The Lived Experiences of Female Leaders in Two University Settings: Perceived Supports, Barriers, and Challenges
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The dearth of women in higher education both as full professors and senior administrators is alarming, and the factors impeding their entrance and limiting their advancement are relatively unknown. The purpose of this research was to document the lived experiences of women leaders who were full professors or who held senior leadership positions in two universities in Atlantic Canada. I researched the perceived supports, challenges, and barriers that women leaders faced in their professional lives, as well as the influence of gender in their leadership positions. I approached the research from a social constructivism standpoint and utilized a phenomenological research design. I used standpoint theory to analyze the data. Data sources included two interviews with each participant and a seven-day leadership journal from each participant. Women noted multiple supports, challenges, and barriers in their personal and professional lives. Supports include husbands, mentors, workshops, and networking. Challenges and barriers included children, colleagues, work/life conflicts, invisibility, and a lack of leadership development programs. Findings indicated that gender equality has not been achieved in the postsecondary setting, and gendered expectations, sexism, and discrimination remain strong barriers for women. Applying standpoint theory, the social location of the participants impacted their lives, opinions, and views of leadership in postsecondary institutions. Their lived realities and experiences changed over time as the academic and institutional culture changed over time, and, as such, their views about women and leadership were altered. Implications of this work are that university leaders need to create supports for women and make them easily accessible, and create a women-friendly environment that will increase the ease with which women can enter, advance, and succeed in the institution.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".