"Be Women, Stay Women, Become Women": A Critical Rethinking of Gender and Educational Leadership

• In Event: Women as K–12 Leaders

Abstract

Current research on gender and educational leadership focuses exclusively on women, making men the invisible gender. Critical Black Feminist scholars push work on women and educational leadership further by bringing intersectional identity into the discourse, but the research still describes women as leading in one way. New critical work in feminist, transfeminist and queer theory expands on existing work about gender identity. These theories bind gender, sexuality and race together to form messy, complex notions of gender. Patriarchal and white supremacist structures are dismantled by the understanding that gender identity is not biological destiny. Putting critical theory in conversation with gender and educational leadership literature will enable scholars to create liberatory frameworks to understand how gender identity impacts school leadership.

Author

• Sarah Odell, University of Wisconsin - Madison