Supporting women leaders in postsecondary education: Opinion

Postsecondary leadership must work to mitigate inequality and promote an inclusive environment to support female leaders, writes Lucy Meredith. While there have been notable gains in the supports for women as academic staff, Meredith argues that work must be done in the area of senior leadership to address the cultural expectations and stereotypes preventing gender equality in these areas. The author says that typical “ideal” leadership traits are also often stereotypically considered “masculine,” which can lead to female leaders receiving harsher evaluations simply for answering questions differently from male respondents. Meredith recommends that institutions become better at taking advantage of female talent by encouraging women to participate in development programs, changing role-related gender stereotypes, offering unconscious bias training, and tackling inequality and discrimination Times Higher Ed (Subscription) Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.