.” Their conversations about the relative merits of both femininities and masculinities leadership strongly favored the former as more productive. These women were praising the incisiveness of femininities leadership which may not previously have been in the metaphoric “calculus of interests” of the hegemonic masculinities culture of HE. Until very recently HE has been a “default man” society, a term coined by the artist and social commentator Perry about wider society (2014). By default, the images and metaphors defining HE masculinities and masculinist leadership cultures have remained powerful, rejecting alternatives which could compromise their vested interests.
• These vested interests cultivate modern “microaggressions” which mask sexism (and racism) and which are “more likely to be expressed as covert, indirect and more ambiguous thus creating challenges in identifying and acknowledging its occurrence (Holder et al., 2015). That both generations of women experienced and enjoyed the leadership alternatives (described by more comfortable metaphors and images) as more inclusive, effective and transformational is encouraging. While feminists are accused of threatening this status quo, both the older and younger women in this study demonstrate that alternative and more fluid metaphors and images of feminine leadership are evident across the generations.