Gender
leadership style:
the self-perceptions of secondary headteachers
Marianne Coleman
Institute of Education, University of London
T
he centrality of leadership in education is
reflected in current policy on the
development of levels of leadership in our
schools through national standards and the
opening of the National College for School Leadership.
Recent scholarship has focussed on transformational
leadership, on the establishment of a clear vision with
articulated values and the link between leading and
learning. Leithwood et al (1999) state that
transformational leadership is the style most likely to:
“help those in, and served by current and future schools,
respond productively to the significant challenges facing
them.” Day et al (2000) identify effective leaders as
being driven by values and as being “person-centred”.
Within this context, gender continues to impact as a
variable on management and leadership
The focus of leadership research and its relationship
to gender has often been on equal opportunities or on
the similarities or differences between men and women
as leaders (Davidson and Burke, 1994, 2000).
Feminist scholarship, for example Blackmore (1999),
on the subject of women and leadership has impacted
on management and leadership studies. However, in
most research or theorising about leadership and
management in education there has been a tendency
for gender to be an ‘add-on’, or marginalised.
Nevertheless, it has been argued that: “an
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&
understanding of the impact of gender on life in
schools and colleges is an essential component of our
ways of knowing about educational leadership.” (Hall,
1997). This belief, that gender is essential to
understanding leadership behaviour, underpins two
surveys and some of these results are discussed here.
The first survey was with female secondary
headteachers (Coleman, 2000, 2001) and the second
with a one in three sample of male headteachers in
England and Wales. The response rate for the women
was 70 per cent (n= 470) and for the men 60 per cent
(n= 412). The full findings are discussed elsewhere
(Coleman, 2002). As gender and leadership are the
focus of the surveys both men and women were asked
the same questions relating to career progress,
relationships between home, family and career and
their own expectations and experiences in becoming
and being a headteacher.The findings briefly discussed
here relate to only one aspect of the survey; the self-
perceptions of the female and male secondary school
headteachers of their own leadership and management
styles. Issues relating to family and home are not
considered in detail here although they do impact on
the ways in which the headteachers perceive themselves
and I briefly return to that in the concluding section.
The data are unusual in two ways. First, most
research on gender in educational management and
leadership has been qualitative, whereas the data
considered here are from a large-scale survey.There is
a significant body of qualitative research that has
focused on women and leadership in education, ➤
MiE, Vol 17 issue 1 29
 ➤ (Shakeshaft, 1989, Blackmore, 1989, 1999, Adler,
1993, Ouston, 1993, Ozga, 1993, Hall, 1996, Coleman,
2000). The use of a survey in relation to gender and
leadership is relatively unusual, and it is hoped that the
findings complement and contextualise the existing
body of qualitative research. Secondly, gender issues
are usually identified as women’s issues, but this survey,
focussing on leadership and gender, was carried out
with men as well as women.There is not much research
at present on how men actually manage and lead in
schools, although there is a growing interest in the
concept of masculinities (Mac an Ghaill, 1994,
more like those of a good manager than are men’s
stereotypic styles.” However, there is a danger of being
essentialist about women as leaders, and everyday
observation tells us both women and men actually lead
and manage using a range of styles. Some women
manage in an authoritarian style and some men in a
caring and nurturing way (Evetts, 1994, Gold, 1996,
Blackmore 1999).
Gray (1993) has used gender paradigms in the
professional development of headteachers of both
sexes. Without relating them to gender, his paradigms
were presented to the headteachers in my surveys who

There are stereotypes about how men and women in

management and leadership operate. Women are
thought to be caring, tolerant, emotional, intuitive,
gentle and predisposed towards collaboration,
empowerment and teamwork. Men are supposed to be
aggressive, assertive, analytical, decisive and more
inclined to act independently (Bem, 1974, Gray, 1993)
Collinson and Hearn, 2000), recognising that male were asked to identify which of the adjectives they
stereotypes of leadership can be just as inappropriate could apply to themselves as leaders and managers.
for many men as for women. Without wishing to fall into the essentialist trap, I
wanted to find out whether there was a tendency for
Stereotypes and ideals more women to operate within a feminine paradigm
There are stereotypes about how men and women in and more men within a masculine one.
management and leadership operate. Women are
thought to be caring, tolerant, emotional, intuitive,
Table 1
gentle and predisposed towards collaboration,
empowerment and teamwork. Men are supposed to be Gender Paradigms (Gray, 1993)
aggressive, assertive, analytical, decisive and more The nurturing/ The defensive/aggressive
inclined to act independently (Bem, 1974, Gray, 1993). feminine paradigm masculine paradigm
There are also firmly held cultural expectations that
“the manager is male” (Schein, 1994). These caring, highly regulated,
expectations are pervasive and have been identified as
held by most men and women of all ages in a range of creative, conformist,
international settings. It is only in some of the younger
women that there is some recognition that the more intuitive, normative,
feminine qualities are appropriate for leadership.
However, the preferred style of transformational aware of individual differences, competitive,
leadership which develops and motivates staff to share
a vision for the school owes much more to a feminine non-competitive, evaluative,
paradigm of management than a masculine one, whilst
tolerant, disciplined,
managerial leadership, focussing on the achievement of
tasks in a formal and hierarchical way is closer to the
subjective, objective,
masculine paradigm.
After conducting a meta-analysis of research,
informal. formal.
Shakeshaft (1989) was able to say that: “women’s
traditional and stereotypic styles of communication are

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Survey findings perceptions of women from men. There are great
When faced with this choice of adjectives that were similarities between the adjectives chosen most often by
either stereotypically ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, the both men and women headteachers. From the feminine
headteachers, both male and female, chose a range of paradigm, the women are slightly more likely to choose
adjectives to describe themselves that were ‘aware of individual differences’ and ‘non-competitive’,
predominantly ‘feminine’ but also included some ‘intuitive’ and ‘creative’. The men are more likely to
‘masculine’ ones. The prevailing model of management choose ‘caring’ and ‘tolerant’, two adjectives that are
that both sexes appear to identify is ‘androgynous’ in very much identified with the essentialist concept of the
that it cuts across both sets of gender stereotypes, but it idealised woman leader. In the masculine paradigm,
does favour the ‘feminine’. the men were slightly more likely than the women to
The outcomes show that the paradigms are not identify themselves as having ‘male’ qualities with the
particularly relevant in distinguishing the self- exception of the word ‘disciplined’. Overall there
appears to be a greater convergence by both men and
women towards the feminine paradigm, although some
Table 2
elements of the male paradigm still hold a little stronger
Qualities identified by for the men. There is a fairly clear rejection by most of
headteachers from the the respondents of the ‘feminine’ characteristics of
‘non-competitive’ and ‘subjective’ and the ‘masculine’
Gray (1993) paradigms characteristics of ‘formal’, highly regulated’,
‘conformist’ and ‘normative’.
% indicating that they felt they had the quality
The outcomes of this set of questions were validated
Female paradigm women men
by a further open-ended question. In the survey, as well
as being offered the adjectives in the paradigms, the
Aware of individual differences 86.0 84.0 headteachers were given a free choice of three adjectives
that they felt best described them as managers and
Caring 79.4 84.2 leaders. No guidance was given on the choice, to allow
them to provide unprompted responses. This led to
Intuitive 76.2 66.0 over 50% there being a very large range of adjectives. However,
of both the words were sorted into five themes to establish their
Tolerant 68.7 79.6 sexes perceptions of management and leadership styles that
they adopted.
Creative 63.0 54.1 There was little difference in the percentage of words in
each category chosen by men and women, the women
Informal 59.4 60.4 tended to be more likely to choose words relating to people
than the men, but were also more likely to choose words that
Non-competitive 21.5 17.0
chosen by
were defined as ‘autocratic’. For example, one woman head
a minority styled herself:“bloody-minded, belligerent and aggressive”.
Subjective 13.8 13.3 The men were slightly more likely to choose words that ➤

Male paradigm Table 3

Evaluative 61.1 70.0

Styles of leadership and management
identified by choice of adjectives
Disciplined 60.4 51.0 over 50%
Women Men
of both
No. of words % of total No. of words % of total
Competitive 50.6 57.3 sexes

Collaborative 458 38.5 401 40.0

Objective 50.6 61.7

People-oriented 283 23.8 212 21.3

Formal 14.9 18.2

Autocratic/directive 177 14.9 119 11.9

Highly regulated 13.2 11.4
chosen by
a minority Efficient 139 11.6 126 12.7
Conformist 10.9 13.6

Values 132 11.1 138 13.9

Normative 4.0 7.0
(Coleman, 2002)

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 ➤ related to collaboration, efficiency and values. Collaboration
is more often associated with women and feminine
management styles, although efficiency would be identified
with the more ‘masculine’ managerial stance.
The single most popular group of words for both men
and women was the one termed collaborative and the second
most popular was the potentially overlapping ‘people-
oriented’ style. These two broad categories give a clear
indication of a favoured style of management for both men
and women.This is similar for both and aligns more with the
participative and possibly even the transformational styles of
Leithwood et al (1999). However, observation and
triangulation of data would be necessary in order to establish
this more clearly.A survey can only give a superficial idea of
how people manage and this survey has only asked the
headteachers themselves for their own perceptions.
The outcomes of the two sets of questions, one based on
the Gray paradigms and the other on a free choice of
adjectives, indicate that most men and women
headteachers see themselves as operating in similar and
mainly ‘feminine’ ways.When the groups of adjectives were
analysed together rather than looking at each adjective
separately, there was a range of styles, with the majority of
up to 80 per cent of both men and women identifying
themselves as collaborative and people-centred. However,
there was a minority that go against the normatively
preferred trend and see themselves as autocratic and/or
managerial. Within this minority of about 20 per cent there
were slightly more women than men and more of these are
women aged 50 or over. This style is more easily identified
with the ‘masculine’ stereotype of management, which
focuses on direction, targets and efficiency rather than
collaboration, empowerment and caring. The age
differential in the women was statistically significant but age
was not a differentiating factor among the men. The
perceptions of a group of women over 50 identify them as
significantly more likely to operate in an autocratic and
directive manner than any other group of headteachers, but
they were still a small minority overall.
Conclusions
The survey shows that the perceptions of men and
women headteachers about their own management and
leadership style are similar and that their self perception
of style is more likely to be ‘feminine’ than masculine’.
There does not seem to be a strong case for the
identification of women headteachers with a feminine
style and men headteachers with a masculine style.This
raises a number of issues, some of which could form the
basis for further qualitative research:
At a time when transformational and participative
leadership are normatively preferred, it is possible that
both men and women are consciously adopting these
styles or claiming to adopt them.
As the idea that “the manager is male” is still prevalent,
the adoption of ‘feminine’ and approved styles of
management by men as well as women is likely to help
32 MiE, Vol 17 issue 1 Downloaded from mie.sagepub.com at University of Victoria on June 5, 2015
perpetuate male dominance of leadership roles.
It is possible that leaders in education and in the public
sector generally are more likely to operate as ‘people
orientated’ compared to leaders and managers in the
private sector, but the evidence on this is inconclusive. The
work of Jirasinghe and Lyons (1996) indicates that male
and female headteachers are more alike than male and
female managers in general. However, a study of
managers (Charlesworth, 1997) which asked respondents
to choose from 11 adjectives the ones that described their
own management style, found the single most popular
adjective was ‘participative’, chosen by over 60 per cent of
the women and 50 per cent of the men.
The relationship between age, gender and leadership
style is unclear. The identification of more ‘masculine’
values by a significant number of older women could
indicate that they have changed as they got older, or that
they had to adopt what were perceived as the correct
attributes for leadership at a time when women were
discriminated against more overtly.
The survey reports self-perception, and although the
headteachers were also asked about practical aspects of
the ways in which they lead their schools, there is no
indication of how far their views of their own leadership
would be shared by others and further research in this
area would be helpful.
Although there is overall similarity between the men
and the women in the preference for a ‘feminine’ style,
there are still differences between the male and female
responses, which could be analysed much further and in
more depth through qualitative research.
This survey has indicated that the majority of both men
and women headteachers are aspiring to a style of
leadership that is collaborative, caring and people-oriented
and that the ‘macho’ gender stereotype that is associated
with men as leaders is not the way that most men actually
see themselves. However, to return to the impact of gender
on leadership, the similarities in the perceptions of men and
women of their own, and presumably preferred,
management style does not indicate that their experience
of headship is also similar. The basic and pervasive
stereotype which identifies management and leadership
with maleness, and the archetypal view of women as caring,
nurturing and collaborative, confers an automatic status on
both men and women which privileges the men. Findings
from other parts of the survey throw light on the experience
of headship. Over two thirds of the women headteachers
in the survey reported instances of sexism associated with
promotion and appointment. As headteachers they often
felt isolated, since women are generally not expected to be
in the leadership role.They also felt that, as women, they
had to prove themselves as leaders and that they had to be
better than a man in order to become a headteacher. As
marriage partners and parents there were tremendous
differences between the men and the women headteachers
in relation to the incidence of marriage and parenthood,
who bore the weight of domestic responsibilities and the
prevalence of divorce. In a culture that tends to expect that
managers are men, the social experience of being a
headteacher is felt very differently by women and men and
this must impact on the professional identity and the mode
of operation of both men and women heads. MiE

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