Emal 3

Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 36, No. 1 (February 2000) 44-75

Educational Administration Quarterly
Skrla et al. / WOMEN SUPERINTENDENTS SPEAK
Sexism, Silence, and Solutions: Women

Superintendents Speak Up and Speak Out
Linda Skrla
Pedro Reyes
James Joseph Scheurich
Women as a group continue to be underrepresented in the ranks of American public

school superintendents. Since the mid-1970s, researchers have attempted to account for
the continued domination of the public school superintendency by men, but even in
research that has moved beyond traditional paradigms, barriers to gaining insight into
women superintendents’ experiences from their own viewpoints have persisted. The
qualitative case study on which this article is based was designed to break down some of
those barriers by using a participatory research design that included the women partici-
pants’ own analyses of their experiences and that explored their proposed solutions for
the problems surrounding their inequitable treatment. The authors discuss three interre-
lated parts of the study results—the sexism that is part of the culture of the superinten-
dency, the silence of the educational administration profession about women superinten-
dents’discriminatory experiences, and the study participants’proposed solutions for the
problems of sexism and silence.
Until we have . . . a literature from the silenced, we will probably not

have a full critique of the social order from their perspectives. Nor will
we have their proposed solutions, or the means of sharing their daily
worlds.
—Lincoln (1993, p. 44)
The development of an activist discourse among female public school

superintendents depends on structural conditions and discursive possibilities
that do not exist in these women’s professional lives (Chase, 1995). For
example, Susan Chase reported that the women she and Colleen Bell inter-
viewed for their study of the work lives of women superintendents had
© 2000 The University Council for Educational Administration
44
Skrla et al. / WOMEN SUPERINTENDENTS SPEAK 45
difficulty integrating talk about their individual struggles for equality with
their narratives about professional work. Chase attributed this “discursive
disjunction” for her participants to the ideological character of conventional
practices in educational administration. That is, in a profession in which men
and masculinity set the standards for what is valued, women superintendents,
visible and isolated members of an underrepresented minority group, are
pressured to “de-feminize,” or disaffiliate from other women, in order to
prove themselves as professionals (Bell, 1995). This disaffiliation inhibits
the development of pro-equity discourse. In other words, because the femi-
nist discourse of social change continues to receive a hostile hearing in the
world of educational administration (Chase, 1995), women superintendents
who want to succeed stay silent about systemic problems of inequality.
Parallel to the silence that exists at the individual level for women superin-
tendents is the larger silence of the educational administration profession
about the discrimination these women face. Other researchers (e.g., Ander-
son, 1990; Chase & Bell, 1994; Gosetti & Rusch, 1995; Marshall, 1993;
Reyes, 1994; Rizvi, 1993) have criticized educational administration for its
disinterest in examining and challenging inequalities within the profession,
even though the numbers alone tell the story of the particular inequality rep-
resented by women in the superintendency. The percentage of American
school superintendents who were women in 1992 was 6.6 (Glass, 1992), a
figure virtually unchanged from 6.7% 40 years earlier. One might think such
numbers would spark more interest and create some of the discussion sug-
gested by Chase (1995)—not only because of the inequitable treatment of the
women themselves but because of the connections of this treatment with the
discrimination faced by others in schools. Furthermore, nearly three fourths
(74.4%) of the educational workforce is female (National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics [NCES], 1997, p. 79), yet women as a group continue to be
underrepresented in the ranks of superintendents.
These issues that shape women’s experiences in the public school superin-
tendency are important to us as researchers. We are interested in piercing the
silence at both the individual and professional level that surrounds women in
the superintendency and in promoting a pro-equity discourse about and
among female school leaders. The research discussed in this article was
designed, thus, to advance the conversation in a space that has been filled by
silence—silence that has been interrupted only sporadically by the muffled
voices described by Chase (1995). We sought to create a context in which
women who have been superintendents might move toward integrating talk
of their professional roles with activist discourse about inequality and sex-
ism. Furthermore, we sought to research these women’s experiences in a par-
ticipatory way that might move us all beyond an entirely researcher-
46 Educational Administration Quarterly
constructed view of what was going on in our participants’ lives, that is, to
include the women’s own analyses of their experiences and, perhaps most
important, explore their own proposed solutions (Lincoln, 1993) for the
problem of the silence surrounding their inequitable treatment.
We emphasize here the importance and interrelatedness of these two
issues—the critical need to hear and pay attention to the voices of women
superintendents in the field and the necessity of using empathetic and partici-
patory research methods to move toward a better understanding of these
women’s experiences. The U.S. public school superintendency continues to
be the most gender-stratified executive position in the country (Björk, 1999),
with men 40 times more likely to advance from teaching to the top leadership
role in schools than are women (Skrla, 1999); therefore, it should be clearly
evident that research-based understanding of this inequitable situation from
the perspectives of the relatively few women who inhabit the role is needed.
It should also be evident from the results of past research that different
and more participant-sensitive methods than educational administration
researchers have used in the past will be required to create contexts in which
these women feel free enough to be able to talk about the full range of their
experiences, including their experiences with sexism and discriminatory
treatment.
Thus, what is presented here is a discussion of both our method and our
findings on three interrelated topics that emerged from our research inter-
views with women who had been superintendents—the sexism our partici-
pants experienced in their professional roles, the silence we identified earlier,
and our participants’ proposed solutions for the problems of sexism and
silence. In our view, neither the methodology nor the findings can be fully
understood without the other. That is, the particular methodology we used
created the context in which our findings were possible. We begin with two
introductory sections that discuss the study background and research design.
These are followed by a results section that is divided into three parts. First,
we discuss the sexism that, in our participants’ views, permeates the culture
of the superintendency. Next, the women superintendents’ views on the
silence of the profession concerning their discriminatory treatment, includ-
ing their own individual roles in the maintenance of that silence, are dis-
cussed. The third part of the discussion of our results contains the women’s
proposed solutions to the problems of sexism in the superintendency and the
silence maintained by educational administration on what happens to women
who are superintendents. The final section of the article contains a discussion
of the results and concluding comments.
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The American public school superintendency is a career field dominated

by men, a situation that has persisted virtually unchanged for the past 100
years (Blount, 1998; Glass, 1992; Shakeshaft, 1987). Other traditionally
male occupations in which women comprise only 35% of the labor force have
become “feminized” by increasing (though still unrepresentative) percent-
ages of women in upper management (Tannen, 1994; Weis, 1997). In con-
trast, public schools, with a 74% female workforce (NCES, 1997), continue
to have fewer than 7% women superintendents (Glass, 1992). In short, in
public schools, women teach, men manage (Pigford & Tonnsen, 1993).
Since the mid-1970s, researchers have attempted to account for the con-
tinued domination of the public school superintendency by men, and a vari-
ety of theories have been developed to explain the phenomenon. Several
researchers have examined themes and have developed categories for the
existing knowledge base about women school administrators (see, e.g.,
Adkinson, 1981; Banks, 1995; Bell & Chase, 1993; Estler, 1975; Lynch,
1990; Shakeshaft, 1987). There are commonalties among the taxonomies
developed by these researchers, including general agreement on sociocul-
tural (i.e., sex-role stereotyping, gender bias, and discrimination) and struc-
tural (i.e., informal power structures, networking, and mentoring) categories
of theories. However, all of these theories have, in our view, offered incom-
plete explanations for the continued underrepresentation of women in the
public school superintendency.
During the past 10 years, feminist researchers in educational administra-
tion (e.g., Bell, 1988; Blackmore, 1989; Blount, 1995, 1998; Brunner, 1994,
1997, 1998a, 1998b; Chase, 1995; Chase & Bell, 1994; Grogan, 1996, 1998;
Marshall, 1993, 1997; Shakeshaft, 1987), and others who would not neces-
sarily identify themselves as feminist (e.g., Anderson, 1990; Scheurich,
1995a), have called for research on women’s experiences in the public school
administration, including the superintendency, to include the perspectives of
the women themselves. These researchers have sharply criticized the knowl-
edge base in educational administration about women administrators for its
biases. Empirical studies that have presented the underrepresentative num-
bers of women holding the position of superintendent as neutral assessments
of truth, traditional theoretical lenses that have located the problems within
the women themselves, and samples and attitudes that have been biased in
favor of men have been identified as contributing to the production of a
knowledge base that has left us wondering “what women’s ambitions and
perspectives are, how women perceive and experience their work, and how
women think about their colleagues” (Bell, 1988, p. 35).
Recently, studies designed to move beyond traditional paradigms to reach
more informed understandings about women’s work lives as superintendents
have begun to appear in the literature (e.g., Beekley, 1994; Bell, 1995; Bell &
Chase, 1993; Brunner, 1994, 1997, 1998b; Chase, 1995; Grogan, 1996;
Skrla, 1998; Tallerico & Burstyn, 1996; Tallerico, Burstyn, & Poole, 1993). It
should not be surprising, however, that additional barriers to gaining insight
to women superintendents’ experiences from their own viewpoints have
emerged in these studies. As noted in the introduction to this article, Chase
(1995) found a discursive disjunction that occurred in her conversations with
the female superintendents who were participants in her study. The partici-
pants spoke freely on topics related to job performance, but the conversations
became strained when the topics were related to gender. “A disjunction
between taken-for-granted, gender and race-neutral discourse about profes-
sional work and contentious, gendered, and radicalized discourse about
inequality . . . shapes how women superintendents talk about their experi-
ences” (p. xi). Similarly, Beekley (1994), in her study of women’s exits from
the superintendency, commented on a notable reluctance on the part of her
participants to openly discuss issues explicitly related to gender.
Why did these women fail to acknowledge the prejudice and discrimination
they experienced? They really did not talk at length about the problem. Was it
because they just accepted it as part of the job, or were they so accustomed to it
they didn’t find it unusual? Did they ignore it as a way of managing the work
they had to do? Is it not socially acceptable to talk about it? (p. 149)
This apparent avoidance of, or discomfort with, discussion of gender

issues in the superintendency experience has been attributed by other re-
searchers to lessons women superintendents learn from the male-constructed
culture of the superintendency—that they are out of place and should keep
quiet (West & Zimmerman, 1991). In fact, Marshall (1993) found that
women administrators “learned to downplay isolation and sexism. . . . They
must not make trouble. They learned to deny the differences” (p. 173). Ac-
cording to Schmuck and Schubert (1995), women administrators see their
experiences as individual and fail to comprehend how gender serves as a
segregating factor in the culture of public schools. Smulyan (in press) de-
scribed her experience with this phenomenon in interviewing women school
administrators.
Each of the women tended . . . to examine her own life and job from an individ-
ual perspective that rarely included gender as a theoretical or political lens. . . .
Even when [the participants] did see and describe issues of gender in their
lives and work, they preferred not to credit gender with much influence and not
to recognize it as a system for explaining their own and others’ experience. Ac-
knowledging the role of gender in one’s life seemed to suggest an inability to
function as a legitimate leader in the given structure of schools, an inability to
control her own life and work. As I listened to their stories I heard a tension be-
tween [their] descriptions of their experiences in the world as women and their
ability and willingness to explore the implications of those experiences.
Rizvi (1993) characterized this problem as the maintenance of a myth of neu-

trality that keeps most administrators from confronting issues of sexism.
Other theorists (e.g., Anderson, 1990; Hyle, 1991) have identified discrimi-
natory social constructions in the culture of educational administration that
make certain questions unaskable and certain phenomena unobservable.
STUDY DESIGN
These and other researchers’ conclusions on the suppression of activist

1
discourse about gender, sexism, and discrimination in the superintendency
served as a starting point for the design of the qualitative case study research
on which this article is based and, ultimately, shaped the research in two im-
portant ways. First, we saw a need for additional research on the sexism and
discriminatory treatment that women school superintendents experience.
These are important issues for the educational administration profession.
Previous studies guided by traditional paradigms and using traditional meth-
ods (whether quantitative or qualitative) left much about these issues in
women superintendents’work lives unexplored and unexplained. Second, we
felt that a research design that departed in significant ways from previous
work with women superintendents would be necessary in order to reach a
more informed understanding of women’s perceptions of these issues. In
other words, we saw the research design, the participants, the researchers,
and the results of the research as inextricably intertwined. Lincoln (1993)
pointed out the significance of such a view of research.
Social science could re-create itself in ways which are simultaneously critical
of the status quo and multivocal. In the first instance, I intend to imply that an
emergent social science might shed its seeming ahistoricity and presumed ob-
jectivity in favor of the commitment to change, empowerment, and social
transformation. In the latter instance, I mean to suggest the creation of narra-

tives in multiple forms with multiple voices represented. . . . [This] suggests
that the roles of the researcher, researched, and text will change radically.
(p. 31)
In keeping with this view of interrelatedness among the researchers, the study
design, and the results, we explain the methodology for the study in a fairly
detailed way below.
Research Questions
In her 1988 critique of research on women in the superintendency, Bell

pointed out that of the studies she reviewed for her research “none attempted
to describe and understand the experience of women superintendents from
the perspective of the women themselves” (p. 35). She also proposed a list of
questions that could serve to guide future research. These questions, then,
were influential in the formulation of the four research questions that guided
our study.
Specifically, we were interested in researching how women who have
been superintendents think and talk about gender, the role of the superinten-
dent, and the interactions between these two. We were particularly interested
in their awareness of and thinking about gender’s role in structuring difficult
and conflicted work situations. Thus, we investigated the following four
questions:
1. How do women who have been superintendents perceive the way that gender
is socially represented?
2. How do women who have been superintendents perceive the way that the role
of the superintendency is socially represented?
3. How do women who have been superintendents experience and deal with the
differences and/or similarities between the way that gender is socially repre-
sented and the way that the role of the superintendent is socially represented?
4. How do women who have been superintendents experience the role gender
plays in understanding and managing problematic work situations?
Participants and Study Context
In choosing the participants for our study, we used intensity sampling, a

method described by Miles and Huberman (1994) and Patton (1990). That is,
we purposely selected participants who represented “information-rich cases
that manifest the phenomenon intensely, . . . excellent or rich examples of the
phenomenon of interest, but not unusual cases” (Patton, 1990, p. 171). Case
study research, as Stake (1995) pointed out, is not sampling research. The
goal of case study research is not generalization but particularization. “In

qualitative case study, we seek greater understanding of . . . the case. We want
to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of [it], its embeddedness and
interaction with its contexts” (p. 16). With this in mind, we invited three suc-
cessful women superintendents who had recently exited the superintendency
to be participants, not with the goal of producing knowledge that would be
generalizable to all women superintendents but instead with the goal of
reaching an in-depth, informed understanding of these women’s experiences
from their own perspectives.
Our choice of women who had exited the superintendency as participants
was purposeful. The phenomenon of women’s exit from the superintendency
has been studied by others (e.g., Allen, 1996; Beekley, 1994; Tallerico &
Burstyn, 1996; Tallerico et al., 1993) and, thus, was not the focus of our work.
Instead, former superintendents were chosen rather than currently practicing
ones because we felt it was likely that they would be able to talk more freely
about their experiences. With some few exceptions, the participants in previ-
ous studies that attempted to focus on gender-related issues in the superinten-
dency were women still working in public schools. In spite of the anonymity
provided by these studies, the pressure of having to maintain employment in
the superintendency may have constrained what these superintendents were
willing to discuss. One of Bell’s (1995) participants alluded to this type of
restraint when she said, “If I weren’t involved with schools, I might be radi-
cal” (p. 288). Thus, our selection of participants who had exited the field was
intended to enhance the likelihood of frank, open interviews.
Our choice of women who had left the superintendency also shaped the
study in other ways. Because we were attempting to find out what was “going
on” with gender, particularly in problematic work situations, from the per-
spectives of women who had been superintendents, we purposely sought as
participants women who might have insight into these issues. We looked for
women who were, by reputation in the profession, successful, capable super-
intendents who met two other criteria: (a) each had more than 3 years of expe-
rience in the same superintendency, and (b) each left her last superintendency
for employment in another field. None of our participants was fired or had
adverse action taken on extension of her contract, but all the women negoti-
ated agreements with their boards of trustees and resigned before the end of
multiyear contracts. All three women left their superintendencies voluntar-
ily; however, the circumstances surrounding their exits were, by their own
descriptions, politically problematic to the extent that each woman decided to
seek employment in a position other than a public school superintendency.
Because the number of women who have been superintendents is small
and the number who have exited the superintendency is much smaller, great
care needed to be taken so that we honored the promise of anonymity given to

our participants. In addition to the general ethical principles involved, this
was especially important to us because all three of our participants initially
expressed reluctance to participate in this study. They said directly that they
did not want to be personally associated with the activist stance of this re-
search for fear of negative repercussions in their personal and professional
lives. Therefore, two strategies intended to protect the participants’ anonym-
ity were employed. First, details that might be most telling about their lives
and their work settings were altered slightly. Second, as suggested by Morse
(1994),
Demographic data are presented in aggregates, so that identifiers (such as gen-

der, age, and years of experience) are not linked (making individuals recogniz-
able) and are not consistently associated with the same participant throughout
the text, even if a code name is used. (p. 232)
Our participants, Leslie Conrad, Amanda Hunter, and Emma Wilburn (not
their real names), were all White women of middle age. Among the three of
them, however, they had a broad range of experiences in school administra-
tion and the superintendency.
The school districts for which these women served as superintendents
were all in the Southwest. The districts ranged in size from 1,500 to 6,000 stu-
dents and were all within commuting distance of major metropolitan areas.
These districts could be termed “medium sized” according to data from the
NCES (1998). (As of the 1996-1997 school year, 7.6% of the 14,422 school
districts in the United States had more than 7,500 students, and 59.5% of dis-
tricts had fewer than 1,500 students.) The taxable wealth per pupil in our par-
ticipants’ three school districts ranged from 40% below the state average in
one district and near the state average in another, to many times the state aver-
age in the third district, which was one of the wealthiest districts in the state.
These three districts had annual budgets of between $10 million and $35
million.
Our participants’ districts served student populations that were economi-
cally and racially diverse. In all three districts, more than one third of children
qualified for federal free or reduced-price lunch assistance; in one district,
this figure was close to 50%. In two districts, approximately two thirds of stu-
dents were White, and one third were Hispanic. One district had a student
population in which African American, Hispanic, and White students were
almost equally represented.
Only one of our participants was born and raised in the state where she
served as superintendent. Another was born in a different Southern state. The
third participant was born in the North and started her career there before
moving to the Southwest to work as a superintendent. For two of the women,
the superintendency they exited was their first. The third woman who partici-
pated in our study was one of the pioneer women superintendents in her state
and had served as superintendent for three districts.
One of our participants was recruited for her most recent superintendency
by a search consultant hired by the school board. The 2 others were promoted
from within the district, one from the position of business manager and the
other from the role of assistant superintendent for instruction. All of the
women had been superintendents for more than 5 years in the district from
which they exited the superintendency. At the time of our interviews, 1 had
left the superintendency fewer than 6 months earlier, another had been out of
the role for 1 year, and the third had exited 2 years before. During the 6-month
period in which our interviews took place, all 3 women were working in
education-related fields other than public schools. One of our participants
has since returned to the superintendency.
Two of these former superintendents held doctorate degrees. All 3 were
married, and 1 had school-aged children. All of the women described them-
selves as actively involved in community organizations. One participant was
also actively involved in church work. All of the women belonged to their
states’ administrator organizations, but none of them belonged to any
women’s organizations or groups. Two participants knew one another
slightly before participation in the research project; neither knew the third
participant.
Data Collection
In addition to choosing women who were no longer employed in the

superintendency, we incorporated a second feature in our research design that
was intended to help us get behind, below, and beyond surface-level and con-
strained conversations about gender’s role in the superintendency. We chose
an interview technique designed to create a context in which the women felt
safe and free to talk. We attempted to create interviews that were closer to
conversations among colleagues in which everyone was involved in explor-
ing the research questions and to which everyone contributed on an as nearly
equal basis as possible than to traditional interviews in which an “expert”
researcher questions research “subjects.” Mishler (1986) described this
approach to interviewing as “accept[ing] interviewees as collaborators, that
is, as full participants in the development of the study and in the analysis and
interpretation of the data” (p. 126). Many others have discussed such col-
laborative techniques in research interviewing (see, e.g., Chirban, 1996;

Fontana & Frey, 1994; Kvale, 1996; Lincoln, 1993; McCracken, 1988;
Scheurich, 1995b).
The interviewing approach we chose for this study was one that not only
viewed research interviewing as a collaborative process but emphasized the
critical importance of both the interaction and the relationship between the
interviewer and interviewee. The interactive-relational approach, developed
by Chirban (1996), resulted from “years of longitudinal interviews with
twelve leading American women” (p. xiii). The interactive-relational
approach to interviewing was designed to balance the professional responsi-
bility of the researcher with the goal of understanding the interviewee.
Following this approach, six characteristics and qualities of the inter-
viewer—self awareness, authenticity, attunement, posturing in the interac-
tion, engagement of relational dynamics, and integration of the researcher’s
person in the process—can be tailored to achieve the goals of the interview
through two components, the interaction and the relationship. Chirban
(1996) described the interaction and relationship as follows:
The interaction creates a context or setting for the wellspring of engaging an in-
terviewee. Usually initiated by the interviewer, the interaction shapes the dy-
namics, the conscious and unconscious processes, of communication that
evolves between the interviewer and interviewee. The interaction often deter-
mines the role and parameters for communication, accounting for the balance
of power and freedom experience in the interview process. The relationship
provides the vehicle for the interviewer to know the interviewee. This relation-
ship emerges from the deepening awareness of one another that occurs in their
interactions, that in turn becomes the source of the energy in the interview.
Within this relationship, the two people exchange their ideas, beliefs, and feel-
ings that enhance growth and understanding. (p. xiii)
Because of the importance of the interaction and the relationship with the
participants in the interactive-relational method, all the interviews for our
study were conducted by the first author, who, although now an educational
administration professor, is a woman with campus and district-level admini-
stration experience. The participants were aware of the involvement of the
other two authors (who are male educational administration professors with
school leadership experience) in the design, data analysis, and writing of the
study. In fact, deliberate and consistent efforts were made throughout the
course of the study, beginning with the initial telephone contact with the par-
ticipants, to communicate openly with them about all aspects of this research,
including the activist philosophy guiding it.
Three interviews using the interactive-relational approach were con-

ducted with each participant: two individual interviews followed by a focus
group interview with all three participants. Each of the interviews lasted
approximately 2 hours. Individual interviews were conducted at the partici-
pants’ work sites. The focus group was conducted at a university; this loca-
tion allowed for all three participants and the interviewer to have relatively
equal travel time. We originally envisioned three individual interviews with
each former superintendent; however, the suggestion for the focus group
arose during preliminary conversations with one of the participants. She was
eager to see if the other participants’ stories matched hers. The other 2 study
participants were similarly enthusiastic about the opportunity for a group
interview when this possibility was discussed with them, so the study design
was altered to incorporate this suggestion.
Another feature of the research design that enhanced the likelihood of
reaching previously unexamined issues related to gender were the interview
protocols. We did not ask prestructured, traditional questions about barriers,
mentors, and career paths. Instead, we designed interview guides sequen-
tially based on what emerged from previous interviews, and the participants
were involved in shaping the interview guides for the second round of indi-
vidual interviews and the focus group. Our participants knew from the begin-
ning the subject of our research. When they were initially contacted by tele-
phone and asked to participate in the interviews, we discussed with each of
them why they were invited to be participants in the study, what previous
research with women superintendents had found, and how other researchers
had found their participants’ discussions of gender and discrimination to be
constrained.
In a deliberate attempt, then, to reduce potential anxiety about discussing
gender issues, no questions explicitly related to gender were asked in the first
round of individual interviews, and the participants knew this in advance.
First-round questions were designed to encourage the women to tell their
own stories of their most recent superintendency experiences from recruit-
ment and hiring through resignation and exit. The questions were open
ended, covering relationships with various stakeholder groups (students,
teachers, staff, administrators, board members, parents, community mem-
bers), accomplishments, disappointments, and difficult work situations.
From the results of the first-round interviews, three individually different
interview guides for the second round were developed that followed up on
gender-related issues that emerged from round-one interview data for each
individual. For example, in response to a question in the first individual inter-
view dealing with relationships with community members, Leslie said,
“They [the community members] . . . were very concerned that a woman was
put it charge. . . . I heard through the grapevine, ‘Well, we don’t need that . . .
woman telling us what to do.’ ” Follow-up questions about this statement
were, then, asked in the second individual interview with Leslie. In the same
way, the final focus group interview guide was constructed from themes
related to gender that emerged from the individual interviews. The partici-
pants also all contributed to the interview guide their own questions that they
wanted to ask each other for the focus group. This sequential construction of
individually oriented interview guides allowed us to involve our participants
in discussions of the results as they emerged, and this design provided our
interviewees with forums in which to propose their own solutions to some of
the problems women superintendents face.
Data Analysis
All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Data analysis began

after the first interview and continued until the final report was complete.
Two different methods of indexing and sorting respondents’ statements by
content were employed. Initially, a deductive content analysis structured
around the study’s four research questions was performed using FolioViews
qualitative research software. A second, inductive analysis of all the study
data was performed by hand, using sequential analysis techniques described
by Miles and Huberman (1994). Several different techniques were used to
contribute toward the trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) of the study
results, including prolonged engagement, triangulation of methods, member
checks, and reflexive journaling.
RESULTS
In this section, we discuss three interrelated portions of our study results

that deal with issues of sexism, silence, and solutions. In this research project,
our study participants were provided with opportunities to reflect on their
experiences in the superintendency and a context in which to talk openly
about them. In both the individual interviews and the focus group, they talked
about instances throughout their careers in which they experienced sexism,
that is, when they were stereotyped, persecuted, or discriminated against
based on their gender. These observations make up the first part of the results
presented here. Second, we present all three study participants’ views on the
professional silence surrounding gender discrimination in educational
administration and on their own unwillingness to examine the sexism present
in the culture of the superintendency. The third section contains the study par-
ticipants’ proposed solutions for the issues of sexism and silence faced by
women superintendents.
Sexism
As a strategy of our participatory research design, we shared the research

questions that guided the study, some of the findings of earlier research, and
our reasons for using an interactive interview technique with our participants.
Thus, the female former superintendents who talked with us were aware from
the beginning that gender’s role in their work lives (including sexism and dis-
criminatory treatment) was of interest to us. All three study participants said
that while they were superintendents, they were unaware of or ignored gen-
der’s role in their experiences and that even in situations in which they were
aware of it, they did not want to deal with it. (This stance is explained in more
detail in the section on silence.) However, given a context in which to reflect
and talk during the course of the individual and focus group interviews, the
participants described many instances of differential treatment in the super-
intendency based on their gender. Viewing their experiences in retrospect, the
three former superintendents identified clear-cut examples of sexism in the
forms of questioned competence, sex-role stereotyping, and intimidation.
Questioned competence. Even though our study participants met all of the
traditionally identified measures of success for superintendents—student
performance in their districts rose, their budgets balanced, and their bond is-
sues passed—they still met with overt and covert challenges to their abilities
that they attributed to being seen as women rather than as superintendents.
For example, Amanda described a feeling of always having to second-guess
herself.
I think that you always have to be aware of [the gender issue]. Even going into a
board meeting. You have to second-guess yourself. You have to ask it from a
man’s perspective. You know, when I would get ready [for a board meeting], it
would be like going into battle. I would have to ask myself, about everything
that I was doing on that agenda, ‘How is a man going to look at this?’And that’s
tough. But you have to; you have to second-guess yourself. Because they’re out
there and they’re doing it. You know. And they may never say it’s because you
are a woman. But when they are looking at those numbers [on the budget], you
are a woman.
In much the same way, Emma reported a continual questioning of her actions
because she was perceived as not knowing about particular areas of school
district operations. She described the situation: “I think that some of it was a
lot more questioning of my competence because I was female.” In another in-
terview, Emma pointed out, “A woman saying, ‘This needs to be done,’ is go-
ing to cause more question, more doubt.”
Leslie also described feeling as if people were uncomfortable with having
a woman superintendent, and that discomfort resulted in almost continual
questioning of her leadership.
They [the community members] were, I think number one, very concerned that
a woman was put in charge. I heard through the grapevine, “Well, we don’t
need that . . . woman telling us what to do.” And that was probably cleaned up
from what was being said. There was definitely some concern. I remember go-
ing down and speaking to one of the community groups and just being chal-
lenged on pretty much every change we had tried to initiate.
The above quotation was taken from the transcript of the first individual inter-
view with Leslie. A follow-up question was asked in the second individual
interview. In answering this question, Leslie said that she thought her diffi-
culties in gaining acceptance were exacerbated by the amount of change she
initiated.
Interviewer: You said [in the first interview] that you were going to be challenged
with trying to follow through on anything that you tried to initiate. Do you think
that situation had anything to do with perceived weakness and passivity of the
female? That the challenges were more frequent? Or was that just a function of
the community system?
Leslie: I think it was a mixture of both. I think any kind of change, in a small com-
munity that has had someone in the role of the superintendent for 15 or 20
years, any kind of change is going to be difficult. But it’s even more difficult, I
think, when you bring in a woman to initiate that change. . . . It just creates a real
conflict.
The issue of our participants’ competence being questioned, particularly

by board members, arose in every individual interview; this issue also was
discussed during the group interview. For instance, Amanda said,
I think that’s one thing that probably needs some discussion—boards and com-
munities and the way they look at female versus male going in [to the superin-
tendency]. They’re business minded and they don’t seem to think a woman can
think that way. Heaven forbid you go crawl on a roof! . . . We have an equity
question here.
Leslie agreed and pointed out that despite an increasing need for superinten-
dents to be instructional leaders, boards question women’s competence in
noninstructional areas and do not allow “women to serve as they really are
prepared to serve.”
Sex-role stereotypes. Another manifestation of sexism in the superinten-

dency experiences of our participants came in the form of stereotypical
expectations from board, school, and community members for our study par-
ticipants’ behaviors, roles, and job performance. These sex-role stereotypes
described by our interviewees fell into three categories—perceptions of
malleable personalities, assumptions about appropriate activities, and expec-
tations of feminine behavior.
In describing the first category of these stereotypes, perceptions of malle-
able personalities, two of our interviewees felt their boards initially saw them
stereotypically as being easy to direct because they were female. In Emma’s
case, she described her situation as being tied not only to her femaleness but
to her soft-spoken style. “I think that some people originally wanted me in
that role because I would do what I was told because I was a woman. . . . I
think I was perceived as weak because I was not loud.” Amanda, as she did of-
ten during the course of our interviews with her, drew a distinction between
what was said and what people appeared to feel at a deeper level.
They [board members] are going to say the right things, but what they, deep
down inside, feel—and how, over the long haul, they act, is totally different.
And I know that I was looked at when I went into the position [as] “She’s cute.
She’ll do what we tell her to do.”
A second type of sex-role stereotyping that our participants mentioned

was assumptions made by board members and others concerning the appro-
priate spheres of operational knowledge and activities based on the superin-
tendent’s gender. Leslie described her board having “grave concerns” about
having a woman in charge of building a new school.
Although I’d already been through one [building program] and been very suc-
cessful with that, [board members] would ask, “Has the super been down to
walk the site?” You know. “Has the superintendent been over to check the ele-
mentary school?” It was an always checking up on me kind of thing. It wasn’t
blatantly sexist, but I don’t think they would have done that to a man. I really
don’t. So, again, it’s just all those innuendoes that you pick up on. I shouldn’t be
able to manage a building program and finance. All that kind of thing. I don’t
think they were really aware of it at all. It’s just so ingrained and habitual that it
really wasn’t anything exceptional to them. It’s just a matter of their life story
unfolding.
Similarly, Amanda talked about having to be prepared “from every angle”

when dealing with “things male board members related to.” She also said that
she heard many “woman” remarks when she was hired. “You know, ‘What
the hell is this board doing, giving it [the superintendency] to a young
woman? She doesn’t know business.’ ” In Emma’s case, she described having
difficulty whenever she got “into male domains . . . like Coke machines, ac-
tivity funds, and maintenance buying.” She felt that people were continually
surprised to find her capable of dealing with issues such as those she listed:
“[People in the district] came in with expectations, and I rarely met their
expectations.”
A third type of role stereotyping talked about by our participants was the
pressure they felt to maintain appropriately feminine behavior. As Amanda
put it,
It’s what you wear. It’s what you say. It’s how you behave in private and in pub-
lic. . . . You can have viewpoints, but you have to be very careful in who you ex-
press those to, or how you express those. You cannot get out there on a limb.
You know, I think to be feminine, you just have to ride a line, and you have got
to watch everything that you say, and everything that you do because you are
being judged in much greater detail and extent than any man is. The rules are
very, very defined, but they are not talked about. We just have to take it for
granted that we are in a fishbowl. Things that we say, things that we do, places
we go, all of those things are being evaluated.
All three women described over and over in the interviews their strong sense
of feeling the double bind described by Tannen (1994)—the impossibility of
being seen as assertive as a leader while also maintaining an appropriately
feminine demeanor. Emma described it in these terms:
It’s that old description—if a man goes after it a hundred percent, he’s aggres-
sive; if a woman goes after it a hundred percent, she’s whatever the term is. If a
man is demanding and unpredictable in his moods, he’s something positive, but
if woman does it she’s a bitch. And so I think that the kind of thing that happens
gets to be a real problem; no matter what you do as a woman, it’s going to be
wrong. If you stand up and say, “This is it. This is the end. This is absolute,”
then you are a witch. If you try to build consensus, then you haven’t got the
backbone and the guts and the knowledge to lead. So you get really caught.
Leslie seemed to feel keenly the conflict between meeting the stereotypical
expectations of feminine behavior while acting as a leader. The following
quote is representative of comments that were made throughout our inter-

views with Leslie.
The passivity we see in a general perspective for women is antithetical to what

you would expect the role of superintendent to be. . . . I could feel the struggle
within myself personally. . . . It was very difficult for board members. Even
though they had told me to be assertive, when I was assertive, they couldn’t re-
ceive. So, I really had no where to go. I couldn’t do anything right, no matter
what I did.
Intimidation. Other indicators of sexism in the superintendency encoun-

tered by our study participants included intimidating tactics and behaviors of
board and community members. The three women attributed these people’s
actions and attitudes to the femaleness of the superintendent. A phrase we
heard repeatedly was, “They never would have done that to a man.” From
Amanda:
Two of those newer board members called me personally, and I’ve never been
talked to like that in my whole life—they wouldn’t have done that to a man. I
mean, they called me names and things like that. They would never have called
a man and talked that way. And I guess maybe I should have responded back to
them the way they were talking to me. But, you know, . . . they could do that
to a woman because they’re bigger, and they knew all the words and all those
actions.
Amanda went on to describe what she termed “all sorts of lies” that were told
by board and community members—a disinformation campaign that seemed,
to her, to be structured around the fact that she was female. She talked about
feeling that some of the rumors were started to create trouble between her and
her husband and also mentioned the language used to refer to her. “After 4
good years, I woke up one morning, and I was ‘that woman’ to everybody.”
Amanda added, “I think gender was a huge part of it; they would never, in a
million years, have replaced me with a woman.”
In Leslie’s case, she talked about being visited in her office by members of
her board as “almost like being visited by the Mafia. They would come in
twos with their hands in their pockets.” She went on to say that she thought
these board members were uncomfortable with her because she was a
woman. “They were very uncomfortable dealing with me one-on-one.” In
Emma’s case, she described being spoken to as if she were an unruly child
rather than the chief executive of a school district. She gave as examples a
board member who told her “not to misbehave” and a community member
who warned her in a public meeting “not to embarrass” her board members.
Silence
The former superintendents who participated in this study described (ret-

rospectively) their experiences with sexism and discriminatory treatment in
the superintendency with vividness and detail. They also spoke clearly about
their own silence while they were superintendents concerning these issues
and about the silence of other individuals, organizations, and institutions
connected to the superintendency at all levels. In fact, silence proved to be
one of the key topics of conversation during the focus group interview with all
three participants.
Personal silence. Our study participants talked individually and as a group

about their own silence on issues related to gender in their superintendency
experiences while they were still in the role. Early on during her second indi-
vidual interview, Leslie described the role of women in public school admini-
stration as “almost like what we used to say about children—not being
heard.” According to Amanda, “It [the gender issue] was never a driving
force to me.” Similarly, Emma said,
Quite honestly, even though I have been the first female in every administrative
position I’ve had, I have never—it has been rare where the instances really hit
me as being blatant sexist issues. . . . It was unusual for me to think that way.
In addition to describing her own unawareness, Leslie alluded to the de-

structive results of that unawareness.
I was ignorant of a lot of it. I knew, I mean, you kind of pick up these vibes, in-
tuit something. You know there’s a negative, but you don’t understand how
strong it is until maybe it’s too late to do anything about it.
She went on to say that she felt as if men had the advantage in dealing with
gender-related issues because “they are clued in earlier to what the real issues
are.” One of the clearest statements about personal silence came from
Amanda.
You know, in talking with other female superintendents and administrators, a

lot of times they would say to me things that were more gender issues. . . . I
didn’t see it. Or, if I did see it, I acknowledged it; I knew it was there, but I
wanted to be better than that. I wanted to get past the gender issue [italics
added]. And you never do with some people.
Another illustration of their personal reluctance to deal directly with gen-

der issues was the way our participants characterized situations in which
male administrators in their organizations told these superintendents that
they could not work for a woman. Leslie told a story about a campus principal
who “could not receive any kind of correction from me at all, or redirection.”
She said that this man made it quite clear that his image of a woman was com-
pletely opposite to how he viewed himself and alluded to his homemaker
wife for whom he was sole support. When we asked Leslie if she ever dealt di-
rectly with what she felt was a gender issue with this principal, she said, “I
didn’t address it with him overtly.”
Amanda, similarly, described a situation with one of her principals: “He
could not work for a woman, and we established that real quick. And we were
very good friends. But he could not handle it whenever I had to be in an
authoritative role.” Amanda said about the same male principal in another
interview, “He told me, ‘I cannot work for a female. I cannot work for a young
female [respondent’s emphasis].’ So, we knew where we stood right off—
right up front. . . . I appreciated the fact that he was so honest with me.” Nei-
ther Leslie nor Amanda dealt with the behavior of these principals as insubor-
dination. Amanda described the man as a friend and said she appreciated his
honesty.
Silent preparation programs. These female former superintendents also

described silence on gender issues as characteristic of their superintendency
preparation programs. When asked whether the role of gender had ever been
discussed in their preparation programs, all 3 participants said it had not
been. We asked Emma, “Did [your professors] ever address how the experi-
ence of the superintendency might be different for females?” She replied,
“No . . . it was never brought up.” Amanda was also emphatic when asked if
gender was brought up in her own superintendency program:
It was totally silent. . . . I was working on my superintendency credential when I

got the position [as superintendent]. When I went to class, the professor could
not believe—I had other professors come to me—they just could not believe
that I was in that position [respondent’s emphasis]. And you would have
thought, them knowing my abilities from me taking numerous classes with
them over the years, that they wouldn’t have been showing the surprise. And
that’s what it was. It was just total shock and surprise at what had taken place.
So. No. No. No. They still don’t even talk about that.
Leslie, too, described her preparation programs at both the mid-management

(principalship) and superintendency levels as silent on issues of gender.
“When I went through the midmanagement program, or even the superinten-

dency program, we had no preparation for dealing with gender differ-
ences—and styles of communication. And that, I think, made a significant
difference in my career.”
In several places during our interviews with her, Leslie mentioned her
unawareness of gender issues in her work life and linked this unawareness to
inadequate training and preparation. At one point she said, “I went into this
[the superintendency] not knowing a lot . . . about gender. I hadn’t really given
it a lot of thought, [and] the degree of conflict that developed I never pictured
in my mind.”
Silence of the profession. Amanda, Emma, and Leslie described educa-

tional administration as a profession in which the concerns of women super-
intendents about discriminatory treatment and sexism were not addressed nor
even heard. From state legislatures and state education agencies to profes-
sional organizations for boards and administrators, the institutions of the pro-
fession were seen as places where women’s issues were ignored. According
to Amanda,
I want somebody to fight . . . [for] what we believe in, and we don’t have that in
our professional organizations. We don’t have that at our agency, and we don’t
have that in the legislature. They are the first ones that need someone to go in
there and talk to them about gender equity.
Leslie concurred, describing a situation in which she had proposed a session

on gender issues for a state convention sponsored jointly by board and admin-
istrator professional organizations: “You know my story about trying to get
on the agenda at [the conference]; there was no interest.”
Emma also described the professional organizations as being male domi-
nated with rituals and agendas based on stereotypically male concerns. “Go
to any superintendent’s meeting and watch the men walk up to each other . . .
the first thing out of their mouths will be, ‘How was last Friday night’s
game?’ ” Emma went on to discuss how the superintendency was, in her view,
passed down from male to male, with superintendents grooming male princi-
pals and coaches for the role. She described this as “almost a monarchy type
of succession.” Women were clearly excluded from the line of succession, in
Emma’s view. As she succinctly phrased it during the group interview, “It’s
not a glass ceiling; it’s a steel grid.” Amanda concurred and added, “We don’t
want to talk about these things. We want them to go away. Pretty much the
way we’ve done race in schools. We’ve done gender that way in schools.”
Solutions
The women superintendents in our study described themselves as pro-

ceeding in their jobs as if gender were not a factor. However, all 3 study par-
ticipants, viewing their experiences in retrospect, described the operation of
gender in their superintendencies. When asked about the implications of this
recently found awareness of their own situations for present and future
female superintendents, the women offered proposed solutions based on
their experiences that were tied to the silence maintained by the profession on
the sexism surrounding the superintendency. Our study participants’ pro-
posed solutions fell into six categories: research, integrated discourse, uni-
versity preparation programs, state agencies and professional organizations,
school boards, and women’s upbringing. We discuss these briefly below.
Research. Although this study and others, notably the work of Bell (1988,
1995), Chase (1995), Brunner (1994, 1997, 1998b), and Grogan (1996), rep-
resent a small start in illuminating women’s issues in the superintendency
from inclusive points of view, our study participants said that this type of
work needs to be continued. They talked about the type of research repre-
sented by our study in contrast to traditional research on the superintendency;
furthermore, they described the need for research to get past surface-level
views, to more fully involve participants, and to reach out to wider audiences.
As Emma put it, “Research—that’s the key piece . . . [to be] willing and
able to look at things and to go deeper than ‘this is the way it’s always been
done [italics added].’ ” Similarly, Amanda pointed out,
I don’t think it [the situation women superintendents face] is any different to-
day than it was 20 years ago . . . looking back at the research. My hope is that we
can change it, but it has to be through efforts such as you [the researchers in this
study] are making.
In a different interview, Amanda again described the need for the education
of others about the existence of the type of research represented by our study.
I want this kind of research to be out there [italics added] so that people can say,
“But, look.” Too many stories end up similar to mine and worse. . . . And don’t
tell me the same thing is going to happen to a man in the same scenario the way
it has to a woman.
Amanda reiterated her strong desire to get this type of research “out there”
when she was asked if she had any comments and clarifications after having
been given a draft of the final report to review. She had only one thing to say:
“Just promise me you will publish it.”
Leslie also spoke eloquently about the need for women’s views of the su-
perintendency to get out in circulation and for women superintendency aspi-
rants to be exposed to them.
The implications for women are not good in terms of serving in the top role.
There exists, obviously, a glass ceiling. It’s good to be assistant superintendent
for curriculum and instruction; we’re accepted there. And that’s fine. In terms
of moving on into the top position, it’s difficult to do that, number one. Just to
get there. And then to carry on successfully, as I’ve said before, is very diffi-
cult. . . . The implications for women are that they should just be aware of the
struggle that they’re going to have when they get into the superintendency role.
They may have served as a director of curriculum or an assistant superinten-
dent, but it’s not going to be the same. It’s going to be quite different once they
get into the superintendency.
In this participant’s view, research about women leaders ought to expose all the
hidden issues and problems associated with taking on the superintendency.
Integrated discourse. All of our study participants indicated that during

their careers, they had had little opportunity to process or make sense of their
experiences as women superintendents. Although they did not use the same
terminology as the researchers, the women we interviewed described experi-
encing both Chase’s (1995) discursive disjunction, the difficulty in integrat-
ing talk of professional work with talk of inequality, and Bell’s (1995) disaf-
filiation, the pressure to remain disassociated from other women in the
profession. They said that this combination of inhibited discourse and isola-
tion left them wondering whether their problems were peculiar to them or
part of a larger picture. As Leslie put it, “Is it me, or is there a broader problem
here?” Emma commented, “It has been . . . unusual for me to think that way
[about gender]. When I look back, sometimes I wonder.” Amanda even raised
a question with the other two women during the group interview on how other
superintendents viewed the women’s situations in their districts. She said,
“Several of them [other superintendents in the region] said, ‘That wouldn’t
have happened to me.’Is that how they responded to you? I think the other su-
perintendents saw it as ‘she’s a woman.’ . . . It really put some doubt in my
mind.” In response to Amanda’s question, the other two participants said that
they too had received similar comments.
As a proposed solution to these problems, our study participants saw
opportunities for integrated discourse in which talk of women’s experiences
with inequality and sexism could be interwoven with professional conversa-

tion as desirable and beneficial. All 3 women expressed a strong desire to par-
ticipate in the group interview and were eager to reach that phase so that they
could, as Leslie phrased it, “see how much we reflect each other.” As was
mentioned earlier in this article, the idea for the group interview itself was a
suggestion from Leslie. She said that she wanted a forum to talk with the
other participants because stories she had heard about other women superin-
tendents over the years had led her to believe that the experience for women in
the superintendency was “just ditto, ditto, ditto of my life story.” Amanda also
indicated that the opportunity to dialog with the other women superinten-
dents was something that she enjoyed and felt was beneficial. She said, about
being a participant in our research, “This has been fun. It has brought some
things out for me—put things into perspective. It’s helped me . . . and, you
know, I can’t wait to share some of these things with other colleagues.”
Leslie, too, spoke to the need for broadening understanding through inclu-
sive conversations among educational administrators about the issues women
superintendents face. She said, “[We need] some practice at least in thinking
through those things.” Leslie also pointed out that this integrated discourse
should include men as well women.
Having women understand, as well as men, if that’s possible, a little bit more
about different roles and expectations and being able, even, to call on men as
colleagues and have them understand your position, . . . having a deeper per-
spective in leadership across the board would be very helpful.
As Leslie’s comments illustrate, our study participants saw integrated dis-

course as one of the solutions they would propose for the sexism and dis-
crimination they faced in their professional lives.
University preparation programs. One of the places such an integrated

discourse should ideally take place would be university preparation pro-
grams for superintendents. Our participants felt that the inclusive conversa-
tion about the role of gender in the superintendency needed to begin while the
superintendents were still aspirants for the position. In proposing a solution
for the silence in university superintendency preparation programs, Emma
said that the difficult gender issues women will confront in the superinten-
dency need to be dealt with in a way that would make them “real to us.” Leslie
suggested the use of role-plays and other situational teaching models to allow
nontraditional superintendent aspirants to practice confronting some of the
barriers they will face.
You [need to] have some idea about what kinds of things you might run into be-
fore you do. I mean, I just kind of hit them cold. And had to run through them.
Or run the gauntlet without really understanding what techniques would help
me. . . . Some case studies or role-plays would be very helpful . . . just so you’re
not hit without any experience at all, without any thoughts about these things.
Our study participants suggested that both the curriculum and instructional
delivery models in superintendency programs need to be revised to reflect the
presence of women.
State agencies and professional organizations. University preparation

programs were not the only organizations targeted for change by our study
participants. Amanda, Emma, and Leslie identified state education agencies
and professional organizations for superintendents and school board
members as being necessary participants in solving the problems of sexism
and discrimination that women superintendents face. Amanda quite clearly
stated the need in this area.
I want the [state education agency] to look at things like this [gender issues] be-
cause they could be a part and they choose not to. . . . The [school board associa-
tion], and people like that, with the politics and the money going into their
pockets, they’re not going to get out there on that limb and say, “These are the
things that you need to be aware of.” Very few people want to get out there on
that limb.
Amanda saw the silence by these agencies on gender and discrimination is-
sues as contributing to the maintenance of the status quo.
Our study participants talked about these issues during the group inter-
view, and they suggested that state education agencies and professional
organizations need to deal with sexism and discrimination in their own
organizations, as the numbers of women in upper management in these
organizations mirror the unrepresentative numbers of women in the superin-
tendency. Amanda emphasized in one of her individual interviews that gen-
der bias existed throughout her administrators’professional organization and
that it affected the quality of services women superintendents received, par-
ticularly legal services. She was adamant that this situation needed to change.
“It [legal representation] was very gender biased, almost a patting on the
hand. . . . This is what we pay money for? This is someone in our corner? . . . I
want somebody who’s going to stand up for what is right.”
School boards. Other groups that our study participants felt were in need
of extensive training on gender-related issues were school boards. We asked
the three women if any of them had ever raised the gender issue directly with
any of the boards with which they had worked. None of them indicated that
they had. As Leslie put it, “We talked about it as if gender were not involved.”
When we asked if they thought board training on this issue would help, our
participants were skeptical but emphatically said that it was needed. Amanda
said, “I think that needs to be one of those things that the boards have to go
through and be honest with themselves. Lots of training on those gender,
power-related issues.” Emma agreed:
I think the board that hires a female, or hires a Black is more likely to have to
defend that—and [board members are] not prepared to defend it in a way that
they’re comfortable with in their environment. [When criticism] is aimed at the
superintendent because she’s a female and the issue really has nothing to do
with being female, they don’t quite know how to respond. When it’s someone
they’ve known all their life, they may get sucked in to talking about her [the su-
perintendent] being a woman.
Thus, in Emma’s view, boards of trustees need sensitizing to issues of gender

and discrimination, particularly those boards that are operating with tradi-
tional conceptions of school leadership.
Women’s upbringing. A final solution proposed by our study participants

moved beyond the culture of public schools into larger society. In discussing
with us what solutions they might offer future women superintendents, our
interviewees talked about the need to change the way women are socialized
during their upbringings. According to Amanda, “From the beginning my
mother taught me things that girls do, and girls say, and girls don’t say. . . . I’d
like to think that these things hit the surface. . . . My hope is that we can
change it.” Similarly, Leslie suggested that women need to be raised to “be
tough.”
I think we have to raise a woman to be tough. To be competitive. To take the

gloves off and get out there and fight hard. I wasn’t raised that way. And I
wasn’t aware. I mean, I fought, but I didn’t fight like they fight. I thought I was
being logical and reasoned . . . but I learned the real hard way.
In describing the outcome of what a more balanced rearing of women could

produce, Emma put it this way, “The women who have it together have some
of the softness, [but] they’ve got some of the steel, and they’re comfortable
with who they are. And that defines their femininity, not femininity defining
who they are.”
CONCLUSION
The unawareness of, or denial of, gender’s role in their work lives as
superintendents was seen by our study participants as having played a signifi-
cant role in their careers. Although the women rejected the stereotypical con-
structions of femininity as applying to themselves, others with whom they
came in contact in their professional roles, such as board members, adminis-
trators, teachers, parents, and community members, often had expectations
of these women based on cultural expectations for appropriately feminine
behavior. This situation was further complicated by the unwritten societal
rules that prohibited our participants from even acknowledging their differ-
ential treatment and by the steadfast silence of the profession in which they
worked. As Mary Daly (1978) pointed out, the silencing and erasing of
women’s voices takes many forms, but it centers on the creation of fear in
women’s minds should they speak out. Thus, our participants lived out their
professional careers as superintendents maintaining a silence about the sex-
ism and discrimination they experienced that due to the oppressive culture of
educational administration, seemed natural, normal, and even healthy to
them. Through the course of this research study, however, our participants
moved beyond their silence to speak up and speak out about the discrimina-
tory treatment they experienced as women superintendents.
Our research shows that activist discursive possibilities for women super-
intendents can be created, at least in a research setting. In the introduction to
this work, we spoke of Chase’s (1995) contention that structural conditions
and discursive (im)possibilities prevented the formation of an activist dis-
course among women superintendents—a group that, arguably, continues to
be the most marginalized in educational administration. By deliberately set-
ting out to move away from what Anderson (1990) described as typical
research in educational administration that “perpetuate[s] functionalist para-
digms . . . and [uses] research methods incapable of capturing the sense-
making processes of social actors” (p. 38), we were able to create a context in
which our participants could tell their stories of successful professional work
interwoven with acknowledgments of their own silence and candid accounts
of their experiences with sexism and discriminatory treatment.
This research opens up new and promising possibilities for future study in
the area of school leadership. For example, by using participatory methods
and by creating empathic research contexts, we may be able to learn how
women leaders construct their identities in inherently inequitable circum-
stances such those found in the superintendency; we need to find out how
women leaders’ identity formation intersects with the construction of leader-

ship roles. Such research should lead to better understanding of new and
alternative forms of school leadership. We may also seek to understand how
inequities are developed as women leaders interact and negotiate with male
superintendents or other leaders. Other studies may focus on women’s expe-
riences with the goal of explaining how women leaders may move from
marginalized status, to the center, to being fully appreciated as leaders.
Moreover, research may focus on theoretical development, integrating gen-
der as a key explanatory construct in leadership. Similarly, future research
should uncover new and different practices for leadership preparation pro-
grams that take into account the experiences of superintendents such as the
women who participated in our study.
As researchers, we believe that the sharing of stories such as those told by
our participants and the widening of conversations about sexism and dis-
crimination to include individuals, groups, and institutions connected to the
superintendency at all levels has the potential to nourish the growth of the sti-
fled or absent activist discourse about women’s issues and concerns. Further-
more, the growth of such a discourse has the potential to affect the fundamen-
tal structures of the superintendency by short-circuiting some of the power
that has kept those structures in place. As Weedon (1987) pointed out about
the potentially negative and/or positive power of discourses, “Discourse
transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but it also undermines and
exposes it, renders it fragile, and makes it possible to thwart it” (p. 111).
Our study participants, in their proposed solutions, target historically
male-dominated, powerful groups and institutions connected with the super-
intendency for the type of undermining and exposing that Weedon (1987)
described. The same agencies and institutions that have been participants in
the maintenance of the professional silence about sexism in the superinten-
dency—university preparation programs, state education agencies, and pro-
fessional organizations for administrators and school boards—could, in our
participants’ views, become places in which the feminist discourse of social
change is no longer met with the hostile hearing described by Chase (1995).
However, these groups and organizations must first develop openness toward
pro-equity discourse on women’s issues and must eventually welcome,
encourage, and even nurture it. What is needed, however, for the profession to
move in this direction is for the conversation among and about women super-
intendents to increase in numbers, to widen in scope, and to escalate in vol-
ume so that neither the women themselves nor the education profession in
general continue to remain silent.
NOTE
1. A useful distinction can be made between the words sex and gender; as Reece (1995) and
others have pointed out, the terms are not synonymous. Furthermore, according to Hare-Mustin
and Marecek (1990), “Gender is used in contrast to terms like sex . . . for the explicit purpose of
creating a space in which socially mediated differences between men and women can be ex-
plored apart from biological differences” (p. 29). However, our study participants did not differ-
entiate between these two terms in our conversations with them, and we did not raise this issue
with them. Thus, although being female “does not necessarily equate with . . . being feminine”
(Reece, 1995, p. 96), for the women with whom we talked, their biological femaleness was
closely linked to expectations for their feminine behavior, and the terms sex and gender (and
variations thereof) are used interchangeably.
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Educational Administration Quarterly

Vol. 36, No. 1 (February 2000) 44-75

Skrla et al. / WOMEN SUPERINTENDENTS SPEAK

Sexism, Silence, and Solutions: Women

Women as a group continue to be underrepresented in the ranks of American public

Until we have . . . a literature from the silenced, we will probably not

The development of an activist discourse among female public school

© 2000 The University Council for Educational Administration

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The American public school superintendency is a career field dominated

This apparent avoidance of, or discomfort with, discussion of gender

Rizvi (1993) characterized this problem as the maintenance of a myth of neu-

These and other researchers’ conclusions on the suppression of activist

transformation. In the latter instance, I mean to suggest the creation of narra-

In her 1988 critique of research on women in the superintendency, Bell

Participants and Study Context

In choosing the participants for our study, we used intensity sampling, a

goal of case study research is not generalization but particularization. “In

care needed to be taken so that we honored the promise of anonymity given to

Demographic data are presented in aggregates, so that identifiers (such as gen-

In addition to choosing women who were no longer employed in the

laborative techniques in research interviewing (see, e.g., Chirban, 1996;

Three interviews using the interactive-relational approach were con-

All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. Data analysis began

In this section, we discuss three interrelated portions of our study results

As a strategy of our participatory research design, we shared the research

The issue of our participants’ competence being questioned, particularly

Sex-role stereotypes. Another manifestation of sexism in the superinten-

A second type of sex-role stereotyping that our participants mentioned

Similarly, Amanda talked about having to be prepared “from every angle”

quote is representative of comments that were made throughout our inter-

The passivity we see in a general perspective for women is antithetical to what

Intimidation. Other indicators of sexism in the superintendency encoun-

The former superintendents who participated in this study described (ret-

Personal silence. Our study participants talked individually and as a group

In addition to describing her own unawareness, Leslie alluded to the de-

You know, in talking with other female superintendents and administrators, a

Another illustration of their personal reluctance to deal directly with gen-

Silent preparation programs. These female former superintendents also

It was totally silent. . . . I was working on my superintendency credential when I

Leslie, too, described her preparation programs at both the mid-management

“When I went through the midmanagement program, or even the superinten-

Silence of the profession. Amanda, Emma, and Leslie described educa-

Leslie concurred, describing a situation in which she had proposed a session

The women superintendents in our study described themselves as pro-

Integrated discourse. All of our study participants indicated that during

with inequality and sexism could be interwoven with professional conversa-

As Leslie’s comments illustrate, our study participants saw integrated dis-

University preparation programs. One of the places such an integrated

State agencies and professional organizations. University preparation

Thus, in Emma’s view, boards of trustees need sensitizing to issues of gender

Women’s upbringing. A final solution proposed by our study participants

I think we have to raise a woman to be tough. To be competitive. To take the

In describing the outcome of what a more balanced rearing of women could

women leaders’ identity formation intersects with the construction of leader-

Adkinson, J. A. (1981). Women in school administration: A review of the research. Review of

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