White Women In School Leadership Summary

A study by Reed (2012) examined how the intersectionalities of race and gender influence the practices of three black public secondary school administrators. Reed used Bloom’s and Erlandson’s (2003) four assumptions on Black feminist epistemology—the blending of people’s history and lived experience, commonalities within lived experience, the variance within standpoints, and the non-existence of a universal identification of oppression of black women—as a theoretical framework to organize her findings. The participants revealed not only their encounters with various challenges but also how they navigated those challenges based on their gender and race positions. Reed found that the three black female participants faced the minimization of their power because of their gender and age, none had experienced being mentored by a black female principal, and her participants’ response to oppression usually involved “creative insubordination.” In adding to the literature …show more content…
Rusch (2004) found that professors in school administration preparation programs indicated that engaging in useful—and needed—discussion on gender and race cause stress leading to a paucity of these themes in the area of school leadership preparation. Indeed, Rusch concludes, “The documented fear of equity discourse and the avoidance of opportunity to gain knowledge related to gender and race in leadership are the most confounding findings” (p. 41) of her study. Chase (1995) reveals that in the process of conducting their study of female school superintendents, Bell and Chase “felt much more self-conscious when asking about their experiences with gender, racial, or ethnic inequality” (p. 16). The lack of discussion of critical issues—such as gender and race—in graduate programs limits this country’s ability to create more democratic