Abstract:

South Africa’s struggle against racial discrimination has received international exposure. Focus on gender disenfranchisement was, however, eclipsed by the struggle for racial redress. In the current climate of redress, post Apartheid South Africa has pledged an unequivocal commitment to the promotion of a unitary, non-sexist, non-racist education system. Several enabling national policies have been legislated to promote equity and access to those previously excluded by virtue of race and gender from participating and assuming leadership roles in key public domains. Despite women’s exclusion from other areas of public social engagement, teaching has remained a women-dominated profession. The affirmative action move, in South Africa, to appoint women to school leadership posts necessitates educating women to unlearn the myths about their lack of abilities and capabilities to ensure that they assume school leadership roles confidently and competently. Assuming leadership in educational contexts ravages by the scourge of HIV/AIDS, poverty, gender violence, and other social maladies call for extraordinary leadership skills among women educators.

This presentation will draw on qualitative data collected at various schools in Johannesburg, South Africa to:
(i) examine the experiences of female school leaders who have assumed leadership and management roles; and
(ii) the strategies that they are employing to respond to the educational leadership challenges that they have to navigate; and
(iii) reflect how their unique contextual experiences are informing feminist conceptions of educational leadership theories, images and metaphors.

Keywords:

Women in educational leadership, disadvantaged school communities, identity politics, female principals.