Gender and headship in the twenty-first century

whilst the women headteachers are still quite likely to take most or an equal share of
the responsibilities with their partner, the men headteachers are not (see Table 16).
Since about ten per cent of the women state that their partners have retired, a
number of these retired people will be responsible for the situation where the women
heads are taking less than 50 per cent of the domestic responsibilities. What is most
noticeable is that the men heads generally have a lot of support when it comes to
domestic matters with a very traditional division of labour in their households. This
applies to the younger as well as the older men. In around 70 per cent of the male
heads’ households their wives/partners have most of the responsibility. Only two per
cent of secondary men heads and three per cent of primary men heads take most of
the domestic responsibility. In the homes of the women heads, a third of the
secondary women and 40 per cent of the primary women heads have overall
responsibility for the home. The only change since the earlier surveys is that the
balance has shifted slightly for the women secondary heads with a third rather than
40 per cent taking most of the responsibility. The pattern for the male heads has not
changed at all.

Table 16: Sharing domestic responsibilities with partner % (secondary heads
only)

Primary heads were not surveyed in the 1990s, but in 2004 the shares of domestic
responsibility follow the same pattern as for the secondary heads, although the
primary women are more likely to take major responsibility with 41 per cent of women
primary heads are more likely to take more than 50 per cent of the share and only 16
per cent under 50 per cent of the share of domestic responsibility.

Follow your partner

One of the constraints on a career can be a move to a different location. Traditionally
this has involved women in following their husband/partner when he has a career
move, to the detriment of their career. As a result women have often built up a
variety of experience gained piecemeal rather than in a planned fashion, as they take
on work where it is available to them.

As with the division of domestic responsibilities, two patterns emerge from the data,
one for the women headteachers, and one for the men. In the case of the women
secondary heads there was only a small difference between the proportion of women
changing jobs to follow their partner and their partner changing jobs to follow them.
A different model emerges for the male heads where it was rare for the male
secondary headteachers to have followed their wife/partner (four per cent) and
relatively normal for their wife/partner to have followed them (53 per cent). Although
there was a similar pattern for the primary heads, in all cases the proportions were
smaller, indicating less geographical movement for primary heads. This would be

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