Kansas Female Superintendents: Historic Barriers and Prospects for the Future

Abstract

Although women have dominated the public education workforce, limited access to senior leadership remains evident. In Kansas, over 78 percent of teachers are women, but less than 15 percent of women serve as school district superintendents. There is a disproportionately smaller representation of women achieving the superintendency in the state of Kansas. Furthermore, the number of women occupying the superintendent position continues to be less than the national norm of 25 percent. The purpose of this study was to investigate, through the lived experiences of ten female education leaders in Kansas, their career aspirations, barriers, and challenges to reaching the top district administration level, the superintendency. This study sought to elaborate on and provide a critique of how scholars traditionally conceptualized the experiences of women and to describe possible connections related to the disproportionately smaller representation of females, including the intersectionality of gender, social norms, race, and opportunity, found within the school superintendent position. To this end, the research questions are as follows: 1. How does the number of female educational leaders who aspire to the superintendency relate to the total number of superintendents? 2. What perceived (or real) barriers exist that discourage or inhibit female educational leaders from pursuing superintendency positions (e.g., age, family status, years of experiences, school district type, size, community type, degree attainment, initial interest, race, social norms, gender identities, encouragement)? 3. How does the number of female second-tier district administrators relate to the number of female superintendents? What factors may encourage females to remain in second-tier district administrator positions rather than pursuing the superintendency? The research questions are addressed through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with principals, mid-level district administrators, and superintendents in the state of Kansas. Furthermore, a qualitative research design was most suitable to examine and understand the female leaders’ personal reflections of experiences and opportunities, as well as the meaning that they derived through those experiences from their perspectives. Themes were developed inductively using categorical content analysis to focus on specific content themes within the narrative. As evidenced by the literature, it was critical to investigate the progression of leadership development to identify and develop future female leaders in education. The findings indicate there are few women who initially aspire to the superintendency position. Furthermore, women are beginning to overcome some of the barriers; however, many of these barriers persist today. This inquiry is important because it allows us to examine the barriers within the superintendency in order to provide a new perspective to the body of literature that has historically been grounded in almost exclusively white, male, and heterosexist epistemologies. Future research might include a more statistical approach to assessing the rate of career aspiration, as well as methods to overcome the barriers rather than navigate them.