Gender and headship in the twenty-first century

tended to see themselves in the caring and collaborative mode. However, in 2004,
the more directive style is much more common (in the 1990s research the style was
termed 'efficient' Coleman, 2002). There seems to have been a move to incorporate
a slightly harder, tougher edge to the leadership style reported, and for this tendency
to be shared by both men and women. Although the collaborative, caring and people
centred concepts dominate, the more directive/efficient mode of operation is a strong
second and this is slightly more so in the secondary sector and also slightly more
apparent amongst women than men.

The influence of national programmes and of the current agenda in schools can be
traced in the use in 2004 of words that were scarcely mentioned in the 1990s.
Notable amongst these are:

inclusion
affiliative
coaching
authoritative
visionary.

Some of these terms are derived from the work of consultants Hay McBer and are
used in the Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers (LPSH).

In addition to the unprompted words that the heads gave to describe their style, they
were also asked to pick from a list, termed by Gray (1993) as ‘gender paradigms’
those qualities that they felt applied to them as a manager and a leader. As in the
previous surveys in the 1990s, there was very little difference between the choices of
the men and the women, with both choosing qualities that mainly came from the
'feminine' paradigm supporting their earlier free choice of many caring and
collaborative adjectives. From Tables 18 and 19 below the similarity between the
choices of the men and women can be seen.

Table 18: Secondary headteachers % choosing the gender related words that
they felt applied to them

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