The Importance of Executive Women Leaders' Lifelong Stories and Vulnerability in Interrogating Higher Education's Patriarchy

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: Centering Gender and Race in Leadership Practices (Table 10)

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between the experiences and leadership of women leaders in patriarchally framed higher education institutions. Narrative inquiry methodology and narrative identity and feminist poststructuralism frameworks guided six executive-level current and retired women leaders in the California Community College and California State University systems as they narrated the connection between their life story experiences and their leadership, identities, and conceptualizations of power. How the women narrate their life stories presents important implications for women on a pathway to executive leadership and provides ample reason for organizations to dismantle patriarchal structures to make space for feminist leadership that holds the potential to address the current issues facing higher education institutions.

Authors

• Cynthia Luna, California State University - Fresno
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Moradian Watson, California State University - Fresno
  Presenting Author