Women in Learning Leadership (WiLL): Unpacking Women’s School Management and Leadership Practices to Enhance Learning

• In Event: Empowering change through sound evidence: insights from collaborative, gender-centred applied education research in sub-Saharan Africa

Proposal

Women in Learning Leadership (WiLL) is a joint initiative of the Gender at the Centre Initiative hosted by IIEP-UNESCO Dakar and UNICEF Innocenti’s Global Office of Research and Foresight. Through an approach that combines the co-creation of evidence with national capacity development, hand in hand with Ministries of Education and partners, WiLL seeks to promote equitable gender representation in school management positions in low- and middle-income countries as part of the overall promotion of good practice in school leadership.

School leaders are strategic levers to foster quality education for all girls and boys. They motivate and empower teachers, build trust with communities, and foster a collaborative and enabling environment to improve learning for all girls and boys.

Despite promising findings revealing the influencing role of female school leadership in learning and other education outcomes, women remain largely underrepresented in school leadership roles and policies focusing on female school leaders are scarce, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Evidence from some countries in sub-Saharan African countries shows that as few as one in ten primary school leaders are women (Bergman, Alban, and Brossard, 2022).

Research has shown that being exposed to female leaders reduces negative stereotypes about women's roles, increases parents’ aspirations for their daughters, and helps reduce the educational attainment gender gap. Emerging evidence also suggests that female school leaders may adopt practices that contribute to better education outcomes. In several countries, they were found to do better at encouraging teacher attendance, providing pedagogical information, and engaging parents in children’s learning.

However, women remain largely underrepresented in school leadership positions and face major barriers to successfully performing their role. Even in countries where the representation of women among the teaching staff is relatively high, their numbers drop drastically in leadership positions.

Through an approach that combines the generation of evidence and its promotion for better policy-making and capacity building in participating countries, this project seeks to strengthen the impact of differentiated school leadership and management practices while promoting equitable gender representation in school leadership positions with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. New IIEP GCI evidence from Francophone Africa shows the potential of school leadership practices to improve learning in different countries. Characteristics of female directors compared with males include a higher propensity to propose tutoring sessions and meetings with parents and greater attention paid to teachers’ absenteeism (accompanied by lower rates of absenteeism).

With activities developed together with the government and other educational actors, the project has been successfully implemented in Benin and Madagascar.

During the session, we will report on how this research is enabling GCI to:

- generate evidence for a better understanding of women’s school leadership practices and the promotion of equitable gender representation in school management positions
- accompany evidence-based policy-making and social dialogue
- support the scale-up of effective school leadership practices among both women and men
- develop global public goods to advocate for evidence-based actions to improve school leadership and gender equity in education.

Author

• Carolina Alban, UNESCO IIEP