Women in Educational Administration and The Glass Ceiling

Women in Educational Administration and The Glass Ceiling

Several people at the conference dealt with the problems women encounter in getting into administrative positions in schools and colleges and when they do, the obstacles they encounter in making their jobs successful. Their discussions brought home to me the reality of my own mother's experience. As children we witnessed our mother struggling, summer after summer and during many school years in the evenings, with those courses required for an administrative license. The state gave her that license some twelve years ago, but she is still teaching mathematics in high school. We used to tease her when we were growing up calling her "principal mom" and "assistant principal mom" and the like and pretending that she called us into her office for punishment. We do not do that any more because we know it won't be fun and games any more but it will be a cruel joke if we did that. What made her disillusioned about the career of an administrator in her school system in which she served nearly a quarter of a century?

It has to do with what is known as a glass ceiling. Administrative positions are open to all qualified persons. They are up there within everyone's view. All you have to do is qualify yourself with the appropriate education and skills. The law of the land makes every person eligible for them. All employers proclaim in their policy statements that they are "equal opportunity employers." But when women reach for them, the invisible ceiling stops them. A cruel tease indeed!

My mother said she would not talk to me about her own reluctance to pursue an administrative career, despite all the efforts she put in to qualify for it. She said I should talk with...

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...ishawaka, and Penn-Harris-Madison School Systems.

2. For information on local colleges and universities, I interviewed 12 professors and administrators at Saint Mary's College and the University of Notre Dame.

3. For information on the status of women in educational administration on the regional and national level, I used the following sources:

a. Patricia T. Whitfield, Status of Access of Women and Minorities to Administrative Positions in Idaho. ERIC TITLE No. ED 323907.

b. Kathryn M. Moore, Women and Minorities. Leaders in Transition: A National Study of Higher Education Administrators. ERIC TITLE No. ED 225459.

c. University of New Hampshire President's Commission on Status of Women. University of New Hampshire, 1993.

d. Rene Redwood, The Glass Ceiling: The Findings and Recommendations of the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission. Washington, D.C. 1996.