Women Principals in a Multicultural Society: New Insights into Feminist Educational Leadership

Women Principals in a Multicultural Society New Insights into Feminist Educational Leadership

Women Principals in a Multicultural Society New Insights into Feminist Educational Leadership Edited by Izhar Oplatka Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel And Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz University of Haifa, Israel

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Paperback ISBN: 90-77874-27-5 Hardbound ISBN: 90-77874-28-3 Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands http://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2006 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

Izhar wishes to dedicate this book to his wife, Edna Oplatka, and their children Shelly, Itai, and Tal, and to thank them for their support and empathy. Rachel wishes to dedicate this book to Reuven Lazarowitz and their children and grandchildren, and to her late mother, Batia Hertz (1916-2004), a woman who valued the uniqueness of people.

CONTENT Content

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

About the Editors

xi

Introduction Introduction Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz and Izhar Oplatka

3

Section I: Women Principals and the Multicultural Society 1

2

3

Women’s leadership in education: A review of the knowledge base Izhar Oplatka and Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz

17

Women, educational leadership, and cultural context: A crosscultural analytical framework Clive Dimmock and Allan Walker

33

Women in the Israeli Educational System Audrey Addi-Raccah

49

Section II: Leading a School Within My Social Group 4

5

6

7

Why are there so few Palestinian Women in Principalship positions? Nabil Khattab and Jamil Ibrahim Equality, Autonomy, and innovativeness: The life story of secular women principals in Israel Izhar Oplatka The diamond workshop; A story of ultra-orthodox female principals Mira Karnieli “They felt I raped a role that was not supposed to be mine”: First woman principal in a Bedouin tribal society Sarab Aburabia-Queder

71

89

103

123

vii

8 9

Leadership in a multicultural school: Does Gender Matter? Devorah Eden and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman Women as participative leaders: Understanding participative leadership from a cross-cultural perspective Anit Somech

139

155

Section III: Epilogue and Reflection 10

11

viii

Seeing beyond difference: Women administrators in Canada and Israel Janice Wallace

175

Epilogue: Feminist pedagogy; An alternative look at female leadership Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz & Izhar Oplatka

193

Bio Notes

205

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank the authors of this volume for their time, energy and efforts that brought about the completion of this important book. Without their unique contribution this book could not appear. The contributors truly represent the multicultural message of the book, and the interaction with them was a rewarding experience for the editors A special gratitude is given to the University of Haifa, to the Ben Gurion University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Dept. of Education for their financial support in the production of this book. Mrs. Dee B. Ankonina who edited the various chapter of this book deserves much professional appreciation. Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz Thanks the social/ personality program and faculty in the Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center in the City University of New York (CUNY) for their academic support while being there on sabbatical in 2004-2005.

ix

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Rachel Hertz Lazarowitz is a professor of Social and Educational Psychology at the faculty of Education in the University of Haifa. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research areas are intergroup relations across gender and religion, and cooperative learning. She Published widely in English and Hebrew, in 2004 she edited with Zelniker, Stephan and White, Stephan a special issue on Arab-Jewish coexistence programs in the Journal of Social Issues. E-mail: [email protected] Izhar Oplatka is a senior lecturer in the division of educational administration and policy in the Department of Education, Ben Gurion University, Israel. His current areas of interest are the career development of schoolteachers and principals, gender in educational administration, and educational marketing. He has published many articles in leading journals in the field of educational administration and comparative education, such as Educational Administration Quarterly (2006), Journal of Educational Administration (2004), and Comparative Education Review (2002). His book From Burnout to Renewal: The Life Story of Women Principals in Israel (2002) was the first book published in Hebrew about the lives and careers of female principals. E-mail: [email protected]

xi

INTRODUCTION

RACHEL HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & IZHAR OPLATKA

INTRODUCTION

One of the challenges to feminist research and methodology and to women’s school leadership, particularly, comes from women’s ability or inability to actualize their varied experiences within the schools they lead. The literature on women’s leadership in schools searches for unique leadership styles of women, but ignores other important factors such as cultural differences, economic and socialpolitical divisions, race and nationality, religion and identity. The complex relations among the above factors shape the being and doing of women principals’ professional lives in different ways around the world. The need for a broader perspective is further supported by researchers of multiculturalism, who maintain that multiculturalism in its various guises clearly signals a crisis in the definition of “nation” (Bennett, 1998). A nation can be divided into diverse social groups that each represent a different set of cultural scripts and, therefore, are also termed “micro-cultures.” Ethnic and racial differences among these micro-cultures are addressed as a question of “identity” rather than of history and politics. People who belong to the same micro-cultures share cultural identities and values that bind them together as a group (Gollnick & Chinn, 1986). In line with this criticism and from a multicultural standpoint, it is premised that women principals’ professional experiences may be influenced by their microculture, as well as by their position as women. Voices of women principals in diverse cultural settings may provide insight into a variety of “female” leadership perspectives emanating from their cultural scripts. Thus, this book is based on the assumption that discourse on a “female” style of leadership is dangerous and simplistic, for claiming that gender is the main contributor to management behavior and style may result in an unreal and even distorted picture of the lives of women principals (Blackmore, 1999; Court, 1998; Oplatka, 2001, 2002; Reay & Ball, 2000, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Shapira 2005). Following Hall (1996), therefore, who claimed that gender is not a sole explanatory factor for men’s and women’s performance in their jobs, this book incorporates the concept of “multiculturalism” as a central variable in exploring women principals’ accomplishments of their role. The book critically analyzes the intersecting issues of gender, school leadership and multicultural experiences as expressed in women’s school principalship in the diverse micro-cultures composing Israeli society. The micro-cultures within Israel contain groups that share cultural patterns not common to the Israeli macro-culture. These various micro-cultures include Jews of different ethnic groups; Arabs with I. Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 3–13. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

various religious affiliations; secular and religious groups; immigrants; foreign workers; and their children. All of the above are living in various settings in Israel. Each group has distinctive cultural patterns while sharing some cultural patterns with all members of Israeli macro-culture. Coupled with the high percentage of women principals in the Israeli educational system, Israel may be considered a “laboratory” for larger western countries that must cope with multicultural education systems and diverse ethnic groups. Potential readers from Europe and North America may find Israel to be a case study for understanding the impact of diversity on the nature of female principalship. The multicultural makeup of Israel is structured within a segregated educational system regulated by the state. This reality enables us to better analyse the impact of micro-cultures on gender and school leadership. The most important aspects of this book are its emphasis on a multicultural view of women and principalship. To put it simply, the book’s main contribution is its attempt to explore women principals’ lives and careers in a variety of social and ethnic groups, assuming that cultural scripts and values render some influence upon their leadership styles, career development, and professional issues. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comparative documentation of women principals’ leadership styles and perspective from a multicultural standpoint. We believe that women principals engaging in multicultural society may present multiple professional identities that are strongly linked both with their gender and with the cultural patterns of their specific micro-culture. Embedded in this assumption are issues of social interests, beliefs, goals, values, and commitment that may potentially impact the perceptions and performance of women principals, which, in turn, may engender diverse leadership styles among women in education. Put differently, in multicultural societies a mosaic of "female" principalship may emerge, and this issue may be examined within the multicultural society of Israel. In addition, this book presents typically unheard voices of women principals in minority groups, such as religious groups and immigrants, who act and live in a modern country but experience marginalization. Modern theories in educational administration originating mostly in North America and the British Commonwealth nations have ignored these women and focused mainly on women principals from the mainstream (usually White middle class). Therefore, this book also examines the relevancy of established feminist theories in educational administration to other groups of women in principalship. ISRAEL: THE LAND FOR AN ANCIENT AND A NEW NATION

The State of Israel, named such by its Jewish majority since 1948, and by us as the Jewish editors of the book, is the continuation of a long history regarding this part of the Middle East. Called Judea in the biblical era and Palestine before 1948, this region holds one of the most ancient lands and ancient peoples of the Mediterranean. The land was “promised” to Abraham in the biblical era. Based on the Old Testament, Jews claim this land was promised to Isaac, one of the three founding fathers of the Jewish people/religion. Israel is the birthplace of the three 4

INTRODUCTION

monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The people of the Holy Land survived many rulers, battles between Muslims and Christians, and exile. The educational system that is addressed in this book was developed by the Jews at the end of the 19th century (circa 1880). The Jewish people, mainly from Europe, began returning to the region, settled in small but growing numbers in the land then called Palestine. In recent times, World War I and the concomitant conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain (1917) ended with victory for Great Britain and the British Mandate that ruled Palestine until 1947. Israel was granted its independence as a Jewish state in 1947 by the British Crown and the United Nations Council. The temporary Jewish government accepted the “Partition Plan” (1917), followed by the Balfour Declaration (1929), declaring the right of the Jews to have their own homeland. The 1947 plan was to create two states for two nations: one for the Arabs who lived in Palestine and one for the Jews. At that time there were about 600,000 Jews, many of them survivors of the Holocaust in World War II, and half a million Arabs (Auni-Serge, 1994; Rekhess, 1998). Upon withdrawal of the military forces by Great Britain in 1948, the new nation, Israel, was attacked by the armies of seven Arab nations who did not accept the Partition Plan and who accused the Jews and the British Crown of colonialism, imperialism, and invasion of their land. The Jews, who won this war, called it the War of Independence. The Arabs called this same war the Nakba – disaster or catastrophe (Ghanim, 2001). Before 1948, the country was binational, with Arab and Jewish inhabitants. In the course of the War of Independence, many Arab inhabitants fled, or were exiled and became refugees (Lustick, 1994). In subsequent years, Jews from over 100 countries of the Diaspora settled in Israel. Many of them were survivors of the Holocaust, and many others were exiled or fled from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Israel is today a state of immigrants, a binational, multiethnic and multi-religious state, with almost seven million citizens, of which Arabs comprise about 20%. The state is divided into social, national, and political enclaves (White-Stephan, Hertz-Lazarowitz, Zelniker, & Stephan, 2004). MULTICULTURALISM WITHIN CONFLICT AND COEXISTENCE

Israeli society, despite the small size of its population, is becoming ever more diverse, like most societies in the western world. This diversity relates to national, social-political, economic, religious, and cultural spheres. Social scientists pinpoint four major divisions in Israeli society: the national division between Jews and Arabs; the level of religiosity between orthodox religiously observant Jews and secular Jews; the ethnic division between Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern origin and Ashkenazi Jews of European and American origin; and the most recent division between native Israelis and immigrants, mostly but not only from the former Soviet Union (Addi-Raccah, this volume; Kalekin-Fishman, 2004; Khattab & Ibrahim, this volume; Horowitz, 2000; Smooha, 1997).

5

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

The intensity of the divisions and the conflicts that arise among the different groups reflect changes within Israeli society. For example, the division between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews was very bitter and violent in the 1950s and 1960s, but it then abated, partly due to intermarriages and compensatory state policies. On the other hand, the Jewish-Arab division within the State of Israel has persisted for all the years of its existence, since 1948. Issues of identity, civic equality, domination, and oppression are constantly voiced within Israeli society (Halabi & Sonnenschein, 2004; Rouhana, 1997). Within the Arab population in Israel, the majority (80%) is Muslim, 10% is Christian, 5% is Druze, and the remainder comprises Bedouin, Circassian, and other small groups. Most Arabs (90%) live in mono-ethnic villages, whereas most Jews live in mono-ethnic cities. Israel has only five mixed Arab-Jewish cities (Ghanim, 2001; Zelniker &Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2005). Relations between the Israeli Arab citizens and the Israeli Jewish citizens within Israel are strongly affected by two facets of the country's political reality. On the one hand, within Israel, Arab citizens work through their formal representatives in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and through many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are used as lobby agents to enhance equality in civil rights and resource allocation by the state to the Arab sector. On the other hand, the Israeli Arabs uphold a unique political relationship with the Palestinian Authority and people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The fate of the Arab people in the “occupied” territories (dovish terminology), or the “liberated” territories (hawkish terminology), deepens the division between Jews and Arabs within Israel. This division has become a central issue in Israel in the years since the first Intifada (uprising) in 1989, and more so since the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, after a short period of hope for peace following the Oslo Agreement that collapsed with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995 (Sharoni & AbuNimer, 2000; White-Stephan et al., 2004). However, this political reality has not overtly affected in a negative way the Arab educational system in Israel, which continues to strive with noticeable success to excel within the constraints of Jewish majority control (Al-Haj, 1998). Many extracurricular coexistence programs are being conducted with Arab and Jewish schools (Hertz-Lazarowitz, Kupermintz, & Lang, 1999; Maoz, 2004), in addition to the many innovative educational projects sponsored and developed by the Israeli Ministry of Education within each of the two sectors (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2004). Recently, Arab and Jewish school principals have also been working together to improve education within their mixed cities (Eden & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2002). Several of the chapters in this book relate to the Arab sector and its unique micro-context, and to the unique, segregated secular and religious micro-cultures within the Jewish sector. The voices of Arab women and of religious Jewish women were rarely documented in the Israeli public sphere because they were marginal to secular Jewish society (Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shapira, 2005; Osem, 2004). Thus, these chapters are pioneering works about women’s leadership, and

6

INTRODUCTION

offer important contributions to the understanding of the macro- and microprocesses of empowerment and obstruction within these micro cultures. ISRAEL'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Education in Israel is segregated by nationality and degree of adherence to religious practices, with separate educational sectors for religious and secular Jewish children and for Arab children, with each sector including both state and non-state schools. Non-state private schools for reform (moderately religious) Jews and ultra-orthodox Jews as well as Arab church-affiliated schools do receive partial government funding (Al-Haj, 1998; Elboim-Dror, 1986; Mar’i, 1978). The language of studies for Jewish children in state and non-state schools is Hebrew, and for the Arab children in Arab schools is Arabic. Jewish children (with the exception of children in the non-state ultra-orthodox schools) take English as a second language in the third or fourth grade, and later can choose French or Arabic as a third language. Arab children take Hebrew as a second language in the second or third grade (Abu Rabia, 2005; Ben-Rafael, 1994, and then can choose English or French as a third language. Because of the segregation, the likelihood of Jewish children meeting Arab children or of religious orthodox Jewish children meeting secular Jewish children is very low (Zelniker & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2005). The school structure is generally arranged in three units: 6 years of elementary school, 3 years of junior high school, and 3 years of high school. Some districts also operate by 6+6 unit systems, and a small minority of districts continues to operate the 8 + 4 year structure that typified the educational system until "integration reform" began in 1968. Preschool education in Israel is mandatory and free for 5year-old children, but Israel has a high preschool attendance from age 2. In all these levels of schooling, the system is segregated as described above (ElboimDror, 1986). The only institutions of learning that are integrated by nationality, religion, and levels of religiosity are the seven main Israeli universities, where all groups of Israeli society can meet (Gilat, 2004; Hofman, 1988). However, despite its unique importance, this integration is very limited in terms of the number of students who actually attend those universities: about 35% of Jewish high school graduates and only 5% of Arab high school graduates. Although some educational programs work to facilitate cross-national encounters betweens Jews and Arabs and intranational encounters between religious and secular Jews, the level of segregation remains very high. Many Jews express distress and fear over the growing Arab population in the state, and many Arabs feel angry about the unequal distribution of resources and discrimination that they attribute to national and local politics (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2003). Moreover, a deep division exists between orthodox and secular Jews and, likewise, between fundamentalist and modern Muslims. To date, the numbers of students, teachers, and principals in non-state schools operated by religious organizations is growing within both national groups. These increasing subdivisions in the educational system arise from the country's lack of legal 7

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

separation between religion and state and from the political state of affairs in the Israeli Knesset where different political parties (at the time of this writing, over 10) can exercise their power to attain resources for their non-state education sub-sector. Within this power relation matrix, the dominance of the Jewish political parties results in discriminative policies and unequal allocation of resources that favor the Jews (Al-Haj, 1998; Elboim-Dror, 1986; Mar'i, 1978; Kalekin-Fishman, 2004). The Arab minority in general suffers from a number of profound problems: Income level for the Arab population is below the national average and generally lower than that of the Jewish population. The majority of Arabs live in villages and small cities in segregated areas, and are remote from centers of business, industry, and higher education. Only about 10% of the Arabs are living in mixed cities. Despite Israel's law requiring mandatory education up through graduation from high school, the percentage of Arab students at risk is higher then that of the Jews; Arab academic outcomes are lower as measured by the matriculation exams that afford admittance to universities, and the dropout rate, usually during high school, is higher in the Arab sector (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002). The state, the local authorities, and schools make a genuine effort to increase the percentages of Arab students who successfully complete the matriculation exams and can be admitted to college level education. For example, in a 5-year educational program held in one of the five mixed cities in Israel, the percentage of Arab high school graduates with a matriculation certificate was only 29% in 1995. By 2002, the percentage had risen to 43%, but was still lower than that of the Jewish high school graduates in the same mixed city (51%) (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2003). OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

This book is organized into three sections. The first section, “Women Principals and the Multicultural Society,” includes three chapters that set the overall stage for the case studies of women principals from a multicultural perspective, emphasizing the need to explore women in principalship in a wide variety of cultural groups. In Chapter One, “Women’s Leadership in Education: A Review of the Knowledge Base,” the editors, Izhar Oplatka and Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz, present the literature on women and leadership in education, including issues of leadership styles, barriers to female advancement into principalship, profiles of women principals, career development of women principals, role-family conflict, and so forth, and discuss major critical writings on feminist thinking in education. In Chapter Two, “Women, Educational Leadership, and Cultural Context: A Cross-Cultural Analytical Framework,” Clive Dimmock and Allan Walker present a comparative view of leadership in different multicultural societies. This chapter outlines and applies a comprehensive and relevant cultural framework within which women leaders in different societies and types of schools can be researched rigorously and systematically. Dimmock and Walker advocate the assumptions that studies of women leaders in education need to be cognizant of the cultural and contextual settings within which their leadership is exercised. In doing so, these 8

INTRODUCTION

authors present a theoretical background for the subsequent case studies of women principals in diverse cultural groups. In Chapter Three, “women in the Israeli Educational System,” Audrey AddiRaccah uses statistical and previous research data to explain women’s participation rates in school management and presents the characteristics of women principals in the different educational sectors in Israel. Her chapter relates to the three state educational sectors that are fully supported and controlled by the state: the Arab sector, the secular Jewish sector, and the Jewish national religious sector. The second section, "Leading a School Within My Social Group," comprises six chapters, each presenting a case study that describes, analyzes, and reflects on the leadership management of a particular group of women principals in their unique school environment within a particular sector and context. Altogether, these chapters depict a variety of educational subsystems and how women principals lead their schools in the specific micro-culture within which the school, the principal, and the staff operate. These authors draw concluding thoughts about these specific principal's contribution to a general understanding of women’s school leadership in multicultural or non-western societies and, when possible, also outline some practical guidelines for principals in multicultural societies, with implications for policy makers and directions for future research. It is hoped that the readers will find their own ways to extend these authors' perspectives on women’s leadership and will thereby engage in an interactive, multicultural dialogue. In the first of these case studies, in Chapter Four, “Why are there so few Palestinian Women in Principalship Positions,” Nabil Khattab and Jamil Ibrahim use the term Palestinians to define and relate to the Arab citizens of the State of Israel. This chapter serves as a continuation of the prior chapter by Audrey AddiRaccah about Israeli society, and looks deeper into the Arab society within the country. The authors provide statistical data in order to address the issue of why so few Palestinian women hold leadership positions within the Israeli-Arab educational system. Khattab and Ibrahim pinpoint two socio cultural factors affecting female career trajectories in this minority. Palestinian males hold a unique status due to the patriarchy within traditional Arab society and due to the general rarity of high-level occupational positions accessible to the marginalized Arab minority group within Israel. The chapter presents a short case study of a women principal to illustrate the slow feminization of women principalship in this sector. In Chapter Five, "Equality, Autonomy, and Innovativeness: The Life Story of Secular Women Principals in Israel," Izhar Oplatka displays the career development and leadership styles of female principals who work in the mainstream educational system in Israel. They are non-observant, secular Jews who live in a modern society, whose values are drawn, by and large, from the western world, especially from US. The author connects major issues in their careers (e.g., career entry, the induction stage in principalship, leadership style, role performance) to the dominant cultural scripts in the non-observant Jewish society of Israel. It is assumed that in spite of the influence of gender upon their career,

9

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

many of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at work appear to be associated with the liberal, democratic society in which they live and work. In Chapter Six, "The Diamond Workshop: The Story of Ultra-Orthodox Female Principals," Mira Karnieli addresses the unique situation of the ultra-orthodox woman principal who must adapt to bridge the family-work conflict that predominates for women in this socially closed group. This pioneering article provides a rare opportunity to look at the lives and careers of ultra-orthodox women. The case study gives insight into the vision and mission of one particular school principal who aims to empower her young female students to "shine like diamonds" in their education yet also seeks to educate them to maintain the woman’s place in religious tradition. In Chapter Seven, “'They Felt I Raped a Role That Was Not Supposed To Be Mine:' First Woman Principal in a Bedouin Tribal Society," Sarab AburabiaQueder presents the strategies used by one of the two women principals in the Bedouin society in Israel, to help her cope with cultural obstacles and to attain the status of “administrator-principal” in a local Bedouin school in southern Israel. This chapter examines her many struggles as the first woman entering the public sphere in Bedouin society, in educational management. When she is perceived to be in power, in her authoritative role, this principal's stubborn yet somewhat tender way of confronting cultural norms, creates a unique management style, which is stemming from her specific cultures' demands. This description provides the reader with a special approach to female leadership in schools within this society and culture. In Chapter Eight, “Leadership in a Multicultural School: Does Gender Matter?,” Devorah Eden and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman explore how a woman principal made her personal commitment to cope with an uncommon multicultural population: the children of temporary immigrant workers who had mostly entered Israel illegally from various countries. The two researchers visited and observed the Jewish state-secular elementary school located within the “ghetto” of foreign workers’ families, and interviewed the principal. Their chapter presents the school work and routine and the principal's innovative leadership with this population. The principal defines herself as a person who is highly aware and responsive to human rights, and this case study has already gained much attention in Israel, even leading to new regulations that promote these children's rights and well-being. In Chapter Nine, “Women as Participative Leaders: Understanding Participative Leadership from a Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Anit Somech compares women principals who have adopted a participative leadership style in the kibbutz with their counterparts in the urban sector. Participative and cooperative lifestyles in Israel have long comprised the core values in Jewish society in general and in kibbutz communal life in particular (Hertz-Lazarowitz & Zelniker, 1995). Somech explores how culture shapes the philosophy and strategy of these principals' participative leadership style. The third and final section, “Epilogue and Reflection,” contains two concluding and reflective chapters to sum up the cases and link them with other countries, theories, and models of women in principalship and other areas of study. 10

INTRODUCTION

In Chapter Ten, “Seeing beyond Differences: Women Administrators in Canada and Israel,” Janice Wallace connects the research on cases from an Israeli multicultural context to her own work as well as the work of other Canadian researchers who have explored the challenges faced by women principals in that country. In Canada, cultural history and socioeconomic opportunities, including opportunities to become school administrators, are organized around linguistic, religious, racial, and ethnic diversity, as well as gender, which are all addressed in state-initiated multicultural policy. Wallace uses a reflexive post structural reading of the discourses that are revealed in the Israeli case studies to determine what they disclose about the meanings that shape multiculturalism, patriarchy, and women’s “place” within educational bureaucracies. In Chapter Eleven, "Epilogue: Feminist Pedagogy – An Alternative Look at Female Leadership," the editors, Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz and Izhar Oplatka, examine several of the book's major, challenging themes in order to explore general and specific issues that have emerged from the different micro-cultural contextual case studies. The editors propose that women principals can empower their unique leadership style by connecting leadership management to pedagogy. When the school leaders’ vision and mission are based on critical feminist and multicultural pedagogies, multiculturalism in various forms may become a meaningful and empowering reality for all school participants. REFERENCES Abu Rabia, S. (Editor). (2005). The language resources of Israel. A special issue of: Language Culture and Curriculum, 18(1), 1-138. Al-Haj, M. (1998). Education, empowerment and control: The case of the Arabs in Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press. Auni-Segre, D. (1994). Israel: A society in transition. In I. S. Lustick (Ed.), The conflict with the Arabs in Israeli politics and society (pp. 29-49). New York: Garland. Ben-Rafael, E. (1994). Language, identity, and social division: The case of Israel. New York: Oxford University Press. Bennett, D. (Ed.). (1998). Multicultural states: Rethinking difference and identity. London: Routledge. Blackmore, J. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, leadership and educational change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Court, M. R. (1998). Women challenging managerialism: Devolution dilemmas in the establishment of co-principalship in primary schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand. School Leadership and Management, 18(1), 35-57. Eden, D., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2002). The political power of school principals in Israel: A case study. Journal of Educational Administration, 40(3), 211-230. Elboim-Dror, R. (1986). Jewish education in Eretz Israel. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi. [Hebrew]. Ghanem, A. (2001). The Palestinian-Arab minority in Israel, 1948-2001: A political study. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gilat, A. (2004). Strategies for empowerment: Jewish and Muslim religious and secular women in the university. Unpublished manuscript, Faculty of Eduction, Haifa University Gollnick, D. M., & Chinn, P. C. (1986). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society. Columbus: Merrill. Halabi, R., & Sonnenschein, N. (2004). The Jewish-Arab encounter in a time of crisis. Journal of Social Issues, 60, (2), 372-387.

11

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA Hall, V. (1996). Dancing on the ceiling: A study of women managers in education. London: Paul Chapman. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2003). Arab and Jewish youth in Israel: Voicing national injustice on campus. Journal of Social Issues, 59(1), 51-66. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2004). Existence and coexistence in Acre: The power of educational activism. Journal of Social Issues, 60(2), 357-373. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., Kupermintz, H., & Lang, J. (1999). Arab-Jewish students’ encounters. In E. Weiner (Ed.), Handbook of interethnic coexistence (pp. 565-585). New York: Continuum. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Shapira, T. (2005). Muslim women's life stories: Building leadership. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36(2), 165-181. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Zelniker, T. (1995).Cooperative learning in the Israeli context: Historical, educational and cultural perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 23, 267-285. Hofman, J. E. (Ed.). (1988). Arab-Jewish relationships in Israel. Bristol, UK: Wyndham Hall Press. Horowitz, T. (2000). Violence as a social phenomenon. Jerusalem: Szold Institute. [Hebrew]. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2002). The Arab population in Israel. (Publication No. 26.) Jerusalem: [Hebrew]. Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2004). Ideology, policy and practice: Education for immigrants and minorities in Israel today. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. Lustick, I. S. (Ed.). (1994). The conflict with the Arabs in Israeli politics and society. New York: Garland. Maoz, I. (2004). Coexistence is in the eye of the beholder: Evaluating inter-group encounter interventions between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Journal of Social Issues, 60(2), 437-452. Mar’i, M. (1978). Education in Israel. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Oplatka, I. (2001). I changed my management style: The cross gender transition of women head teachers in mid-career. School Leadership and Management, 21(2), 219-233. Oplatka, I. (2002). Women principals and the concept of burnout: An alternative voice? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 5(3), 211-226. Osem, G. (2004, July). Malka Haas: An unvoiced story of an educational women leader in the religious kibbutz movement in Israel. Paper presented at Ephrata’s 80th anniversary conference, Jerusalem. Reay, D., & Ball, S. J. (2000). Essentials of female management. Educational Management and Administration, 28(2), 145-159. Rekhess, E. (1988). First steps in the crystallization of Israeli policy toward the Palestinian minority. Monthly Review, 34, 33-36. [Hebrew]. Rouhana, N. (1997). Palestinian citizens in an ethnic Jewish state: Identities and conflict. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shapira, T., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2004). The life story of three Muslim women in leadership positions. Gadish: The Adult Education Journal, 9, 180-200. [Hebrew]. Sharoni, S., & Abu-Nimer, M. (2000). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In D. J. Gerner (Ed.), Understanding the contemporary Middle East (pp. 161-200). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Smooha, S. (1997). Ethnic democracy: Israel as an archetype. Israel Studies, 2(2), 198-241. [Hebrew]. White-Stephan, C., Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., Zelniker, T. & Stephan, W.G. (2004). Introduction to improving Arab-Jewish relations in Israel: Theory and practice in coexistence educational programs. Journal of Social Issues, 60(2), 237-252. Zelniker, T., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2005). School-family partnership for coexistence (SFPC) in the city of Acre: Promoting Arab and Jewish parents’ role as facilitators of children’s literacy development and as agents of coexistence. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 18(1), 114-138.

Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz Faculty of Education Haifa University, Israel

12

INTRODUCTION

Izhar Oplatka Department of Education Ben Gurion University, Israel

13

Section I: Women Principals and the Multicultural Society

IZHAR OPLATKA & RACHEL HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

1. WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION A Review of the Knowledge Base

INTRODUCTION

Women’s under-representation in senior managerial positions in schools was well documented throughout the 1970s and 1980s in many western countries, including the U.K. (Acker, 1989) and the U.S.A. (Shakeshaft, 1989). This underrepresentation of women was most strikingly evident in superintendency and high school principalship, in stark contrast with women's over-representation in the teaching occupation (Lad, 2000). However, the proportion of women principals and assistant principals has been steadily increasing in many countries. Research during the second half of the 1990s onward indicates improvement in the number of women obtaining secondary principalship (Banks, 1995; Coleman, 2002; Hill & Ragland, 1995; Lad, 2000; Young, 2000). Concurrently, research on women in principalship has become a significant field of study, and many books and articles that focus on female principals have been published since the appearance of Carol Shakeshaft's classic 1989 work (Women in Educational Administration). Over time, researchers and writers have addressed three different sets of questions. The first set, dominating early research, addressed issues of gender inequality in promotion to principalship, external and internal barriers for women’s progress in school, and the like (e.g., Acker, 1989; Blackmore, 1989; Davies, 1990; Evetts, 1991; Shakeshaft, 1989). The main research questions early on were: Why are there so few women school administrators? How were gender inequalities created and structured within school administrations? How have these inequalities been maintained and perpetuated? A second set of questions addressed the differentiation between men and women principals regarding attitudes and behaviors. Researchers of gender and educational administration have observed women principals in their work and have explored their characteristics, as well as the institutional and professional cultures within which they work (e.g., Dunlap, 1995; Fennell, 1999; Hall, 1993; Skrla & Young, 2003). They raised questions such as: Do male and female principals differ in their behaviors and actions in school? What qualities and skills are associated with women administrators in schools? What evidence is available to support the claim that women behave differently from men as administrators in educational settings? How should women lead? Is there such a thing as women’s leadership style? What are the implications for women who choose to lead policy and political changes? I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 17–32. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

The last set of questions, emerging mainly during the 1990s onwards, referred to the lives and careers of women principals, including their experiences, dilemmas, and emotions (e.g., Blackmore, 1998; Coleman, 2002; Evetts, 1994; Hall, 1996; Lad, 2000; Oplatka, Bargal, & Inbar, 2001). Researchers were curious to understand what we really know about women principals, and what we can say about their lives and career development. They raised questions such as: What is a woman principal’s typical career story? What are the historical, demographic, career, psychological, and family characteristics of women school administrators? In general, underpinned by critical feminist views that traditional social science began its analyses only pertaining to white men’s experiences (e.g., Harding, 1987), with little awareness of women’s particular experiences, feminist research in educational administration has introduced the dimension of gender in principalship. This approach assumes that one’s gender identification renders a tremendous influence on behavior, perceptions, and effectiveness (Shakeshaft, 1995). The feminist researcher, then, attempts to unearth women principals' experiences, thoughts, and leadership so as to raise their long-unheard voices and, as Blackmore (1999) indicated, to analyze the epistemological foundations of structural-functionalist leadership theories. Blackmore (1993b, p. 39) summed up the aims of feminism in educational administration, commenting that it “has sought to dissolve the gendered division of labor, redefine leadership, develop an ethic of care, seek cultural inclusivity, advocate emancipatory politics, recognize difference, democratize educational practice, and review the role of the state.” This chapter addresses some of the themes discussed above by providing a review of the scholarship that has sought to expand understanding of women as principals, by documenting the ways in which women principals access their role, lead their school, and experience their career. Our purpose here is to outline the common themes and characteristics that emerge from the literature on women principals, and to discuss the deficiencies and weaknesses in this literature. In no way, however, do we attempt to review the full range of studies and writings concerning women in principalship, but rather we hope to provide a theoretical backdrop to this book's case studies and articles on women principals. We discuss the barriers faced by women teachers who aspire to gain a principalship; pinpoint the differences between male and female principals in terms of leadership style, power relations, and career; and end with the impact of the recent education reforms upon women principals’ leadership. We conclude by reflecting upon current knowledge on women principals and considering its shortcomings and needs for further insights. THE PATHS TO PRINCIPALSHIP: “GLASS CEILING” AND INTERNAL BARRIERS

Since the 1970s, probably in light of emergent literature in general management dealing with barriers and discrimination against women employees (e.g., Kanter's classic 1977 work: Men and Women of the Corporation), a number of writers have attempted to identify and categorize some of the barriers to women's progress into principalship (e.g., Hall, 1996 in England; Shakeshaft, 1989 in the U.S.; 18

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

Blackmore, 1993a in Australia). Their studies have suggested various explanations to account for the low representation of women in leadership positions in education. One major explanation revolves around cultural scripts that identify masculine attributes and traits as contributing to effective leadership and feminine attributes and traits as contributing to ineffective leadership (Al-Khalifa & Migniuolos, 1990; Blackmore, 1993a; Curry, 2000). Thus, when an environment assumes that men’s values and practices are the norm for leadership (e.g., management as rational engagement), it is hardly surprising that many women are excluded from principalship, under-represented in school management, and, as Coleman (2001) observed, face discrimination when they aspire to senior management in education. Another common explanation for women's under-representation in principalship refers to the male dominated power structure and relations in schools, which underpin the reproduction of male dominance in educational administration and, in turn, hinder the leadership opportunities of many women (Court, 1998; Limerick & Lingard, 1995; Shakeshaft, 1989). For example, male dominated key leadership positions will likely recruit new principals who resemble their sponsors in attitude, philosophy, deed, appearance, hobbies, club membership, and so on; that is: men (Hill & Ragland, 1995). In the U.S., Shakeshaft (1989) showed that most male superintendents did not want to work closely with women because they saw women as a threat, and in New Zealand women of ethnic minorities have been further constrained by the impact of institutional racism on education systems (Court, 1998). Additionally, when power structures are dominated by (white?) men, women may be even less well plugged into networks that count, admittedly a key aspect of the promotion process in organizations (Coffey & Delamont, 2000; Evetts, 1990). The impact of this power structure upon women’s under-representation in principalship manifests itself mostly when male dominance over a new principal selection process is concerned (Coffey & Delamont, 2000). It is apparent that a male majority in interview panels may comprise a disadvantage for female applicants, due to caution and conservatism in principal appointments, which lead the men to favor the known, i.e., other men (Evetts, 1994). Likewise, women’s different conceptions of careers may not yet be understood by the majority of selectors who judge them in typically androcentric ways (Hall, 1993). To this point, we have discussed some external aspects that may impede many women’s access to educational management. Even in the 21st century, as Cubillo and Brown (2003) noted, one can hardly claim to hear glass ceilings shattering around us both in developed and developing countries. Yet, women’s underrepresentation in principalship may also be attributed, at least in part, to a variety of internal barriers that lead women to decide not to apply for promotion in education, resulting in fewer women than men who apply for principalship (Coffey & Delamont, 2000). Several writers have highlighted women’s lack of necessary aspirations, lack of awareness of the promotion system, and a lack of confidence that they will succeed as likely reasons for low female application rates (Acker, 1995; Cubillo & Brown, 19

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

2003), although feminist scholars have argued that these so-called internal barriers constitute staff room folklore (Coffey & Delamont, 2000). Other internal obstacles put forward in the literature to account for the under-representation of women in principalship include gender-based socialization, fear of failure, lower competitiveness, lower self-esteem, interrupted career development, and limited mobility (Acker & Feuverger, 1996; Cubillo & Brown, 2003; Limerick & Anderson, 1999). Mother's support in western countries and father's encouragement in developing countries were found to help successful women principals overcome these kinds of barriers (Coleman, 2002; Cubillo & Brown, 2003). Interestingly, the “masculine” nature of principalship and leadership, which are incompatible with women’s beliefs and experiences, may not only impede women’s promotion due to superiors’ biases, as indicated above, but also, as some writers contend, may perpetuate women’s low aspirations of attaining a management position (Blackmore, 1996a; Evetts, 1994). Put differently, women’s tendency towards caring, subjective, relational values that could be perceived as at odds with masculine values of management (e.g., rationality, objectivity) are a negative incentive for women’s desire to pursue career progress (Limerick & Anderson, 1999). Davies (1990, p. 204) suggested that to curtail the influence of this barrier, “We will probably need a far more flexible, rotational, non-pyramidal style of school administration.” This remark brings us to the lengthy debate about gender-based differences between male and female principals. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP

A great deal of research has revolved around the similarities and differences of males and females in principalship. The major question raised in these studies was whether women principals display the same behaviors in the school as do male principals. Some researchers have ardently argued that men and women differ in how they manage people and assume leadership roles, although these differences were attributed to different socialization patterns and life experiences rather than to innate sources (Evetts, 1994; Fennell, 1999; Grace, 1995; Hall, 1993; Marshall, 1995; Nias, 1999; Regan & Brooks, 1995; Shakeshaft, 1989). The significant domains exhibiting gender differences consisted of human relationships (e.g., care, empathy), the focus on teaching and learning, school-community relationships, day-to-day interactions, time management, job satisfaction, evaluation and assessment, leadership style, power relations, and career cycle. Shakeshaft (1995, p. 146) summed up the major differences: Women were more likely than men to encourage the empowerment of their teachers, establish instructional priorities, be attentive to the social and emotional development of the students, focus on student relationships, be attentive to the feelings of teachers, include more so-called “facts” in the evaluation, look for the teachers’ personal effects on the lives of children, place emphasis on the technical skills of teaching, make comments on the content and quality of the educational program to provide information 20

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

gathered from other sources, involve the teacher in decision making, issue directives for improvement, provide immediate feedback on performance, and emphasize curricular programs. Men, on the other hand, were more likely than women to emphasize organizational structure and to avoid conflict. In contrast, other researchers have found less conclusive support for gender differences both in general management and principalship. In general management, considerable literature indicates similarities between male and female leaders (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999; Eagly & Johnson, 1990), with only subtle gender differences rendering scant influence on style, career, and so forth (Powell, 1990). In education, Mertz and McNeely (1998) suggested that the either/or, male/female dichotomy is too simplistic and called for a multidimensional approach that examines context, ethnicity, and other factors when conducting research on the issue of leadership style. Similarly, Jirasinghe and Lyons’s (1996) study of 255 head teachers in England, comprising 113 men and 142 women, found no differences between male and female teachers' propensity for directive leadership. According to Evetts (1990), the problem with comparative studies is that they can encourage androcentric views by continuing to use a male concept definition of leadership. Furthermore, within the discourse of “men and women” dualism, only two forms of argument are possible – either no difference or the documentation of differences (Reynolds, 1995). Therefore, we need studies that start from the female principals, assuming the differences among women to be as important as the differences between women and men (Hall, 1993). This view is manifested in this book. Despite the dispute in this contested area of inquiry, advocates of “gender differences” have focused on three major areas of comparison, as described next: leadership styles, power relations, and careers. The variety of research methodologies utilized in these studies (e.g., questionnaires, observations, interviews) could, by and large, explain their contradictory findings. For instance, Shakeshaft's (1989) use of a Leadership Behavior Description questionnaire revealed no differences between male and female principals, whereas observation techniques used by Evetts (1994) did yield gender differences. Gender Differences in Leadership Styles In the 1980s, the emphasis of female leadership research shifted to the differences in style between men and women. A style of leadership may be defined as “a manner of working, an approach, a feeling, a method and a way, and as such it is elusive and intangible, problematic to measure and to demonstrate” (Evetts, 1994, p. 160). Some researchers believe that males and females demonstrate different leadership styles (e.g., Nogay & Beebe, 1997; Irby & Brown, 1995), the most prominent of which refers to a democratic, participative style versus an autocratic style. Generally speaking, an important research finding across all settings was the tendency for females to adopt a democratic, participative style, whereas men were

21

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

more apt to display an autocratic, directive style (Adler, Laney, & Paker, 1993; Eagly, Karau, & Johnson, 1992; Shakeshaft, 1989). In addition, women are, by and large, inclined to work in a collegial manner and actively bring in other constituents to take part in decision-making (Grogan, 1996), as part of what Regan and Brooks (1995) coined “relationship leadership.” In this sense, the four cases of women principals in Fennell’s (1999) study involved the development and nurture of reciprocal relationships between teachers, and the six women principals in Hall’s (1996) study showed a strong commitment to teamwork and professional consultation. Similarly, Israeli female principals were reported as emphasizing listening and collaboration as means to maintain discipline in school and class rather than rules and hierarchy (Oplatka & Atias, in press). Nevertheless, a deeper look at the democratic-autocratic dichotomy with respect to gender reveals a more complex picture. Some findings seem to suggest that a stark distinction does not exist between male and female principals in terms of management style, but rather that each sex attaches different meanings to the same leadership style. For example, Grace (1995) showed that commitment to teamwork and a culture of consultation could be found in the accounts of both men and women principals, but the women principals' discourse more frequently accepted teamwork as a normal and organic process, whereas men referred to “their” creation of teamwork as an important innovation in the school culture. Along the same lines, Coleman (2002) showed that many of the female principals she studied used adjectives that identified themselves as collaborative and caring but not as democratic, rather stating that the final responsibility for decisions rests with them. Thus, their behavior resembled the term “contrived collegiality” suggested by Hargreaves (1994). Oplatka (2001) pinpointed the gender cross-transition of women principals in mid-life; those who began their principalship with a democratic leadership style experienced a transition to a more directive style and vice versa. Thus, it is likely that the differences are actually a matter of degree, as Reay and Ball (2000) argued; in other words, being slightly less directive than a male counterpart does not constitute a democratic, power-sharing work style. Another predominant distinction that researchers have reported between male and female principals refers to the place given to instruction and learning in the principal’s mind, that is, the extent to which the principal adopts instructional leadership (Acker, 1995; Eagly et al., 1992). Marshall (1995) noted that women educational administrators were “more attuned to teaching, curriculum and instruction and children, perhaps because they have spent more time as teachers and as mothers before they became administrators” (p. 488). Similarly, Shakeshaft (1989) indicated that women principals put more emphasis on teaching and learning, classroom problems, teachers’ professional development, and the monitoring and evaluation of student learning than did their male counterparts. Likewise, women principals were found to pay much attention to vision-building for the school and to devote much time and energy toward change initiation and implementation (Acker, 1995; Fennell, 1999), despite the difficulties they reported in getting male teachers to “hear” them compared to male principals (Lee, Dedrick, & Smith, 1991). 22

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

Given this set of findings, some writers claimed that the “feminine style,” which comprises caring, creativity, intuition, awareness of individual differences, noncompetitiveness, tolerance, subjectivity, and informality (Gray, 1993) is appropriate to educational organizations, mainly nursery and elementary schools. Sadker, Sakder, and Klwin (1991) asserted that female leadership styles were more effective than those of males in the operation of successful schools, perhaps because they resemble the characteristics of transformational leadership, as Fennell (1999) commented. In line with these views, teachers’ accounts have assessed female principals significantly higher than male principals in the areas of communicating school goals, supervising and evaluating instruction, coordinating curriculum, maintaining high visibility, promoting professional development, and providing incentives for learning (Lad, 2000). Teachers perceived principals with a feminine orientation as showing strong human leadership. Women principals maintaining feminine traits may be perceived as consistent with their gender and may probably receive better acceptance from teachers (Shum & Cheng, 1997). Female Israeli teachers in mid-life accepted their newly-appointed female principal because she expressed a “feminine style” that suited their developmental needs at that time, and concomitantly triggered their own self-renewal and personal growth (Oplatka, 2004a). In contrast, other writers maintained that neither a “masculine” nor a “feminine” style is sufficient for effective principalship, but rather every good leader should adopt an “androgynous style” comprising both sets of styles from which he/she can select the most appropriate for the situation. As Hall (1993) observed, androgynous principals recognize the need to manage both tasks and people and to combine instrumental and expressive behaviors. Coleman (1996) showed that many female principals in England have adopted the androgynous style. In Israel, prospective teachers’ construction of androgynous leadership included both caring and strong control, two seemingly contradictory aspects (Oplatka, 2004b). The discussion thus far has shown some evidence for gender-based differences in leadership style in terms of the autocratic-democratic dichotomy, collegial leadership, instructional leadership, innovative behavior, and teacher-principal relationships. Yet, contradictory findings seem to diminish the validity of these kinds of differences. Power Relationships and Gender Differences Power relations are played out in schools as in any other organization. Power (i.e., the ability to decide and act) and particularly its use and misuse comprise central themes in the literature on feminism and leadership. Such power relations are viewed as multidimensional and multidirectional in nature (Fennell, 1999). The literature suggests that women principals prefer to use power in facilitative ways, as “power manifested through someone” (Dunlap & Goldman, 1991, p. 13), whereas their male counterparts associate control with power over others, hierarchy, and individualism (Blackmore, 1989). Women principals are assumed to use “power with” and “power through” styles; they provide others with support and 23

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

feedback, empower others rather than having power over others, and develop closer relationships with teachers and support staff (Fennell, 1999). Indeed, women were found to be more likely to withdraw from conflict or to use collaborative strategies, whereas males more often used autocratic responses (Shakeshaft, 1989). Hurty (1995) redefined the concept of power in schools through a feminist lens, and identified five components of a “power with” style used by women principals (p. 385): …(1) emotional energy, a willingness to use, honestly and openly, a full range of emotions in their work with teachers, students and community; (2) nurtured growth, the ability to nurture students and community; (3) reciprocal talk, talking with rather than at others by listening to and learning from other points of view; (4) pondered mutuality, keeping others in mind in the reflective rumination used in making decisions; and (5) collaborative change, working with and involving others in the transformation of schooling. Both findings from Canada and the U.K. considerably support Hurty’s conceptualization. Hall (1993) described British female principals’ "communion approach" that uses power cooperatively, based on joint ownership, directed towards influence, and expressed in the individual’s quality of being. Fennell (1999, p. 46) analyzed the power relations of four Canadian women principals: The four women linked power with nurturing and energy… [They] spoke a great deal about nurturing feelings of trust between themselves and teachers as well as encouraging, emphasizing and nurturing senses of commitment and responsibility in each individual, whether they be teachers, students or parents, to make their schools and communities positive places in which to learn and develop. The findings associating women with a “power with” style contradict with Reay and Ball's (2000) claim that women in positions of power display the same characteristics as men, regardless of whether or not men are present to influence them. Oplatka’s (2001) study among Israeli women principals supported the latter view by providing the voices of women principals who described themselves as exerting assertiveness and aggressive power over their teaching staff. Different Career Experiences Although the debate about gender differences in leadership styles and power relations has been hotly contested, it is less difficult to show gender dissimilarities in principals' experiences, simply because men and women are influenced differently by their gender and related family issues during childhood and throughout their professional adult lives. Evetts (1994) found gender differences with respect to the process of becoming a principal and the everyday experiences involved in being a principal. Women principals in many countries were found to attain their positions either “from external spur” or “from inside spur,” to use Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz’s 24

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

(1996) concepts. The first career trajectory refers to women principals who said they had not set out to become administrators and, who after becoming certified, had waited for a position to "come to them," that is, to be invited before applying. The second pattern referred to women who have always aspired to principalship, planned their career progress, and held managerial positions in school such as assistant principal or the like. Mertz and McNeely (1998) revealed that women who had attained their principalship via the latter pattern tended to exhibit more assertive behavior, were far less accepting of defeat, expressed more confidence in themselves, and more highly attributed their success to their abilities and hard work than to good fortune, in comparison with women with the first pattern. Similar characteristics emerged among women principals in Israel (Oplatka et al., 2001). When the career issues and experiences of women principals were targeted in research, women principals were generally documented as believing that women had to do more and work harder than men in comparable positions to establish credibility and professional competence (Lad, 2000). Women in principalship described the need to “justify” their management style to others, to prove that it was not too “feminine” in this “masculine-oriented" position, and so forth. They were also found to have higher levels of education and more teaching experience than their male counterparts (Coleman, 2002; Spencer & Kochan, 2000). It is likely that one of the major factors affecting the difference between male and female’s career experiences is family responsibilities, and not only the social norms identifying family responsibilities as within women's sphere of activity (Coleman, 2002). American women high school principals in Lad’s (2000) study identified the expectations of family responsibilities as a strong influence in their professional lives. Marital status also impacted their ability to carry out the responsibilities inherent to their position. Among English principals in Limerick and Anderson’s (1999) study, only a childless woman principal did not report having problems in achieving a balance between the conflicting work-family demands intensified by reforms that took place in that country. Another emergent issue in the research on women principals’ career lives concerns sexism in the workplace. Two works from England pointed to this troublesome aspect of some women principals’ careers. Coleman (2001, 2002) noted that almost half of the women secondary heads in her study reported having encountered sexism in their role, mainly from peers. Some women principals in Evetts’s (1994) career history study had kept a log of sexist comments, harassments, and embarrassments that they had experienced. The discussion to this point suggests disagreement among writers and researchers with respect to gender differences in a variety of women principals’ career and professional domains. Perhaps the inability to gain conclusive evidence was instrumental in bringing about new trends in the research on women principals. The first trend has focused on the influence of large-scale educational reforms in the 1990s on women principals, and the second suggested a new model of woman principal as “a feminist leader.”

25

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

RECENT REFORMS AND WOMEN PRINCIPALS The large-scale reforms of the educational system in many western countries throughout the 1990s introduced innovations in education such as market forces, school-based management, and systemic restructuring, which in turn altered the nature and scope of administrators' and teachers' work (Hargreaves, 1994). Teachers and administrators were expected to cope with multiple demands created by external pressures to be more efficient, effective, and economical in how they went about their work (Blackmore, 1998). Clearly, these reforms had both positive and negative influences on women principals’ work methods and activities. Beginning with the former, Hall (1996) claimed that school-based management was emancipatory for women principals, as it offered them the chance to develop a new style of school administration unfettered by the continuing influence of accepted (male) practice. A similar stance was taken by Limerick and Anderson (1999), who reported an increase in women principals’ ability to challenge the dominant discourse of educational administration subsequent to the introduction of school-based management by legitimizing the challenges they had already confronted through doing things differently. In contrast, the reforms made it very difficult for women principals in England to go on balancing their family and professional responsibilities due to the process of intensification that characterized these reforms (Grace, 1995; Limerick & Anderson, 1999). The negative consequence that likely received the most research attention revolved around the contradiction between the rational and economic models embedded in the recent reforms and women’s leadership style. Underpinned by rational, bureaucratic models, the reforms highlighted concepts such as effectiveness, efficiency, assessment, accountability, competition, assertion, and the like, all concepts that are incompatible with the “feminine” orientation and women’s leadership tendencies described in depth above (Grace, 1995; Reay & Ball, 2000). At the same time, qualities such as caring, nurturing, loyalty, and cooperation are problematic to measure and hence difficult to reward (Court, 1998; Evetts, 1990). In this vein, women principals reported experiencing tension and conflict between their responsiveness to the reforms and their educational beliefs, and this rendered a negative impact on principal/teacher staff relations (Blackmore, 1998; Grace, 1995). Because of this difficulty encountered by women principals in the new market culture in education, Reay and Ball (2000) asserted that leading schools toward feminist ways would be extremely difficult and that female management styles may turn out to have more similarities than differences from orthodox (male) management modes. Despite the conflicts and stress caused by this contradiction and in contrast to Reay and Ball’s (2000) suggestion, Blackmore (1996b) insisted that at times of rapid change it is of great importance that women do the emotional labor, and as Court (1998) proposed, challenge managerialism by adopting collaborative and

26

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

caring attitudes. Their perspective is elaborated in the next section depicting the second major area of recent study. FEMINIST EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP: A NEW TREND IN THE RESEARCH?

Recently, several writers have turned their attention to the concept of “feminist educational leadership,” which singles out the transition from understanding women’s leadership styles and careers to an ideal conceptualization of their work from a feminist standpoint. The literature suggests that four main defining characteristics typify feminist educational leadership (Beck, 1994; Blackmore, 1996b; Gosetti & Rusch, 1995; Regan & Brooks 1995): – A feminist educational leader is informed by a feminist agenda for improved social justice and equity for staff and students in their schools. That is, feminist leaders are motivated by equity (Blackmore, 1993b) and lead in a way that challenges and changes hegemonic institutional practices (Blackmore, 1996b); – Feminist leaders are assumed to challenge and resist unjust practices in their community and society. Their engagement in this respect relates to a wider political agenda that is anti-racist as well as anti-sexist (Gosetti & Rusch, 1995). Their school, therefore, is organized to confront racism, sexism, and inequality; – Such a leader is committed to empowering those she works with, and to meet student needs through empowering and establishing support systems in schools. Empowerment of staff and pupils rather than using hierarchical power is constructed as a feminist and better way to run a particular school; – The establishment of a caring school community, where terms such as empathy, compassion, emotional expression, supportive relations, and so forth prevail, is central to their leadership agenda. This kind of educational leadership is emancipatory in nature and emerges from women’s experiences and beliefs. Accordingly, women feminist leadership may encompass a wider emancipatory agenda that includes issues of race, class, sexuality, and individual differences (Gosetti & Rusch, 1995). In Blackmore’s (1993b) model, feminist leadership goes beyond shared decision-making and teacher empowerment to emancipatory practices. It comprises an engagement in critical reflection with actions through which a feminist leader acknowledges that things can be different, and identifies unjust practices and unequal relationships. From critical reflection comes emancipatory knowledge. This opens up possibilities for change in the way things happen (Blackmore, 1996a; Grundy, 1993; Matthews, 1995). In summary, feminist educational leadership is about challenging and bringing about change, leading differently from the managerial models of leadership, and thereby appearing to be a more educationally than managerially oriented leader. CONCLUDING COMMENTS

The current chapter provided insight into the variety of research topics in the literature on women in principalship and into its development since the 1970s. 27

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ

Admittedly, this kind of research neither has provided a conclusive answer to the question regarding the distinction between male and female principals, nor has suggested any underlying comprehensive framework dictating the relationships between gender, organization, and other variables. Moreover, with the exception of a few works that encompass a broader survey (e.g., Coleman, 2002), the currently available body of research evidence is relatively limited in methodology. For example, Hall (1993) claimed that the research on women principals is mainly descriptive and based on small samples. The extension of the research on women principals has not been without criticism. It has been criticized for assuming that “women” comprise a unified category and for paying insufficient attention to the importance of race, ethnicity, and contextual determinants in women’s lives and careers. Women, it is argued by critics of this research, are not likely to hold identical ways of thinking, shared aspirations or interests, nor a universal “woman’s way of leading.” Women principals, like men, lead in different ways, influenced by their values, political persuasions, personalities, and ethnicity (Hite & McDonald, 2003; Oplatka, 2001; Pringle & Henry, 1994). Reay and Ball’s (2000) work is especially insightful in illustrating this criticism (p. 145): Our argument is that a number of feminist texts on management and gender work with essentialized notions of femininity in which homogenizing conceptions of what it means to be female depict women as uniformly nurturing, affiliative and good at interpersonal relationships. In contrast we suggest that gendered identities are in context more fluid and shifting than they are depicted in such texts. There are many different femininities and the form they take is powerfully shaped by the roles women undertake and the context within which they perform these roles. As a result, female leadership in practice frequently appears to be both more multifaceted and more contradictory than the idealized depictions in some feminist texts. Furthermore, in light of the dominant image of gender uniformity in the feminist literature in educational administration, and in spite of empirical evidence indicating that the combined and interactive effects of race, ethnicity, class, and gender have a pervasive impact on women principals, non-white women principals have been marginalized in the research. Most research upheld the underlying assumption that theories developed on the experiences of white women principals would be congruent with the experiences of any woman principal worldwide (Bell & Mkomo, 1992; Young, 2000). This, absurdly, was exactly the same kind of criticism early feminists in educational administration raised against the knowledge base in this field. Thus, little is known about the career experiences of AfroAmerican, Asian American, Hispanic American, or Native American women, or of many other women principals in developing countries or ethnic minority groups. Their voices continue to remain silent and unheard, as Bell and Mkomo (1992) commented more than a decade ago. It follows that researchers need to look toward new frontiers such as addressing gender and educational leadership from international and multicultural 28

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION

perspectives. Of more value would be, then, to understand the impact of cultural contexts on how women principals enact and view their lives and careers, utilizing culturally embedded and cross-cultural research of women as Banks (1995) and Young (2000) recommended. Cultural and structural factors may be extremely important in determining whether a particular leadership style is enabled to emerge (Acker, 1995) and in considering identity formation and the woman leader persona (Curry, 2000). After an intense period of rising interest in unearthing the career and leadership of mostly white women principals in comparison to their male counterparts (Reynolds, 1995; Skrla & Young, 2003), the field in the early years of the twentyfirst century needs thorough re-examination to consider its past and to contemplate its future. New works that focus on women per se mean that we have moved beyond a paradigm in which women's differences from men lie at the focus. This book endeavors to join this new research development. It raises the unheard, silent voices of women principals from minority groups and portrays their career development, aspirations, leadership style, and the like, while maintaining keen awareness of the strong influences rendered by the social and cultural contexts in which these principals work and live. REFERENCES Acker, S. (1989). Teachers, gender and careers. London: Falmer Press. Acker, S. (1995). The head teacher as career broker: Stories from an English primary school. In D.M. Dunlap, & P.A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 49-67). New York: State University of New York Press. Acker, S., & Feuverger, G., (1996). Doing good and feeling bad: The work of women university teachers. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3), 401-422. Adler, S., Laney, J., & Paker, M. (1993). Managing women: Feminism and power in educational management. Buckingham: Open University Press. Al-Khalifa, E., & Migniuolo, F. (1990, September). Messages for management: The experiences of women’s training. Paper presented at the Conference on Equal Advances in Education Management, Vienna. Banks, C. A. M. (1995). Gender and race as factors in educational leadership and administration. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 65-80). New York: Macmillan. Beck, L. G. (1994). Reclaiming educational administration as a caring profession. New York: Teachers College Press. Bell, E. L., & Mkomo, S. M. (1992). Re-visioning women manager’s lives. In A. Mills, & P. Tancred (Eds.), Gendering organizational analysis (pp. 235-247). Newbury Park: Sage. Blackmore, J. (1989). Educational leadership: A feminist critique and reconstruction. In J. Smyth (Ed.), Critical perspective in educational leadership (pp. 93-131). New York: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1993a). In the shadow of men: The historical construction of administration as a masculinist enterprise. In J. Blackmore, & J. Kenway (Eds.), Gender matters in educational administration. London: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1993b). Women’s educational leadership in new “hard” times. Proceedings of the National Conference of Women in Leadership Program (pp. 35-48). Perth: Edith Cowan University. Blackmore, J. (1996a). Breaking the silence: Feminist contributions to educational administration and policy. In K. Leithwood (Ed.), International handbook of educational administration and leadership. Dortdrecht: Kluwer Press.

29

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ Blackmore, J. (1996b). Doing emotional labor in the education market place: Stories from the field of women in management. Discourse, 17(3), 337-349. Blackmore, J. (1998). You never know you can’t cope: Women in school leadership roles managing their emotions. Gender and Education, 10(3), 265-279. Blackmore, J. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, leadership and educational change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Butterfield, D. A., & Grinnell, J. P. (1999). Reviewing gender, leadership, and managerial behavior. In G. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender and work (pp. 223-238). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Coffey, A., & Delamont, S. (2000). Feminism and the classroom teacher: Research, praxis, pedagogy. London: Routledge/Falmer. Coleman, M. (1996). The management style of female headteachers. Educational Management and Administration, 24(2), 163-174. Coleman, M. (2001). Achievement against the odds: The female secondary headteachers in England and Wales. School Leadership and Management, 21(1), 75-100. Coleman, M. (2002). Women as headteachers: Striking the balance. London: Trentham Books. Cubillo, L., & Brown, M. (2003). Women into educational leadership and management: International differences? Journal of Educational Administration, 41(3), 278-291. Court, M. R. (1998). Women challenging managerialism: Devolution dilemmas in the establishment of co-principalships in primary schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand. School Leadership and Management, 18(1), 35-57. Curry, B. K. (2000). Women in power: Pathways to leadership in education. New York: Teacher College Press. Davies, L (1990). Equity and efficiency: School management in an international context. Lewes, England: Falmer Press. Dunlap, D. (1995). Women leading: An agenda for a new century. In D. M. Dunlap, & P. A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 423-435). New York: State University of New York Press. Dunlap, D., & Goldman, P. (1991). Rethinking power in schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 27, 5-29. Eagly, A. H., & Johnson, B. T. (1990). Gender and leadership style: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 23, 233-256. Eagly, A. H., Karau, S. J., & Johnson, B. T. (1992). Gender and leadership style among school principals: A meta-analysis. Educational Administration Quarterly, 28(1), 76-102. Evetts, J. (1990). Women in primary teaching: Career contexts and strategies. London: Unwin Hyman. Evetts, J. (1991). The experience of secondary headship selection: Continuity and change. Educational Studies, 17(3), 285-294. Evetts, J. (1994). Gender and secondary headship: Managerial experiences in teaching. In J. Evetts (Ed.), Women and career (pp. 157-169). London: Longman. Fennell, H. A. (1999). Power in the principalship: Four women’s experiences. Journal of Educational Administration, 37(1), 23-49. Fuchs, I., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1996). Transition from teacher to principal: An Israeli women's perspective. Megamot, 37(3), 292-314. [Hebrew]. Gosetti, P. P., & Rusch, E. (1995). Reexamining educational leadership: Challenging assumptions. In D. Dunlap, & P. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 122-135). New York: State University of New York Press. Grace, G. (1995). School leadership beyond education management: An essay in policy scholarship. London: Falmer Press. Gray, H. L. (1993). Gender considerations in school management: Masculine and feminine leadership styles. In C. Riches, & C. Morgan (Eds.), Human resources management in education (pp. 38-47). Buckingham: Open University Press. Grogan, M. (1996).Voices of women aspiring to the superintendency. Albany: State University of New York Press.

30

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION Grundy, S. (1993). Educational leadership as emancipatory praxis. In J. Blackmore, & J. Kenway (Eds.), Gender matters in educational administration and policy (pp. 165-177). London: Falmer Press. Hall, V. (1993). Women in educational management: A review of research in Britain. In J. Ouston (Ed.), Women in educational management (pp. 23-46). Harlow, Essex: Longman. Hall, V. (1996). Dancing on the ceiling: A study of women managers in education. London: Paul Chapman. Harding, S. (1987). Feminism and methodology. Milton Keynes, England: Open University Press. Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times. New York: Teachers College Press. Hill, M. S., & Ragland, J. C. (1995). Women as educational leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hite, L. M., & McDonald, K. S. (2003). Career aspirations of non-managerial women: Adjustment and adaptation. Journal of Career Development, 29(4), 221-235. Hurty, K. (1995). Women principals: Leading with power. In D. Dunlap, & P. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 380-406). New York: State University of New York Press. Irby, B. J. & Brown, G. (1995). Constructing a feminist-inclusive theory of leadership. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California. Jirasinghe, D., & Lyons, G. (1996). The competent head: A job analysis of heads’ tasks and personality factors. London: Falmer Press. Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Lad, K. (2000). Two women high school principals: The influence of gender on entry into education and their professional lives. Journal of School Leadership, 12, 663-689. Lee, V. E., Dedrick, R. F., & Smith, J. B. (1991). The effect of the social organization of schools on teachers’ efficacy and satisfaction. Sociology of Education, 64, 190-208. Limerick, B., & Anderson, C. (1999). Female administrators and school-based management. Educational Management and Administration, 27(4), 401-414. Limerick, B., & Lingard, R. (Eds.). (1995). Gender and changing educational management: 2nd yearbook of the Australian council for educational administration. Sydney, Australia: Hoder Education. Marshall, C. (1995). Imaging leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3), 484-492. Matthews, E. N. (1995). Women in educational administration: Views of equity. In D. Dunlap, & P. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 247-273). New York: State University of New York Press. Mertz, N., & McNeely, S. R. (1998). Women on the job: A study of female high school principals. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34(2), 196-222. Nias, J. (1999). Primary teaching as a culture of care. In J. Prosser (Ed.), School culture (pp. 66-81). London: Paul Chapman. Nogay, K., & Beebe, R. J. (1997). Gender and perceptions: Females as secondary principals. Journal of School Leadership, 7, 246-265. Oplatka, I. (2001). I changed my management style: The cross gender transition of women headteachers in mid-career. School Leadership and Management, 21(2), 219-233. Oplatka, I. (2004a). The arrival of a new woman principal and teachers’ self-renewal: Reflections from life stories of mid-career teachers. Planning and Changing, 35(1/2), 55-68. Oplatka, I. (2004b). Prospective teachers’ constructions of leadership: In search of an "androgynous" style. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 3(1), 37-57. Oplatka, I., & Atias, M. (in press). Gendered views of managing discipline in school and class. Gender and Education. Oplatka, I., Bargal, D., & Inbar, D. (2001). The process of self-renewal among women headteachers in mid-career. Journal of Educational Administration, 39(1), 77-94. Powell, G. (1990). Women and men in management. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage.

31

OPLATKA & HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ Pringle J., & Henry, E. (1994, April). Diversity of women’s organizations: Maori and Pakeha. Paper presented at the conference of Women’s Studies Association, New Zealand Reay, D., & Ball, S. (2000). Essentials of female management: Women’s ways of working in the education market place? Educational Management and Administration, 28(2), 145-159. Regan, H. B., & Brooks, G. H. (1995). Out of women’s experience: Creating relational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Reynolds, C. (1995). Feminist frameworks for the study of administration and leadership in educational organizations. In C. Reynolds, & B. Young (Eds.), Women and leadership in Canadian education (pp. 3-18). Calgary: Detselig Enterprises. Sadker, M., Sakder, D., & Klwin, S. (1991). The issue of gender in elementary and secondary education. Review of Research in Education, 17, 169-234. Shakeshaft, C. (1989). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park: Corwin Press. Shakeshaft, C. (1995). A cup half full: A gender critique of the knowledge base in educational administration. In R. Donmoyer, M. Imber, & J. J. Scheurich (Eds.), The knowledge base in educational administration (pp. 42-55). New York: University Press. Shum, L. C., & Cheng, Y. C. (1997). Perceptions of women principals’ leadership and teachers’ work attitudes. Journal of Educational Administration, 35(2), 165-184. Skrla, L., & Young, M. D. (2003). Introduction. In M. D. Young, & L. Skrla (Eds.), Reconsidering feminist research in educational leadership (pp. 1-6). New York: State University of New York Press. Spencer, W. A., & Kochan, F. K. (2000). Gender related differences in career patterns of principals in Alabama: A statewide study. Education Policy and Analysis Archives, 8(9). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n9.html Young, M. (2000). Considering (irreconcilable?) contradictions in cross-group feminist research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(6), 629-660.

Izhar Oplatka Department of Education Ben Gurion University, Israel Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz Faculty of Education Haifa University, Israel

32

CLIVE DIMMOCK AND ALLAN WALKER

2. WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, AND CULTURAL CONTEXT A Cross-Cultural Analytical Framework

INTRODUCTION

This chapter argues that studies of women as leaders in education need to take cognizance of the cultural and contextual settings within which their leadership is exercised. To accomplish this, it is necessary to develop comprehensive and relevant cultural frameworks within which women leaders in different societies and types of schools can be researched rigorously and systematically. Accordingly, this chapter outlines and applies a framework for this purpose. For some while, we have argued the need to locate leadership studies within their cultural setting (Dimmock & Walker, 1998a, 1998b). A burgeoning literature on educational leadership has grown over the last twenty years, but much of this work has paid scant attention to the specificities of context within which leadership is exercised. We have argued that the preponderance of such studies has emanated from American, British and other Anglo-speaking researchers, notably Canadians and Australians, and that this literature makes little effort to demarcate findings within the cultural contexts studied, or to avoid the dangers of over-generalizing to other contexts, no matter how diverse they may be. This ethnocentrism means that the rest of the world outside these researched areas – accounting for about 90 percent of the world population – are relatively ignored in terms of educational leadership. Our argument has consistently been that leader behavior is influenced by context generally and by the cultural part of context specifically. In respect to context – leadership studies looking to distinguish differences at the primary (elementary) and secondary (high) school, single sex and mixed sex school, urban, suburban and rural school – are still very much in their infancy. In regard to culture as perhaps the most important part of context – our work distinguishes between two fundamental levels - societal and organizational. While a considerable amount of research has been achieved on organizational culture and its relationship with leadership, relatively little has looked at the societal culture-leadership connection. The important nexus of society and leadership applies both to comparisons between nation states and macro-societies on the one hand, and to multi-ethnic societies, and ethnic sub-groups on the other. Accelerating recent trends towards multi-ethnic societies, within which a diversity of societal sub-cultures may have I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 33–47. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

DIMMOCK & WALKER

few common values, is tending to make the recognition of traditional homogeneous national identities and cultures an anachronism. In some countries, schisms between ethnic and religious groups may be so emphatic that cross-cultural comparison is valid and important within the same society. As the chapters in this book illustrate, the cross-cultural comparison of women in educational leadership positions in different ethnic-religious groups in Israel, is a case in point. Considerable interest has recently grown in regard to gender studies and educational leadership, and more particularly women in leadership. In the relationship between leader and context/culture, the gender aspect of women (as opposed to men) in leadership clearly falls on the leader side of the equation. However, as indicated earlier, women – just as men – lead in a variety of educational contexts and cultures, highlighting the need for more studies of women leaders in these diverse settings. For example, we know little about women leaders in primary as opposed to secondary school; and as heads of single sex as opposed to co-educational schools. But included in this need are studies of women and leadership across different societies, and within multi-ethnic societies. Leadership is a culturally-bound process - for both women and men. If we expect men’s leadership to vary across societal cultures and within multi-ethnic societies, then there is every reason to expect women’s leadership to do likewise. This places a rather different angle on women and leadership from the traditional feminist studies that have mainly sought to recognize a universal and distinctive style of leadership applicable to women that is different from men. Our interpretation of the relationship between societal culture, gender and leadership is represented in Figure 2.1. Traditional and enduring socio-cultural values define the roles (expected norms) of women and men in the home, workplace and society. These norms, in turn, shape the opportunities that women and men have, respectively, to access leader positions. In many societies, women’s access is restricted, while men’s is unrestricted, but this will depend, among other things, on cultural values with regard to gender roles. Once access to leader positions is attained, the approach to, and style of, leadership develops. Just how different or similar is women’s leadership style and approach to men’s is a moot point; research evidence varies on this. In our model (see Figure 2.1), we have assumed that both men and women adopt styles hitherto described as "masculine" (hierarchical, aggressive) and "feminine" (non-hierarchical, caring), but that there may be a tendency for males to position themselves towards the former and women towards the latter polarity. What is indisputable however is that irrespective of whether gender styles and approaches are similar or different - women’s and men’s interpretation of leadership is bound to be conditioned and influenced by their different social roles and experiences, as shown in Figure 2.1. It is increasingly important to recognize the role and place of women in educational leadership within multicultural societies. Although our earlier work focused on leadership in different societal cultural settings, we have recently turned our attention to the challenges facing leaders of schools within the same multicultural society. Differences between the two aspects can be illustrated thus: It is important to compare women leaders in diverse societal cultural settings, such 34

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

as primary or secondary women principals in China, Japan, Israel and the USA; but it is equally important to study women heads of multicultural schools within those same societies.

Figure 2.1. Societal culture, gender, and leadership

A significant proportion of the research to date on women in educational leadership has focused on two aspects. The first concerns the access of women to leader positions and their career opportunities and trajectories. The second relates to their styles and approaches to leadership once they occupy those positions. Both aspects – often studied in relation to their male counterparts - have deservedly occupied the attention of researchers. In the various themes of educational leadership outlined above – in particular, the gender aspects in relation to context and culture – rigorous, systematic research is required across many diverse cultural and contextual settings. This is particularly so outside the so-called western world. We argue that such studies, if they are to be

35

DIMMOCK & WALKER

authentic and comparative, need to be enhanced by relevant frameworks, models and concepts. The aim of this chapter is to describe such a framework, based on the notion of culture, as a means of informing studies of female leaders, and women aspiring to principal positions. Our framework is equally applicable to male principals or men seeking the principalship. Of particular interest in seeking to apply the framework to females is that women, by and large, are under-represented in senior leadership positions in education generally, and schools particularly (although in some societies this is rapidly changing with women forming the preponderance of principals at primary school level), and many scholars claim, arguably, that their styles of leadership differ from those of men. The chapter is structured as follows: first, we provide an outline of our crosscultural framework, based on two aspects of culture – societal and organizational; secondly, we apply particular parts of the framework to illustrate how it can provide insights into issues concerning women in leadership; finally, some conclusions are drawn about the usefulness of the framework for future research on women in leadership. A CROSS-CULTURAL FRAMEWORK

Since the mid-to-late 1990s we have been aware of the need for, and absence of, rigorous and systematic concepts and models by which comparisons between education leaders and systems of a cross-cultural kind could be made (Dimmock & Walker, 1998a, 1998b). Accordingly, influenced by a number of scholars outside education, notably in the fields of cross-cultural psychology and international business management, we have refined and applied the cross-cultural model described below. Before outlining the model, we need a note of caution. The model or framework recognizes two main levels at which culture and crosscultural comparison is particularly important – societal and organizational. Both levels are instrumental in framing and developing studies of women in leadership. The two are qualitatively different, as our framework explicates, but it is important to recognize that studies of women in leadership may focus on societal cultural, or organizational cultural comparisons, or of course, both. It is also the case that the framework and its dimensions can be applied to ethnic sub-groups within multiethnic societies, as much as to different societies. Each of the levels has six dimensions, as explained below. Six Dimensions of Societal Culture Culture is a difficult phenomenon to measure, gauge or even describe. The identification of cultural dimensions, which we define as core axes around which significant sets of values, beliefs and practices cluster, not only facilitates their description and measurement, but promotes comparison between cultures. Dimensions provide common benchmarks against which cultural characteristics at the societal level can be described, gauged and compared (Dimmock & Walker, 36

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

1998a). Despite their usefulness, however, we agree with Hofstede’s (1994) cautionary remarks that: “They are also constructs that should not be reified. They do not "exist;" they are tools for analysis which may or may not clarify a situation” (p. 40). Our research – involving the review of existing frameworks – for the comparative study of educational leadership and management led to our fashioning the following six-dimensional model (Table 2.1). It is noteworthy that these empirically derived dimensions do not include one exclusively for male versus female oriented cultures. Rather, aspects of gender appear to come through a number of the dimensions as our discussion below reveals. Power-concentrated / Power-disbursed. The first dimension is modeled on Hofstede’s (1991) power-distance construct. We relabeled the dimension as powerdistributed/power-concentrated because this more accurately captures the essence of power relationships in various cultures. Power is either distributed more equally among the various levels of a culture or is concentrated among relatively few. In societies where power is widely distributed, for example, through decentralization and institutionalized democracy, inequity is treated as undesirable and every effort is made to reduce it where possible. In societies where power is commonly concentrated in the hands of the few, inequities are often accepted and legitimized. People in high power concentrated societies tend to accept unequal distributions of power.

Table 2.1: Dimensions of national / societal and organizational culture (adapted from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions) National/societal cultures

Organizational culture

Power-concentrated/Powerdispersed

Process/Outcome oriented Person/Task oriented

Group/Self oriented Professional/Parochial Aggression/Consideration Open/Closed Fatalistic/Proactive Generative/Replicative Limited/Holistic relationship

Control and linkage: Formal/Informal Tight/Loose Direct/Indirect Pragmatic/Normative

37

DIMMOCK & WALKER

Group-oriented / Self-oriented. The second dimension embraces Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s (1997) individualism/ communitarianism category and Hofstede’s (1991) individualism/collectivism dimension. Both of these schemata describe whether people within a given culture tend to focus on self or on their place within a group, hence our preference for the label "group-oriented / selforiented." In self-oriented cultures, relations are fairly loose and relational ties tend to be based on self-interest. People in such societies primarily regard themselves as individuals first, and members of a group, second. In group-oriented cultures, ties between people are tight, relationships are firmly structured and individual needs are subservient to collective needs. Important collectivist values include harmony, face-saving, filial piety and equality of reward distribution among peers. In grouporiented cultures, status is traditionally defined by factors such as age, sex, kinship, educational standing, or formal organizational position. In self-oriented cultures, people are judged and status ascribed according to individual performance or what has been accomplished individually. Aggression / Consideration. This dimension is built on Hofstede’s masculinity/femininity dimension. We reconceptualized it because of the confusion surrounding Hofstede’s label and its discriminatory nature. In what we have called aggression cultures, achievement is stressed, competition dominates and conflicts are resolved through the exercise of power and assertiveness. In such cultures, school norms are set by the best students, the system rewards academic achievement and failure at school is seen as serious; in an organizational context, assertiveness is taken as a virtue; selling oneself, decisiveness and emphasis on career are all valued. By contrast, in consideration societies, emphasis is on relationship, solidarity and resolution of conflicts by compromise and negotiation. At school, norms tend to be set by the average students, system rewards reflect students’ social adaptation and failure at school is taken as unfortunate. Fatalism / Proactivism. Our fourth dimension draws on Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s "attitudes to the environment" category, Hofstede’s "uncertainty avoidance" dimension and our own thinking in respect of the concepts of opportunistic and pragmatic/idealistic. This dimension was relabeled to reflect the proactive or "we can change things around here" attitude in some cultures, and the willingness to accept things as they are - a fatalistic perspective, in others. The dimension addresses how different societies and cultures react to and manage uncertainty and change in social situations. In proactive societies, people tend to believe that they have at least some control over situations and over change. They are tolerant of different opinions and are not excessively threatened by unpredictability. In fatalistic cultures, on the other hand, people believe "what is meant to be, will be." Uncertainty is often viewed as psychologically uncomfortable and disruptive, and people seek to reduce uncertainty and limit risks by hanging on to tradition. This often involves the inflexible retention of rules and dogmas that breed orthodoxy.

38

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Replicative / Generative. This dimension, original to our schema, was so labeled to reflect the fact that some cultures appear more predisposed toward innovation, or the generation of new ideas and methods (generative), whereas other cultures appear more inclined to replicate or to adopt ideas and approaches from elsewhere (replicative). In generative cultures people tend to value the generation of knowledge, new ideas and ways of working and they seek to create solutions to problems, to develop policies and ways of operating which are original. In replicative cultures, people are more likely to adopt innovations, ideas and inventions developed elsewhere. Whereas these sometimes undergo partial adaptation, they are often replicated in toto, with little consideration of alignment to the indigenous cultural context. Holistic relationship / Limited relationship. This dimension builds on Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s "specific/diffuse" and "performance/ connection" categories and on our own work on the importance of relationships in cultures. The dimension reflects an assumption that in some cultures, interpersonal relationships are limited by fixed rules applied to given situations, whereas in other cultures, relationships are more holistic, or underpinned by association and personal considerations. In limited relationship cultures, interactions and relationships tend to be determined by rules that are applied equally to everyone. For example, in deciding a promotion, objective criteria are applied regardless of who are the possible candidates. In holistic cultures on the other hand, greater attention is given to relationship obligations (for example, kinship, patronage and friendship) than to impartially applied rules (Dimmock, 2000). Dealings in formal and structured situations in holistic cultures are driven more by complex, personal considerations than by the specific situation or by formal rules and regulations. Six Dimensions of Organizational Culture Qualitative differences between organizational and societal culture stem from the fact that national cultures differ mostly at the level of basic values, while organizational cultures differ mostly at the level of more superficial practices, as reflected in the recognition of particular symbols, heroes, and rituals (Hofstede, 1991). This allows organizational cultures to be managed and changed, whereas national cultures are more enduring and change only gradually over long time periods, if at all. Research studies on the organizational cultures of companies found large differences in their practices (symbols, heroes, rituals), but only minor differences in their values (Hofstede, 1995). Most of the variation in practices could be accounted for by six dimensions, although further validation of these is required. These six provide a useful baseline for organizational culture in our framework. We have, however, adapted the six, in line with our own research (Dimmock & Wildy, 1995). In addition, while Hofstede presents the dimensions as either/or choices along six axes, it is possible that some of them might be multidimensional rather than unidimensional. The six dimensions (see Table 2.1) are as follows. 39

DIMMOCK & WALKER

Process-oriented/Outcome-oriented. Some cultures are predisposed towards technical and bureaucratic routines, while others emphasize outcomes. Evidence suggests that in outcomes-oriented cultures people perceive greater homogeneity in practices, whereas people in process-oriented cultures perceive greater differences in their practices. In education, some schools are process orientated, emphasizing the processes and the skills of decision making, teaching and learning, while others are results oriented, stressing learning achievements such as exam results. Many schools and school systems are currently reforming their curricula to reflect specific student learning targets or outcomes expressed in terms of knowledge, skills and attitudes, indicating a trend towards designing curricula on the basis of, and measuring student and school performance by, a learning outcomes approach. Strong cultures tend to be more homogeneous and therefore results- or outcomesoriented. Task-oriented/Person-oriented. In task-oriented organizational cultures, emphasis is placed on job performance and maximizing productivity, while human considerations, such as staff welfare, take second place and may even be neglected. Conversely, person-oriented cultures accentuate the care, consideration and welfare of employees. Blake and Mouton (1964) recognized these leadership orientations in the 1960s. Applied to schools, a task-oriented culture exacts maximum work effort and performance out of its teachers in a relatively uncaring work environment. A person-oriented culture on the other hand, values, promotes and shows consideration for the welfare of its teachers. It is conceivable that some schools might score highly (or lowly) on both task and person orientations. Professional/Parochial. In professional cultures, qualified personnel identify primarily with their profession, whose standards are usually defined at national or international level. In parochial cultures, members identify most readily with the organization for which they work. Sociologists, such as Gouldner (1957) have long recognized this phenomenon in their distinction between locals and cosmopolitans. In the school context, some teachers, especially those with an external frame of reference, are primarily committed to the teaching profession as a whole, while others with a strong internal frame of reference are more committed to the particular school in which they work. Open/Closed. This dimension refers to the ease with which resources, such as, people, money, and ideas are exchanged between the organization and its environment. The greater the transfer and exchange of resources between the environment and the organization, the more open the culture. Schools vary between those that champion outside involvement in their affairs and maximum interchange with their environment, and those which eschew such interaction and communication, preferring a more closed, exclusive approach. Trends in education over the last decade have favored the opening of school cultures, particularly to parental influence and involvement.

40

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

Control and linkage. An important part of organizational culture concerns the way in which authority and control are exerted and communicated between members. In this respect, Hofstede’s dimension identifies only one aspect, namely, tightlyloosely controlled cultures. We have added two more aspects, namely, formalinformal and direct-indirect, which, taken together, provide a more detailed account of this dimension in schools. – Formal / Informal. Organizations vary in the extent to which their practices are guided by rules, regulations and “correct procedures” on the one hand, and the extent to which they reflect a more relaxed, spontaneous and intuitive approach on the other. Highly formalized organizations conform to the classic bureaucracies; they emphasize definition of rules and roles, they tend towards inflexibility and are often characterized by austere interpersonal relationships. By contrast, informal organizations have fewer rules dictating procedures, roles are often ill-defined, they display flexibility in their modes of work and interpersonal relationships tend to be more relaxed. – Tight / Loose. This sub-dimension gauges the degree to which members feel there is strong commitment to the shared beliefs, values and practices of an organization. Such strong commitment might come through hierarchical supervision and control, or through members’ own self-motivation. An organization which has strong homogeneity and commitment in respect of its members’ values and practices is tightly controlled (whether control is externally imposed by superordinates or self imposed by employees). Conversely, a loosely controlled culture is one with only weak commitment to, or acceptance of, shared beliefs, values and practices, and little or no control is exerted to achieve homogeneity either by superordinates or by members themselves. – Direct / Indirect. This aspect captures the linkages and patterns of communication through which power, authority and decisions are communicated. In some organizations, managers either assume direct personal responsibility to perform certain tasks and to communicate directly with their staff, often leapfrogging intermediate levels in the vertical hierarchy or chain of command. In other organizations, managers exert control indirectly by delegating to staff the tasks they would otherwise do themselves. Pragmatic / Normative. This dimension defines the way an organization serves its clients, customers or patrons. Some display a flexible, pragmatic policy aimed at meeting the diversity of customer needs. Others, however, exhibit more rigid or normative approaches in responding bureaucratically, failing to meet individual needs. This dimension measures the degree of client orientation. In the educational context, some schools consciously try to meet individual student needs by offering a more diversified curriculum with flexible timetables and alternative teaching strategies. They mold their educational services to meet student needs. Others, particularly the more traditional schools, may be less student focused, expecting them to fit into the agenda determined for them by the school. These schools offer more standardized, normative programs.

41

DIMMOCK & WALKER

Having sketched the cross-cultural framework and its two levels of culture – societal and organizational – it is worth questioning the place of culture among other factors that may influence leadership. Culture and Its Relationship to Other Factors Before relating the cross-cultural model to issues of women and leadership, particularly within the Israeli context, it is important to place the concept of culture in perspective. While it is the scaffolding for our model, we realize that it may not account for all variance to do with gender and leadership. Other factors accounting for women’s access to, and exercise of, leadership may be religion, politics, economics, socioeconomic status, and personality. Each of these deserves recognition as an influence in its own right over the role and place of women in particular societies, the expectations societies hold of them, and the broad social structures within which women – as agents – are expected to live and work. The exception is personality, which is clearly more an individual than a social phenomenon, but one which nevertheless may be partly shaped by social structure and experience. The question that arises concerns the relationship between culture and these other factors. Hofstede (1991), for one, argues that ultimately, most of them reduce back to culture. His reasoning is that religion, politics, and economics are all inextricably about values, which are, of course, the essence of culture. Thus, although religion, economics, and politics are important in their own right, they may also legitimately be seen as sub-sets of culture, in the sense that they each contribute to a society’s fabric of values. Used in this sense, culture becomes the generic, all-embracing phenomenon. While socioeconomic status and personality are probably more independent of culture than politics, economics, and religion, it is inconceivable to think that they exist totally independent of it. Thus, if we were looking for a complete explanatory model that accounted for all variance in the gender-leadership relationship, it would need to be comprehensive and all-embracing, with perhaps culture at the centre-point or hub of the wheel, but with sub-sets as spokes branching out from it. These "spokes" would include religion, politics, economics, socioeconomic status, and individual factors such as personality and personal qualities or attributes. APPLYING THE CROSS-CULTURAL FRAMEWORK TO WOMEN AS LEADERS

This section selectively applies the societal and organizational dimensions to issues concerning women’s access to, and exercise of, educational leadership. The Power-concentrated/Power disbursed dimension often appears to exert an influence on women as leaders. Societal cultures, in which the concentration of power is in the hands of the few, tend to be patriarchal societies. This would contribute to our understanding of why women’s access to leader positions may often be denied in such societies. However, it may also help explain an apparent paradox that in those relatively rare situations in such societies where women are 42

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

able to assume leadership positions, the way in which they exercise it is often similar to men. Societal norms expect a hierarchical style of leadership – from both men and women. The issue of style of leadership is picked up and reflected in the Aggression/Consideration dimension. This is not about male leaders displaying an aggressive leadership style, and women a considerate style. Rather, it is that an aggressive style of leadership displays certain qualities of competition, assertion, and hierarchy – traditionally seen as masculine, while a considerate style reflects a more caring, and concerning group of qualities in leadership, normally thought of as feminine qualities. However, some women demonstrate or adopt a predominantly aggressive leadership style, while some men assume a considerate style. Accounting for this gender reversal of style may be difficult. At least two factors are thought to be contributory – personality and societal culture. Style of leadership may also be responsive to the Group oriented/Self oriented dimension of culture. Leaders in group oriented cultures seem more likely to emphasize social cohesion, the collective good, and harmonious relationships than are their counterparts in self-oriented cultures, where a more individualistic, task oriented approach may be expected in leaders, whether women or men. The three other societal cultural dimensions – Proactive/Fatalistic, Generative/Replicative, and Limited relationship/Holistic relationship do not appear to be particularly gender sensitive. However, each continuum may yield insights into the leadership styles of particular women or groups of women. Leadership is about making things happen, hence pro-activity rather than fatalism might be expected to be an associated characteristic. Critics, however, may argue that authentic leadership is rare and that many so-called leaders fail to exercise real leadership, adopting a benign fatalistic approach. In the same spirit, leadership is meant to be creative, innovative, and concerned with generating new strategies. To the extent that the reality is different, critics might argue that too much replication exists. Likewise, sound leader decisionmaking might be expected to take a holistic set of factors into account – performance and interpersonal relationships to name but two. In practice, however, many leaders appear unable or unwilling to do this and instead allow one or other – often performance – to dictate their actions. Women seem just as susceptible as men to these tendencies, although this claim deserves more careful research. As noted earlier in this chapter, Hofstede (1991) claimed that while societal cultural dimensions are based on deep-seated values and are relatively enduring, organizational cultural dimensions are largely practice based and seen by leaders as characteristics to be managed and possibly changed. At the very least, educational leaders may regard changing the organizational culture as a main goal in a way that would be impossible for them to change societal culture. However, many leaders will be aware that this normally takes time – often many years, and that the leadership-organizational culture relationship is complex and iterative. To an extent, organizational culture shapes leadership. The iterative nature of the relationship – for female and male leaders – can be explored using the six dimensions described in the framework earlier in the chapter. 43

DIMMOCK & WALKER

Both societal and organizational cultural dimensions are extremely important in understanding leaders (men and women), and the leadership of multicultural or multiethnic schools. Within the walls and grounds of a single multiethnic school are found in microcosm many of the macro-societal cultural differences. How this diversity impacts on the organizational culture, leadership practices and leadership style of the principal and other school leaders is generating much current research interest. The present authors, along with colleagues at the University of Leicester, have recently completed two research projects on this theme for the National College for School Leadership in the UK. One of the key findings is that the leader, and their leadership agenda must adapt sensitively and enthusiastically to difference and diversity among the school community if the school is to be successful. Here repeatedly, is the need for responsiveness and sensitivity of leadership to societal culture. Such leadership exerts enormous influence in turn on the organizational culture. The implications for women leaders of multi-ethnic schools are the same as for men. The complex relationship between the two levels of culture – societal and organizational - has hardly begun to be researched in international business let alone educational and school contexts. Since the empirical base is almost nonexistent, we have little idea how the two interact, as they surely must do, in every school and educational institution throughout the world. Given the number of dimensions of societal and organizational culture, and the almost infinite number of combinations among them that might adequately describe leadership agendas and styles, it would be astonishing if there were found to exist a distinct and uniform style of women’s leadership that existed within a multicultural society, let alone one that crossed international and cross-cultural societal boundaries. APPLYING THE CROSS-CULTURAL FRAMEWORK TO ISRAELI WOMEN LEADERS IN EDUCATION

The editors of this book in their introduction refer to a "mosaic of female principalship," basing their argument on the fact that professional identities, which are themselves gender-sensitive, derive from, and are influenced by, the cultural, religious and ethnic groups that exist in a multicultural society such as Israel. Each of the four distinct social groups in Israel – secular Jews, religious Jews, Arabs and Immigrants – has its own distinctive sub-cultural values that influence the place of women in the home, the workplace and society in general, while at the same time providing strong expectations and role models for women as leaders in schools. In terms of access to leader positions, a number of writers in this volume refer to the fact that although more than one half of the principals in Israel are nowadays female, the percentage varies considerably between the four groups. The percentage of female principals is significantly less in the more traditional religious Jewish and Arab groups. The key cross-cultural dimension involved here is the differential concentration/disbursement of Power between the four groups. The more a society’s values reflect a concentration of power, the more patriarchal it 44

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

will tend to be. Sarab Aburabia-Queder in her chapter, for instance, describes a female Bedouin principal in southern Israel and how she negotiates between a cultural norm that is opposed to women’s involvement in management and leadership on the one hand, and the fulfillment of their principal roles on the other. Her chapter provides a dramatic and stark illustration of the struggle of the first Bedouin female principal, and her struggle against hitherto male domination of the principalship. In overcoming all odds to get appointed, she subsequently felt obliged to assume a leadership style that was dichotomous – masculine, aggressive and hierarchical towards male staff (because that was what she felt was expected by them) and the opposite towards female staff. This supports our model (Figure 2.1), which sees leadership style as a negotiated, pragmatic and adaptive phenomenon. While it might be thought that male principals cluster at the hierarchical, masculine end of the continuum, and females at the non-hierarchical, caring end, the reality is often very different. Many female principals adopt and prefer an approach that is typically thought to be masculine, and males, likewise, switch and flip-flop their approach. In contrast to Aburabia-Queder’s case study of the first woman principal in Bedouin society, Karnieli, in her chapter, writes about the socially closed group of ultra-orthodox Jews. Although the place of women in ultra-orthodox Jewish society is very traditional, the actual social roles for women turn out to be extremely different from the Bedouin. For example, while men assume deeply religious roles, women – far from eschewing roles outside the home and family - are expected to develop careers to support the family. There is thus no social stigma to careerminded women principals – such as is found in Bedouin society. Karnieli describes a woman principal who clearly feels much freer to develop her own blend of leadership style than compelled by social expectation. Both of these examples prove that even the most traditional and enduring societal cultures are challenged by, and evolve, no matter how slowly and piecemeal, in response to, changing social needs, new ideas and social structures, and global influences. In this respect Somech compares two distinctly different parts of Israeli society – the kibbutz and urban sectors. She refers to the kibbutz as a collectivist, and the urban as an individualist, sub-culture. In both sub-cultures, women principals are attempting to change the organizational culture to be more participative. The Group oriented/Self oriented cultural dimension in our model accounts well for this. Each sector has its own value systems, and while principals in both sectors foster participation, they do so for different motivations and purposes, leading to difference of approach. In the collectivist, group-oriented kibbutz, participation in school leadership is seen as an indispensable condition for creating a democratic social organization; in the urban society, it is seen as a pragmatic necessity aimed at fostering a more efficient school or social organization. This is a clear indication of how key terms, concepts and policies used in education are culturally mediated, and assume differences of meaning according to their social context. These cases show how each society and sub-group has its own unique norms, expected gender roles and ways of life, all of which may impact on women’s 45

DIMMOCK & WALKER

ability to access leader positions and influence how they exercise leadership in terms of style and approach. More case studies such as these are needed in order to test, develop and refine the cross-cultural model espoused in this chapter. CONCLUSIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREPARATION AND APPOINTMENT OF WOMEN LEADERS

A number of implications follow for the future preparation, recruitment and appointment of women principals. Some of these apply equally to male principals as to women. The first is a great need for aspiring and present principals, as well as those involved in their training and recruitment, to be more informed about the effects and importance of culture and context to successful school leadership. In part, this means improving professional knowledge and understanding of societal and organizational cultures, and thinking through the implications for leaders and leadership of schools in a more systematic and rigorous way than has been the case. In training, recruiting and appointing leaders we have hitherto placed much of the focus on the leaders per se rather than the leader in relation to particular contexts within which they might exercise leadership. The second provides an illustration of the point above. Given the increasing phenomenon of multicultural schools, and the challenges and problems they present, there is a real need for leaders, especially aspiring leaders, of such schools to acquire specialist training and expertise. For example, multi-ethnic schools present very different leadership challenges and problems to homogeneous intake schools. Indeed, great variations in leadership challenges exist among and between multi-ethnic schools. Good leadership involves successful interaction with school communities. Training and preparation of both aspiring and present leaders is needed that prepares them for, and equips them with, the ability and knowledge to create culturally diverse but inclusive schools. The third implication targets women as leaders. Aspiring and present women leaders whose own societal cultures may be resistant or opposed to them assuming leadership positions need support in order to break the mould. Such support can come in various guises, such as personal and professional mentoring, systemic backing from policy makers and educational administrators, and formal training programs aimed at fostering more conducive environments for them to assume effective leadership roles and effective professional practices. A fourth issue concerns the need to talent spot and fast track able women aspirant leaders who may be given the development and training hinted at above. Such preparation could embrace more targeted and specific training for leadership in particular cultural environments. The obverse of this is that those responsible for recruiting and appointing need to be versed in truly understanding the needs and challenges of particular school environments and the type and suitability of leader and leadership required. Educational leadership and management as a field of study and research has generally failed to keep pace with current events leading to the changing nature of societies, demographics, and educational policies. We are concerned that unlike 46

WOMEN, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

other fields, such as international business management and cross-cultural psychology, our field has generally failed to develop models, frameworks and analytical tools by which to understand these dramatic changes and their effects in different societies. Existing models and theories tending towards ethnocentrism, generally fail to distinguish cultural boundaries, and assume a false universalism. Equally, the field of educational leadership has failed in its development to reflect the fast changing nature of schools in multicultural and multi-ethnic societies. We contend that a focus on culture as an analytical concept promises more analytical and robust comparisons between school leaders and leadership, including the study of women educational leaders, across different geo-cultural areas. Such cross-cultural comparisons can embrace a wider rather than narrower perspective, incorporating school leadership, organizational structures, management, and curriculum, teaching and learning, in order to present holistic and contextualized accounts. An international, multicultural and comparative approach to educational leadership and management would bring greater refinement to the field. Few would dispute the need. REFERENCES Blake, R. R., & Mouton, J. S. (1964). The managerial grid. Houston: Gulf. Dimmock, C. (2000). Designing the learning-centered school: A cross-cultural perspective. London: Falmer Press. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (1998a). Comparative educational administration: Developing a crosscultural conceptual framework. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34(4), 558-595. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (1998b). Towards comparative educational administration: The case for a cross-cultural, school-based approach. Journal of Educational Administration, 36(4), 379-401. Dimmock, C., & Wildy, H. (1995). Conceptualizing curriculum management in an effective secondary school. The Curriculum Journal, 6(3), 297-323. Gouldner, A. (1957). Cosmopolitans and locals: Toward an analysis of latent social roles-1. Administrative Science Quarterly, 2, 291-306. Hofstede, G. H. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. London: McGraw Hill. Hofstede, G. H. (1994). Cultural constraints in management theories. International Review of Strategic Management, 5, 27-48. Hofstede, G. H. (1995). Managerial values: The business of international business is culture. In T. Jackson (Ed.), Cross-cultural Management (pp. 150-165). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Trompenaars, F., & Hampden-Turner, C. (1997). Riding the waves of culture (2nd ed.). London: Nicholas Brealey.

Clive Dimmock Centre for Educational Leadership and Management School of Education University of Leicester, England Allan Walker Department of Educational Administration and Policy Chinese University of Hong Kong

47

AUDREY ADDI-RACCAH

3. WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION

Israeli education has been undergoing a process of feminization over the last thirty years. Schools have become a women-dominated workplace and many of them are led by women. However, feminization is occurring at different rates and intensities in the different sectors of the Israeli educational system. These educational sectors represent distinct socio-cultural and economic settings that extend a far reaching effect on women's social position in school. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of women in school leadership positions in Israel. It includes three parts. The first describes and explains feminization in the Israeli context; the second deals with the characteristics of women in leadership positions; and the last focuses on women's leadership style. All of these aspects are addressed with reference to the particular context of each of Israel's educational sectors. THE FEMINIZATION OF SCHOOL PRINCIPALSHIP: A CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE

Feminization Trends The literature has indicated extensively that while women tend to be clustered in teaching, men outnumber women in school principalship, which constitutes the most rewarding and powerful position in school. This traditional pattern, however, is changing. For example, in 1999 in Great Britain, 58% of elementary schools and 28% of secondary schools were headed by females (National Statistics On Line, 1999). In 1994 in the USA, 35% of all public school principals were women (42% in elementary schools and 14% in secondary schools). In private schools, women reached about 54% among school principals (National Center for Education Statistics, 1997). In the Israeli educational system, too, women have made a great progress in entering principalship during the last 30 years, as presented in Table 3.1. Table 3.1 shows the almost triple increase between 1972 to 2000 in the percent of female school leaders in both elementary and high schools.1 At the turn of the century, about one half of Israeli schools (48%) were characterized as femaledominated workplaces, in which both the principal and teachers were women.2

I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 49–68. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ADDI-RACCAH

Table 3.1. Percentage of women in the educational system by year, position, and school level 1972

2000

School principals High school Elementary

14.1 21.1

High school Junior high Elementary

56.1 63.1 77.3

36.7 59.1 Teachers 65.9 75.6 83.0

Note.Based on data analysis of the 1972 Israeli Census (Addi, 1992) and on the 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002). Data regarding Junior high school principals was not available for 1972.

The feminization of school principalship is a multifaceted process. Goldring and Chen (1993) related it to three trends in the Israeli educational system, which occurred in the 1970s and 1980s and continue to remain relevant. All three trends led to males' departure from the profession. The first of these trends involves the decreased occupational prestige of all educators including school principals. The process of devaluation in educators' social standing in society is ongoing. Between 1974 and 1989, the prestige score (ranging from 0-lowest to 100-highest) dropped for elementary school principals from 93.1 to 66.0 and for secondary school principals from 91.1 to 66.4 (Addi, 1992). Recent data showed that low social esteem still characterize educators (Education Watch, 2005). As the social standing of teachers and school principals did not improve and frequently came under social critique, it may have deterred men, who sought attractive and rewarding occupations, from entering the educational field. Yet, it also increased males' odds of leaving teaching and principlaship in order to seek out other occupations (AddiRaccah, 2005). Theses two processes reinforced the system's feminization. The second factor that contributed to feminization relates to the decentralizing reforms in the educational system, which strengthened school principals' role at the local level but at the same time isolated them from "system-wide influences and social and political networks" (Goldring & Chen 1993; p. 178). Since its initiation in the 1980s, decentralization has intensified, leading to more uncertainty and job ambiguity among school principals (Nir, 1999). School leaders report that they are exposed to pressure from external factors such as parents or local educational authorities, who influence school policy and undermine their authority and professional power (Volansky, 2003). As the move toward school decentralization redefined the power relations between the school principal and other school constituencies that demanded a greater share in school governance, it can be assumed that principalship may have become less attractive for men who emphasized a hierarchal and autocratic style of leadership. However, it may have become better suited to women with a tendency toward a more participative and

50

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

democratic style of leadership, thus contributing to their increasing representation in school leadership positions (Power, Halpin, & Whitty, 1997). The third factor associated with feminization concerns the nature of the political relations between the ministry of education and teachers unions. Economic hardships in the 1980s led Israel's teachers unions to fight for better working conditions rather than for increased salaries. Improved conditions like the possibility of part-time hours worked in favor of women. Goldring and Chen (1993) claimed that "teaching and administrative ranks are being filled with upper socioeconomic status females, who view their work as a second income, and who are willing to forego a good salary for comfortable conditions in which to raise their children" (p. 179). Actually, educators' job rewards continue to remain low. Teachers tend to earn about 67% of the labor market's average monthly pay, which is lower than that of other public-sector professions (Israel Teachers Union, 2004). Altogether, these factors caused principalship to become less attractive to men, who moved to other occupations when women replaced them or who did not enter the educational field in the first place. In fact, the tendency to leave a school principalship to move to another occupation is higher among males than among females (Addi-Raccah, 2005). In addition to these factors, since the 1980s, the Ministry of Education made efforts to define the school principal position as a distinct profession by raising school administrators' educational level. Candidates for principalship positions are now required to hold a master's degree in educational administration or a diploma from a two-year school principal training program (Chen, 1999; National Task Force for the Advancement of Education in Israel, 2005). These changes are to women's advantage, as credentials and formal requirements were found to reduce gender inequality (Izraeli, 1997; Reskin & McBrier, 2000). Indeed, by defining the requirements needed for being appointed to school principalship, women gain opportunities to compete with men over school principal positions. Today, many women study educational administration to qualify for administrative positions and increase their chances of being appointed to them (Chen, Addi, & Inbar, 1998). The formalization of job requirements works to women's advantage for other reasons: As school principals are now required to have at least five years of teaching experience, women's chances to enter principalship have increased owing to their strong presence in the teaching ranks. Women now constitute the major pool from which school principals can be chosen. Once women constitute a critical mass in teaching, they come to be the main source from which school principals are drawn (Addi-Raccah, 2002). Hence, it can be argued that the feminization of school principalship in Israel is to a large extent an inevitable result of the feminization of the teaching force. While the above factors explain the general trend toward an increase in women's representation in principalship positions, they offer only a partial explanation in light of the variation typifying the Israeli educational system's extent and intensity of feminization. Indeed, significant differences exist in the extent of women's representation in principalship among the different educational sectors, as presented in the next section. 51

ADDI-RACCAH

Variation in Feminization The Israeli education system is divided into two segregated school systems – the Jewish and the Arab –that are separate and distinct in every aspect, including supervision, organization, and the teaching force's characteristics and composition, to name a few. The Jewish education system comprises about 75.3% of the student population and 84% of its teachers. The Jewish system itself is subdivided into three separate sectors: secular public schools (65.9% of students and 62.9% of teachers), religious public schools (18.1% of students and 21.8% of teachers), and ultra-orthodox schools (16% of students and 15.3% of teachers) (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002, 2004). The ultra-orthodox school system is partially funded by the state but not supervised by it. They have an absolute autonomy over their curricula and school organization. The Arab education system enrolls about 25% of Israel's students along with about 16% of the teaching force. Most Arab children attend public schools. A minority (about 6.3%) attend private schools affiliated with different non-profit organizations or with the Catholic, Anglican, or Greek Orthodox churches. The private Arab schools receive partial financial support from the state. These schools mostly enroll Muslim students, who actually compose the major religious group among Israeli Arabs..3 The present paper addresses only three of these educational sectors, for which large-scale and reliable data are available: the Jewish secular public schools, the Jewish religious public schools, and the Arab public schools. All three of these educational sectors receive full financial support and supervision from the State of Israel. Hence, the current chapter's focus on each of these school types may control for part of the variation between the three school systems, while emphasizing the socio-cultural factors that come into play concerning women's position within each educational sector. Table 3.2 presents the percentage of women in teaching and principalship in these three school systems. As can be seen from this table, in Jewish secular public elementary schools, the percentage of women in principal positions has in fact reached saturation (91.5%), whereas women remain under-represented in high school principalship. In these high schools, while 79.9% of the teachers are women, only 61.7% of the school principals are women. However, in Jewish religious and Arab public schools, the percentages of women are lower, both in principalship and in teaching. Riehl and Byrd's (1997) model may be utilized to explain the differences in women's representation among the three sectors. Their elaborate model for explaining access to school administration combines individuals' actions and characteristics, the organizational context in which a person works, and the wider social context. Hence, adopting a contextual approach, I propose that the extent and intensity of feminization is context bound, depending on the particular socio-cultural, economic, and political conditions of the school environment (see also Spencer, 52

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

1997). From this perspective, I suggest that Israeli women's advancement to school leadership positions largely depends on the respective socioeconomic and cultural context of the particular educational sector in which they operate, as I briefly describe below. Table 3.2. Percentage of women within each position by educational sector

School principals Elementary Secondary Total Teachers Elementary Secondary Total

Jewish secular public schools

Jewish religious public schools

Arab public schools

91.5 61.7 82.1

49.0 24.5 40.5

16.6 5.1 12.4

96.2 79.9 87.6

87.4 63.9 75.8

66.6 39.1 55.1

Note. Data based on the 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002). 4

DIFFERENCES AMONG THE THREE EDUCATIONAL SECTORS

The major distinction between the three educational sectors lies along ethnic lines, between Arabs and Jews. Israeli Arabs compose a minority group within Israeli society. Although officially granted full legal and political rights, they remain on the margins of Israel's political, economic, and social life (Lewin-Epstein & Semyonov, 1993; Tessler & Grant, 1998). Compared with Jewish citizens of Israel, most Arabs live in homogenous and low socioeconomic communities, characterized by fewer social and economic resources and limited access to occupational opportunities. These conditions may contribute to our understanding of Arab women's position in society at large, and more specifically in schools. Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein (1986, 1987) showed that Arab women’s position in the labor market is determined by the scarcity of occupational positions available in their community. As high-status jobs are saturated and employment opportunities are scarce, given the same educational level, women have had to take lower-status and lower-paying jobs than men (Semyonov, Lewin-Epstein, & Braham 1999). Even in teaching, which is traditionally perceived as appropriate for women (Mar’i, 1975), Arab men are found to have an advantage. Recent data showed that compared to Jewish men, Arab men continue to be over-represented in teaching (Gera & Cohen, 2001). This appears to stem from the fact that in the Arab sector, teaching remains an important and attractive employment source for those who hold an academic degree (Al-Haj, 1995). Being segregated from the main Jewish economic sector and therefore protected from competition with their Jewish colleagues (Lewin-Epstein & Semyonov, 1994), Arab teachers benefit from a 53

ADDI-RACCAH

relatively higher social status (Shavit, 1992) and rewards such as salary and prestige (Semyonov, Lewin-Epstein, & Mandel, 2000). Indeed, a recent survey indicated that the social status of Arab teachers surpasses by far the social status of Jewish teachers (6.9 compared to 3.6 on a scale ranging from 1-low to 10-high, based on a survey conducted and reported by Education Watch, 2005). Competition over teaching positions in the Arab sector, therefore, is very tough and unequal, leading to the exclusion of women. This is particularly pronounced in the case of school principals, who play a pivotal social and political role, both within the school and the community at large. In this matter, it may be suggested that Arab women who aspire for educational leadership are exposed to obstacles similar to those that impede women's advancement to different political leadership positions (Abu-Baker, 1998). As Mazawi (1996) argued, competition over school principalship is "a matter of male politics….In this respect, the school setting reproduces the unequal power structure regulating gender relations beyond the school" (p. 106). Actually, Arab women's probability of reaching even viceprincipal positions, which may lead to principalship, is smaller compared to both Arab men and Jewish women (Addi-Raccah & Ayalon, 2002). Obviously, advancement to the school principal position is even more challenging. Based on data from 1991 to 2004, Figure 3.1 presents the annual average percentage of female and male teachers who moved from teaching to school principal positions in the Jewish and Arab sectors (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2005). Figure 3.1 clearly shows that in the Jewish and the Arab educational systems, men have better opportunities than women to move from teaching to principalship. However, the gender gap is greater in the Arab education sector than in its Jewish counterpart. This trend is revealed in both elementary and high school. In addition to the economic factor, Arab women's disadvantage in holding leadership positions in school is affected by cultural norms. Compared both to Arab men and Jewish women, Arab women's position at work is more confined by patriarchal cultural norms (Swirski, Conor, Swirski, & Yehezkel, 2001). These traditional norms limit Arab women's employment to their immediate local and familial surroundings and impede active participation in the cash economy (Suad, 2000). Further, women are expected to forgo professional advancement in favor of men to avoid undermining the patriarchal structure of Arab society and threatening the status of men (Abu-Baker, 1998). As Al-Haj (1995) claims, cultural mores legitimize Arab men's occupation of higher positions than women in the educational system. Arab males possess more political resources to maintain their advantage in holding leadership positions; thus, they gain more support from their community than women. This support is of great importance as their selection to school leadership positions must be approved not only by the local authorities but also by the Israeli security services (Human Rights Watch, 2001; Lustick, 1980). Hence, to be promoted to principalship, in addition to their own human capital resources, Arab teachers must mobilize proper political sponsorship. While men succeed in doing so, women have more difficulty in gaining such support because they must 54

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

first mobilize their family's encouragement and approval. Most Arab women report that without family support they could not have succeeded in their job (Barkol & Kupferberg, 2001). There is also evidence indicating that male family members play a significant role in women's decision to apply for principalship and in their establishment of social networks (Barkol & Kupferberg, 2001; Shapira, 1999). It appears that without the support of men, Arab women lack confidence in their leadership capacity and encounter difficulties in gaining social legitimization for their leadership (Abu-Baker, 1998). Although some of these trends may also appear within the Jewish education system (Shapira & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2002), they are less prevalent Figure 3.1. Average percentage of teachers who moved to school principalship position by educational sector, school level, and gender (1991-2004)

1.1

1.2 1 0.8

1

0.8

0.8 0.6

Males

0.5

0.6

Females

0.4

0.2

0.2

0.2 0 Elementary

Secondary

Jewish

Elementary

Secondary

Arab

. In addition to the differences between the Jewish and Arab education systems, a salient distinction also exists within the Jewish public education sector, between the secular and religious schools. As shown in Table 3.2, compared with the Jewish secular public schools, the religious public schools have a lower percentage of women both in teaching and in principal positions. These differences reflect the unique nature of the two educational sectors. Secular public education serves a socially heterogeneous population with fairly universal, liberal attitudes. This educational sector is guided by meritocratic and egalitarian principles, implying that employees are evaluated and promoted according to their qualifications rather than on the basis of personal connections, status, or ascriptive characteristics. In this regard, the Jewish secular public school system can be said to cultivate a professional culture. It trains its teachers and principals first of all to be professionals and experts in their jobs (Chen, 1999). Women were found to exploit their human capital and personal resources for their career advancement (Fuchs & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1996). Further, given the high percentage of women in teaching and principal positions, Jewish secular public education generates a feminine organizational culture that emphasizes norms of caring and cooperation (Addi55

ADDI-RACCAH

Raccah & Chen, 2000), which, in turn, may help more women to apply to leadership positions. The religious public schools can be defined as fostering a parochial culture that emphasizes a Zionist-religious worldview combining commitment to the Jewish religion and its traditional norms, along with national values (Ayalon & Yogev, 1996; Greenbuim & Herman, 1995; Schwarzwald, 1990). Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish religious public schools were granted pedagogic autonomy to educate their students according to this sector's particular values and aims. Jewish rituals and religious ceremonies constitute a central part of their routine functioning and social activities (Dagan, 1995). Furthermore, according to Taub and Klein (2000), "Religious observance on the part of the teachers …. (is one of) the 'appropriate' behaviors required of teachers in the state religious education system" (p. 349). Scrutiny regarding religious observance of those in school leadership positions is extremely rigorous, likely affecting the process of selection for school principal positions. According to the former director general of religious public education, school principals are expected to act according the worldview of the Zionist-religious movement in their daily life and to implement religious educational doctrine in school. Their mission is to instill religious values and norms in both students and school staff by serving as a role model (Dagan, 2001). Hence, where school principalship is defined as a religious mission, men have an advantage over women in terms of mobilizing support and approval to endorse their appointment, because males hold a privileged position in Jewish religion, rituals, and ceremonies (Addi Raccah & Ayalon, 2002). Indeed, compared to secular public education, in religious public education the criteria for promotion to administrative and supervisory roles are, in practice, less well defined and tend to be informal (Schwarzwald, 1990). This leaves more room for sponsorship, particularistic affiliations, and ascriptive characteristics (Chen, 1985), which limit open competition and operate to exclude women (see also Tallrico, 2000). As in the Arab sector, patriarchal norms also affect the Jewish religious sector (Eden, 2000). In fact, the religious public educational system maintains gendersegregated schools or classrooms and socializes girls to conform to their traditional role as wife and mother alongside their contribution to the collective and the community. Religious Jewish women who define their gender identity in traditional terms (Moore, 2000) are expected to work in areas that are perceived as an extension of the domestic and private sphere, such as education, child care, atrisk youth, nursing, and community work (Rappoport, Penso, & Garb, 1994). Indeed, religiously observant women tend to adopt their gender role and develop low aspirations and expectations to hold positions, such as leadership roles, that are perceived as male jobs (Gaziel & Tzoyzner, 1987). It is then not surprising that compared with Jewish secular public schools the religious public schools boast a lower percentage of women in principal positions (Addi-Raccah & Ayalon, 2002). In can be concluded that the political, socioeconomic, and cultural contexts of the Arab and the Jewish religious public school environments, compared to the 56

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Jewish secular public schools, maintain men's advantage in holding leadership positions, whereas women encounter more barriers to advancing into leadership positions. In this regard, beliefs, values, norms, and ideologies affect recruitment practices that, in turn, may either reduce or foster ascriptive inequality (Tallerico, 2000). As indicated, in each educational sector, women must mobilize different resources to enter principalship. In Jewish secular public schools the dominant resources derive from professional considerations, whereas in Jewish religious schools and Arab education, women need social and cultural resources as well as professional qualifications. In light of the different political, socio-cultural contexts in which women who hold principal positions in Israel operate, the next section addresses three questions: (1) Who are the women who succeed in obtaining principalship positions? (2) Where are they located? and (3) How do they practice leadership? These questions will be examined for each educational sector, and, subsequently, comparisons will be carried out. THE PROFILE OF WOMEN IN SCHOOL PRINCIPAL POSITIONS

In Israel, the main road to principalship is by advancing from teaching positions, to different internal leadership positions in school, and then to principalship. The latter occurs mostly after acquiring an academic degree, preferably a master's degree in educational administration or a diploma from an educational administration program. Table 3.3 presents the personal characteristics of men and women in principal positions in the Jewish secular public, Jewish religious public, and Arab public schools. The data reveal three major findings. First, in each educational sector, school principals and teachers make up two distinct professional groups. Principals are better educated and have more experience than teachers. Partly, these differences relate to the job requirements. Recall that to access principal positions, applicants are formally required to hold an advanced academic degree and at least five years of teaching experience. The findings also show that the difference between school principals and teachers is more evident among Arab women than among Jewish women. It can be assumed that Arab women who have advanced to leadership positions comprise a select group who must prove, by acquiring more education and experience, that it deserves to hold leadership positions. Second, women school principals in all three sectors were found to have fewer young children of their own, compared to their teacher counterparts. For men, such differences were not found. Thus, the link between family responsibilities and access to leadership roles seems to be relevant for women but less so for men. A possible explanation may be that women, but not men, enter principalship after their young children have grown older.5 Indeed, Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz (1996) found that women in principal positions reported that they had left work to care for their young children, but meanwhile had used that time-out to redesign their career and prepare for applying to principalship.

57

58 840 82.1 40.7 44.5 38.2 24.0 61.2

63.3 50.3 16.1 15.0

183 17.9 50.8 39.9 50.3 29.0 41.8

51.8 40.1 29.5 19.0

Men

163 40.5 63.2 50.0 37.4 24.0 64.8

72.4 50.5 12.8 15.0

239 59.5 66.9 45.2 43.9 23.5 40.9

Teachers 61.3 66.6 48.3 43.5 18.2 32.8 16.2 18.0

953 100.0 42.5 43.7 40.3 25.0 58.0

71.3 48.2 18.1 16.8

402 100.0 65.4 47.0 41.3 24.0 50.9

Jewish religious Women Total

School principals

Total

67.5 44.2 10.1 14.0

380 87.6 66.1 52.6 30.1 27.0 39.6

Men

62.4 41.8 3.1 8.0

54 12.4 37.0 40.9 31.8 27.0 46.9

Arab Women

Note. All the differences between the three educational sectors are significant (P<0.05). Data based on the 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

Seniority median

% with MA or higher

% with BA

% with children <14 yrs

% promoted to principal in last 7 years

Seniority median

% with MA or higher

% with BA

% with children <14 yrs

No. % within sector

Jewish secular Women

Men

Table 3.3. Personal characteristics of men and women in school principal and teaching positions in three sectors of Israeli public education

64.2 42.5 6.9 11.0

434 100.0 62.4 51.3 30.3 27.0 40.4

Total

59

417 56.73 (15.27) 87.8 12.29 (1.79) 47.9 55.1

555 62.60 (16.11) 40.2 11.99 (1.56) 47.1 34.1

12.24 (1.75)

433 57.74 (15.54) 79.6

31.6

11.84 (2.43)

293 60.23 (17.66) 27.4

43.3

47.4 51.6

37.0 24.1

47.6 34.8

11.94 (2.11)

296 56.02 (15.64) 78.6

25.6

41.0 28.5

11.88 (2.31)

294 58.64 (17.02) 46.7

36.5

Jewish religious Women Total

School characteristics

Men

Locality characteristics

23.8

69.9

Jewish secular Women Total

10.4 16.8

9.26 (1.64)

526 45.46 (20.00) 2.0

39.2

Men

52.3 48.8

9.59 (1.68)

391 44.23 (17.31) 45.5

13.6

Arab Women

Note. Significant differences (p < .05) between the three educational sectors. Data based on the 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

% in metropolitan area % in high socioeconomic cluster

Median students number at school % of teachers with M BA or higher SD % of schools with 85+% female staff Students' fathers' M years of education SD

% in high schools

Men

Table 3.4. Public school and locality characteristics by school principal gender and educational sector

15.1 20.7

9.30 (1.64)

247 45.33 (19.72) 6.9

36.3

Total

ADDI-RACCAH

Third, the data presented in Table 3.3 show that female principals in the Jewish religious public school and in the Arab schools have personal characteristics that resemble those of their male counterparts, whereas in the Jewish public schools, women principals have less education and experience than men. This finding implies that as the major pool of school principals derives from teachers, who in the Jewish secular public schools are predominantly female, women in this educational system may well find their way into leadership positions even with fewer human resources. That is, the increased presence of women in principalship and teaching appears to have pushed men out of the educational system, enabling to more women to move into better jobs, even if their human capital resources are weak. Organizational and locality characteristics in which school leadership operates can also help depict the portrait of school principals. Table 3.4 shows that women in all three educational sectors, compared to men, tend to work in smaller schools and in elementary schools, where the percentage of female staff is high and the percentage of academic teachers is relatively low. That is, women school principals are concentrated in the lower level of the educational system. Women also tend to head schools located in affluent environments, as indicated by the locality characteristics. As already argued, in these environments, men have more opportunities for working in other more attractive occupations than within the educational system; hence, they leave the educational field to women (see AddiRaccah, 2002). The findings of Tables 3.3 and 3.4 suggest that although female school principals tend to have personal characteristics that resemble those of their male colleagues, the genders are clustered in different school settings. Even within the feminized education framework, males preserve their dominant position by working in more lucrative and prestigious school settings. These data demonstrate that patterns of gender stratification are both determined by the broad socio-cultural context of the educational system (Jewish versus Arab) and, within the educational system, by the organizational context of the school setting. WOMEN'S WAY OF LEADING

Many studies have addressed the gender differences in leadership for different types of organizations including schools (e.g., Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2000). This section focuses on women's way of leading schools as reflected in different Israeli studies. From several studies, we learn that feminization of principalship is linked with changes in school climate and in how schools are managed. Women in school leadership tend to be people-oriented, focus on pedagogic issues, promote educational innovations, empower teachers, and establish a "feminine" work orientation that emphasizes caring and participation (Addi-Raccah & Chen, 2000; Fuchs & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1996; Oplatka, 2002). Some studies found that female leaders adopt a transformational and participative leadership style and create a democratic school climate based on shared governance (Barkol, 1997; Fuchs & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1996). Teachers who work 60

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

under female principals tend to report more cooperation between teachers and management, as well as a higher sense of collegiality and job satisfaction compared to teachers who work under male leadership (Chen & Addi, 1995). There are also some indications that women school principals cultivate a "friendly" female workplace, which is responsive to other women teachers' needs and attentive to their working conditions (Ben-Peretz, 1996). The Israeli findings corroborate those found in other countries (e.g., Shakeshaft, 1987; Regan & Brooks, 1995; Riehl & Lee, 1996). However, while a "feminine" leadership style characterizes the Jewish secular public schools, a different style emerges in the Arab sector (see, for example, Poper & Sleman, 2000). Although Arab women are perceived as agents for social change (Mar’i & Mar’i, 1985), they tend to act like men by adopting an authoritative style and less caring orientations when compared to Jewish women (Addi-Raccah & Chen, 2000). Arab women try to introduce change in their leadership style, but they still do so moderately, less openly and explicitly (Abu-Baker, 1998; Shapira & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2002). The differences in women's leadership style can be related to the socio-cultural and political infrastructure of the Jewish and the Arab schools that shape the behavior and actions of the school principal as suggested by Dimmock and Walker's (2000, 2002) cross-cultural perspective. We can learn how socio-cultural context affects women's leadership practices from a study that examined the extent to which female school principals promote other women, in each of the three educational sectors in Israel.6 The reported study (Addi-Raccah, in press) compared the likelihood of holding internal leadership positions under male and female principalship. Data were gathered by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics in 2000 (ICBS, 2002) and included 38,228 teachers (of whom 68.6% were women) and 849 school principals (of whom 27.2% were women). All were employed in schools with an integrated gender composition of the teaching force, in large Jewish and Arab communities. Findings showed that across the three educational sectors, male school principals tended to advance male teachers to administrative positions (e.g., vice-principal position; for similar results, see Williams, 1992; Allan, 1993); yet, the behavior of women in administrative positions toward other women varied. In the Jewish secular public schools, female principals advanced female teachers to administrative positions; in the religious public schools under female leadership, gender had no significant effect on holding internal positions; and in the Arab schools, female leaders were more likely to promote men. Given these differences between the three educational sectors, it seems that where female school leaders have more social power, stemming from their demographic dominance and normative support in the school’s broader social environment, they are able to challenge dominant gender patterns and promote their female co-workers to positions traditionally perceived as male-type jobs. This is the case in the Jewish secular public schools. Here, female school principals serve as a role model and act as social agents who promote gender equality and change gender relations (Coleman, 2002; Matthews, 1995; Schmuck & Schubert, 1995). These women are

61

ADDI-RACCAH

powerful enough to change the way school is administrated (Regan & Brooks, 1995). By contrast, in both the Arab public schools and the Jewish religious public schools, women leaders were less effective in advancing other women. Hence, female school leaders, as a small group constrained by traditional and patriarchal norms, possessed less social power to challenge the gender structure in school. These women complied with normative expectations. As Riehl and Byrd argued (1997), they were selected because they conformed to and supported the existing dominant norms rather than introducing new ideas. In the Jewish religious public schools, women promoted men and women equally, seemingly ignoring gender. They did not confront or erode the prevailing social norms. As Brunner (2000) indicated, women in leadership positions who claimed gender neutrality "were actually debunking gender bias" (p. 104). Acker (1999) also claimed that genderneutral practices perpetuate the image of organizations managed by male culture and, as such, work to the disadvantage of women. In Arab education, women tended to maintain the traditional gender stratification, in which men are the privileged group that holds better chances of accessing leadership positions. By promoting men rather than women, Arab women in principal positions acted like men in similar positions. Their behavior can be explained by their subordinate position in the broader society, that is, their own society but also the Jewish establishment. As Arab women leaders encounter very limited employment and promotion opportunities in the Arab sector, advancing to a leadership position has far-reaching implications for their social status, more than it has for Jewish women (both secular and religious). In the Arab education system, women principals constitute a particularly small and marginal group, which may be defined as a token group. For them, obtaining leadership positions means great personal advancement. Hence, by acting like men, they distance themselves from their own gender group in an attempt to join a privileged and higher status group (Graves & Powell, 1995; Kanter, 1977). Further, by adapting the normative male leadership style, women as a token group may strive to gain the support and loyalty of the teachers who work under their leadership, particular male teachers, thus mitigating the resistance that might follow their election. These women school leaders do not make trouble. They do not question, either overtly or directly, the gender relations within their community. As Moore (1998) showed, Israeli Arab women accept the patriarchal, traditional, gendered division of labor and tend to preserve the social order by resisting change. In this respect, they resemble other minority women. These women view themselves first as affiliated to an ethnic minority group and second as women. Hence, they tend to conform to traditional values and not to threaten the status of Arab men in order to preserve the ethnic unity of their society (Hassan, 1991; Shokeid, 1998). Gender inequality, then, is absorbed into broader social and ethnic inequality issues, preserving women's traditional roles (Herzog, 1998). In this respect, Israeli Arab women's position is constrained not only by their gender but also by their complex position as belonging to a subordinated ethnic group. As such, they face a double 62

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

disadvantage, once vis-à-vis the Jewish society and once regarding the sociocultural preferences within Arab society (Abu-Baker, 1998) that impede their capacity to lead social change. CONCLUSIONS

Schools in Israel have evolved into female-dominated workplaces that also tend to be led by women. Yet, although women have made progress in accessing principalship positions, feminization has sustained gender stratification. The feminization of teaching and principalship increased gender-segmentation in the labor market, whereas in the educational system getthoization trends can be found. That is, even though women have similar human capital resources as men, women are located in different school settings that give them different power resources. Men, as the dominant social group, maintain their status by working in more prestigious, challenging, and complex organizations (e.g., large secondary schools) while leaving the lower ranks and less prestigious work settings to women (e.g., small elementary schools). While this general pattern depicts the Israeli educational system, feminization occurs at different degrees of intensity in the various educational sectors. Feminization, then, is a complex process that interweaves with broad socioeconomic and cultural factors. In each of these educational sectors, women have to mobilize different types of resources to enter principalship positions, depending on the particular environment in which they operate (see also Ortiz, 2001 on the U.S.). Where more and diverse resources are required, women are less likely to hold principalship positions, as happens in the Jewish religious public schools and mainly in Arab education. In Arab education, for example, women leaders are rare. They must posses a combination of high personal, political, and familial resources in order to overcome the social barriers that prevent them from entering principalship. In Jewish secular public education, political resources are also an advantage, but women mostly rely on their personal investments and capacities. They have fewer barriers to tackle. For them, the glass ceiling is higher than for Arab women or women in the Jewish religious public schools. Once women cross from teaching to principalship, this is still not sufficient in itself to bring about change in the administrative realm. Further, Jewish religious and Arab women, who encounter more difficulty in entering into principalship positions, have less influence on changing gender relations and challenging male hegemony by leading according to their "female way". For them, working in a traditional and patriarchal environment serves as a counterforce to the efforts and actions of individual women to promote gender equality or feminine leadership style (Riehl & Byrd, 1997; Tallerico, 2000). As such, women school leaders who tend to act like men adopt a politics of denial with respect to their discriminatory experience (Marshall, 1993). Attempts to change normative rules regarding gender relations may hinder the political and familial legitimization that women gain by being elected to leadership positions (Barkol & Kupferberg, 2001). 63

ADDI-RACCAH

In the Jewish secular public schools, where women compose a critical mass, they are empowered enough to challenge the existing gender structure and male hegemony. In addition, these women also gain external support and legitimization from the broader societal context that strives to promote gender equality (Pines, Dahan-Kalev, & Ronen, 2001). In these cases, women more easily adopt a female leadership style in schools and are more able to influence the gender relations within the educational system. In this respect, Israeli women in school leadership are not a monolithic group. They negotiate their role differently and lead in different "voices," depending on the context in which they operate. In order to succeed in their job and be effective, they navigate leadership in different ways. It can be concluded that issues of power in school principals' experience arise within the multiple contexts of the social, economic, and political structure of society and the school community (Smulyan, 2000). Hence, women's leadership practices must be understood and analyzed with reference to the particular context in which principals work (Blackmore, 1999). Leadership is not only a question of gender but also a question of the context in which women and men operate. Leadership may be multifaceted, not only defined as a masculine or a feminine style (Blackmore, 1999; Fitzgerald, 2003; Reay & Ball, 2000). That is, women school leaders develop different ways of leading, enabling them to adapt to their community and resist the doubts and disagreement that may follow their selection. As McNay claimed (1992, p.65; in Blackmore, 1999, p. 197), "There are multiple factors which conflict and interlink with each other, producing differential effects. An individual's own identification with and investment in different subject positions and power make it even more difficult to speak of gender as some kind of unifying or bounding experience." Studying women's leadership through a contextual approach is very appealing, not only in the case of Israel but also in other multicultural societies in which women may develop different modes of leadership as they experience and construct their role in different ways. NOTES 1

Goldring and Chen (1993) argued that during the 1980s the increase in women's representation in school principal positions was mostly attributable to the replacement of males, rather than to the expansion of the educational system. The same logic continued for the years 1990 to 2000. 2 This information was computed from the teaching staff survey conducted in 2000. 3 Data were provided by Jacob Steinberg, lawyer and coordinator of the committee on sectors and communities in education within the National Task Force for the Advancement of Education in Israel (Vaadat Doverat), and director of the center for educational and social initiations. 4 This part is adapted and elaborated from Addi-Raccah and Ayalon (2002) and from Addi-Raccah (in press). 5 Based on data analyzed for this article, it was found that females who were newly recruited to school principal positions have fewer young children than teachers. 6 This part is a summary from Addi-Raccah (in press). All the analyses reported here controlled for the percentage of women in school and also controlled for background variables.

64

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

REFERENCES Abu-Baker, K. (1998). A rocky road: Arab women as political leaders in Israel. Ra'anana: Institute for Israeli Arab Studies. [Hebrew]. Acker, J. (1999). Gender and organizations. In J. S. Chafetz (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of gender (pp. 177-194). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Addi, A. (1992). Trends in teachers' status during the last twenty-years. Unpublished manuscript, Institute for Social Research, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. [Hebrew]. Addi-Raccah, A. (2002). The feminization of teaching and principalship in the Israeli education system: A comparative study. Sociology of Education, 75, 231-248. Addi-Raccah, A. (2005). Gender and teachers’ attrition: The occupational destination of former teachers. Sex-Roles, 53(9/10), 739-753. Addi-Raccah, A. (in press). Accessing internal leadership positions at school: Testing the similarityattraction approach regarding gender in three educational sectors in Israel. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(3). Addi-Raccah, A., & Ayalon, H. (2002). Gender inequality in leadership positions: A comparison of three educational sectors in Israel. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(2), 157-177. Addi-Raccah, A., & Chen, M. (2000). Men and women principals in Jewish and Arab education in Israel: Majority versus minority. In S. Shlasky (Ed.), Sexuality and gender in education (pp. 85112). Tel Aviv: Ramot. [Hebrew]. Al-Haj, M. (1995). Education, empowerment, and control: The case of the Arabs in Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press. Allan, J. (1993). Male elementary teachers: Experiences and perspectives. In C. L. Williams (Ed.), Doing women's work: Men in non-traditional occupations (pp. 113-127). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Ayalon, H., & Yogev, A. (1996). The alternative worldview of state religious high schools in Israel. Comparative Education Review, 40(1), 7-28. Barkol, R. (1997). Principal's interpersonal behavior as a determinant of school change. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 21, 149-164. [Hebrew]. Barkol, R., & Kupferberg, I. (2001). Under man's umbrella: Transition stories from teaching to principalship of men and women in the Arab sector in Israel. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 25, 121-152. [Hebrew]. Ben-Peretz, M. (1996). Women as teachers: Teachers as women. In I. Goodson, & A. Hargreaves (Eds.), Teachers' professional lives (pp. 178-186). London: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, leadership and educational change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Brunner, C. C. (2000). Unsettled moments in settled discourse: Women superintendents' experience of inequality. Educational Administrative Quarterly, 36(1), 76-116. Chen, M. (1985). School autonomy: Professionalism versus particularisim? Hed Ha'Chinuch, 59, 21-24. [Hebrew]. Chen, M. (1999). Leadership and management in education. In H. Paldi (Ed.), Israel's anniversary (pp. 301-327). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture. [Hebrew]. Chen, M., & Addi, A. (1995). The effect of principal's gender on teachers' attitudes toward their work. In Y. Dror, & S. Oren (Eds.), The pedagogical poem: A book in honor of Abraham Oren (pp. 125140). Tel Aviv: Ort Publications, Migdal-Ha'emek Municipality, and Oranim College of Education. [Hebrew]. Chen, M., Addi-Raccah, A., & Inbar, N. (1998). Between academic degree and certification in educational administration: A follow-up study. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 22, 5-34. [Hebrew]. Coleman, M. (2002). Managing for equal opportunities. In T. Bush, & L. Bell (Eds.), The principles and practice of educational management (pp. 135-150). London: Paul Chapman.

65

ADDI-RACCAH Dagan, M. (1995). A note to the principal in the state religious education. In N. Greenbuim, & A. Herman (Eds.), Issues in the state religious education. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture. [Hebrew]. Dagan, M. (2001). Leadership and management: The school principal's roles in the public religious education. Be'sde Ha'chemed, 1-3. [Hebrew]. Dimmock,C., & Walker, A. (2000). Developing comparative and international educational leadership and management: A cross-cultural model. School Leadership & Management, 20(2), 143-160. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (2002). School leadership in context: Societal and organizational cultures. In T. Bush, & L. Bell (Eds.), The principles and practice of educational management (pp. 70-85). London: Paul Chapman. Eagly, A. H., & Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C. (2000). The leadership style of women and men. Journal of Social Issue, 57(4), 781-797. Eden, D. (2000). Israel's gender equality in education: Revolution or containment? Urban Education, 35, 473-495. Education Watch. (2005). The index of "your teachers." Tel Aviv: Author. Fitzgerald, T. (2003). Interrogating orthodox voices: Gender, ethnicity and educational leadership. School Leadership and Management, 23(4), 431–444. Fuchs, I. & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1996). Transition from teacher to principal: An Israeli women's perspective. Megamot, 37(3), 292-314. [Hebrew]. Gaziel, H., & Tzoyzner, I. (1987). High school teachers' expectations for promotion to administrative and instructional roles. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 14, 95-108. Gera, R., & Cohen, R. (2001). Poverty among Arab in Israel and Sources of inequality between Jews and Arabs. Economic Quarterly, 48, 543-571 [Hebrew]. Goldring, E. & Chen, M. (1993). The feminization of the principalship in Israel: The trade-off between political power and cooperative leadership. In C. Marshall (Ed.) The new politics of race and gender (pp. 175-182) . London: Falmer Press. Graves, L. M., & Powell, G. N. (1995). The effect of sex similarity on recruiters' evaluation of actual applications: A test of similarity – attraction paradigm. Personnel Psychology, 48(1), 85-98. Greenbuim, N. & Herman, A. (1995). (Eds.). Issues in the state religious education. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture. [Hebrew]. Hassan, M. (1991). Growing up female and Palestinian in Israel. In B. Swirski, & M. P. Safir (Eds.), Calling the equality bluff: Women in Israel (pp. 66-74). New York: Pergamon Press. Herzog, H. (1998). Double marginality: "Oriental" and Arab women in local politics. In O. Yiftachel, & A. Meir (Eds.), Ethnic frontiers and peripheries (pp. 287-308). Boulder: Westview Press. Human Rights Watch (2001). Second class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children in Israel's schools. New York: Author. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2002). Teaching staff survey 1999/2000. Publication No. 1193. [Hebrew]. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2004). Statistical abstract of Israel 2004. No. 55, Jerusalem [Hebrew]. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2005). http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/cw_usr_view_SHTML ?ID=702 Israel Teachers Union. (2004). The counting step: The program for improving the educational system. Retrieved September 12, 2005, /http://www.itu.org.il/Index.asp?CategoryID=201 Izraeli, D. (1997). Israeli women in administration positions. In A. Maor (Ed.), Women: The rising power (pp. 56-75). Tel Aviv: Poalim. [Hebrew]. Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Lewin-Epstein, N., & Semyonov, M. (1993). The Arab minority in Israel's economy. Boulder, CO: Oxford, Westview Press. Lewin-Epstein, N., & Semyonov, M. (1994). Sheltered labor markets, public sector employment, and socio-economic return to education of Arabs in Israel. American Journal of Sociology, 100(3), 622651.

66

WOMEN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM Lustick, I. (1980). Arabs in the Jewish state. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mar'i, M., & Mar'i, S. K. (1985). The role of women as a change agent in Arab society in Israel. In M. Safir, M. T. Mednich, D. Izraeli, & J. Bernard (Eds.), Women's world (pp. 251-260). New York: Praeger. Mar'i, S. K. (1975). Arab education in Israel. New York: Syracuse University Press. Matthews, E. N. (1995). Women in educational administration: Views of equity. In D. M. Dunlap, & P. A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 247-265). New York: State University of New York Press. Marshall, C. (1993). Politics of denial: Gender and race issues in administration. In C. Marshall (Ed.), The politics of race and gender (pp. 168-174). Washington, DC: Falmer. Mazawi, A. E. (1996). Patterns of competition over school-management position and the mediation of social inequalities. Israeli Social Science Research, 11(1), 87-114. Moore, D. (1998). Gender identities and social action: Arab and Jewish women in Israel. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 34(1), 5-29. Moore, D. (2000). Gender identity, nationalism, and social action among Jewish and Arab women in Israel: Redefining the social order. Gender Issues, 18(2), 3-28. National Center for Education Statistics. (1997). Public and private school principals in the United States: A statistical profile, 1987-88 to 1993-94. Washington, DC: Author. National Statistics On Line. (1999). Teachers in maintained schools who are women: By grade. Retrieved August 12, 2005, from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/ssdataset.asp?vlnk= 4413&Pos= &ColRank=2&Rank=272 National Task Force for the Advancement of Education in Israel. (2005).The national program for education. Jerusalem: Author. [Hebrew]. Nir, A. (1999). Who needs educational authority the most? On the role perceptions of Israeli educational echelons. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 23, 155-173. [Hebrew]. Oplatka, I. (2002). Burnout and renewal: The life story of women principals in Israel. Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press. [Hebrew]. Ortiz, I. F. (2001). Using social capital in interpreting the careers of three Latina superintendents. Educational Administration Quarterly, 37(1), 58-85. Pines A. M.,Dahan-Kalev, H.,& Ronen, S. (2001). The influence of feminist self-definition on democratic attitudes of managers. Social Behavior and Personality. 29(6), 907-615. Poper, M., & Sleman, K. (2000). Intercultural differences and leadership perceptions of Jewish and Druze school principals. Journal of Educational Administration, 39(3), 221-232. Power, S., Halpin, D., & Whitty, G. (1997). Managing the state and the market: "New" education management in five countries. British Journal of Educational Studies, 45(4), 342- 362. Rappoport, T., Penso, A., & Gard, Y. (1994). Contribution to the collective by religious girls. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15, 375-88. Reay, D., & Ball, S. J. (2000). Essentials of female management: Women’s ways of working in the education market place? Educational Management & Administration, 28(2), 149-159. Regan, H. B., & Brooks, G. H. (1995). Out of women's experience: Creating relational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Reskin, B. F., & McBrier, B. (2000). Why not ascription? Organizations' employment of male and female managers. American Sociological Review, 65(2), 210-233. Riehl, C., & Byrd, M. A. (1997). Gender differences among new recruits to school administration: Cautionary footnotes to an optimistic tale. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19, 45-64. Riehl, C., & Lee, V. E. (1996). Gender, organizations and leadership. In K. Leithwood et al. (Eds.), International handbook of educational leadership and administration (pp. 879-919). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. Schmuck, P. A., & Schubert, J. (1995). Women principals’ views on sex equity. In D. M. Dunlap, & P. A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 274-284). New York: State University of New York.

67

ADDI-RACCAH Schwarzwald, Y. (1990). State religious education: Reality and research. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan. [Hebrew]. Semyonov, M., & Lewin-Epstein, N. (1986). Economic development, investment dependence and the rise of services in less developed nations. Social Forces, 64, 582-598. Semyonov, M., & Lewin-Epstein, N. (1987). Hewers of wood and drawers of water (Report No. 013). New York: Cornell International Labor Relations. Semyonov, M., Lewin-Epstein, N., & Braham, I. (1999). Changing labor force participation and occupational status: Arab women in the Israeli labor force. Work, Employment and Society, 13(1), 117-131. Semyonov, M., Lewin-Epstein, N., & Mandel, H. (2000). Updated socioeconomic scale for occupations, Megamot, 40(4), 706-729. [Hebrew]. Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park: Sage. Shapira, T. (1999). Women as innovators in Arab schools. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Haifa, Israel. [Hebrew]. Shapira, T., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2002). Muslim women in the forefront of change in school. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 26, 35-68. [Hebrew]. Shavit, Y. (1992). Arab in the Israeli economy: A study of the enclave hypothesis. Israeli Social Science Research, 7(1-2), 47-66. Shokeid, M. (1998). Ethnic identity and the social status of Arab women in Israeli city. In M. Shokeid, & S. Deshen (Eds.), The cross-cultural experience (pp. 225- 243). Tel Aviv: Schoen. [Hebrew]. Smulyan, L. (2000) Balancing acts: Women principals at work. Albany: State University of New York Press. Spencer, A. D. (1997). Teaching as women's work. In B. J. Biddle et al. (Eds.), International handbook of teachers and teaching (pp. 153-198). Netherlands: Kluwer. Suad, J. (Ed.) (2000). Gender and citizenship in the Middle East. New York: Syracuse University Press. Swirski, S., Conor, E., Swirski, B., & Yehezkel, Y. (2001). Women at the labor market of the welfare state. Tel Aviv: Adva Center. [Hebrew]. Tallerico, M. (2000). Gaining access to the superintendency: Headhunting, gender, and color. Educational Administration Quarterly, 36, 18-43. Taub, D., & Klein, J. (2000). State religious education: Religious vs. state. Journal of Church and State, 42(2), 345-363. Tessler, M., & Grant, A. (1998). Israel's Arab citizens: The continuing struggle. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 555, 97-113. Volansky, A. (2003). From educational experiment to educational policy: School based management in Israel. In A. Volansky, & I. A. Friedman (Eds.), School-based management: An international perspective (pp. 207-220). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education. Williams, C. L. (1992). The glass escalator: Hidden advantages for men in the female profession. Social Problems, 39(3), 253-267.

Audrey Addi-Raccah School of Education Tel Aviv University, Israel

68

Section II: Leading a School Within My Social Group

NABIL KHATTAB AND JAMIL IBRAHIM

4. WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTINIAN WOMEN

IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS?

INTRODUCTION

Palestinian women, compared to their male counterparts, are under-represented in leadership positions in education as well as in other segments of the labor market in Israel. Their current position in the labor market in general, and in the educational system in particular, cannot be sufficiently addressed or understood using the conventional explanations of human capital, competition with men, the glass ceiling phenomenon, and other types of discrimination practiced against them within a male-dominated society, as has been the case with previous studies on women principals (Hall, 1993; Shakeshaft, 1993; Wilson, 1997). Nor can their apparent disadvantages be explained solely by reference to cultural, traditional, and patriarchal value systems, as have the very few studies available so far on Palestinian women in educational management in Israel (Abu-Baker, 1998; AddiRaccah, 2002; Addi-Raccah & Ayalon, 2002; Resh & Sa’da-Gerges, in press). Having said that, we would not wish to ignore these explanations. On the contrary, these comprise important factors that, perhaps, play a key role in determining the position of women in the labor market. In this chapter, we use a different argument to consider Palestinian women in leading positions within the Arab educational system in Israel and to examine why so few women progress to principalship. We suggest that a number of other factors have been overlooked by previous studies, which should be taken into account when examining the case of Palestinian women in Israel. These include, for example, the status of Palestinians as a national minority group in Israel, their severe segregation from the majority Jewish population, and the exclusionist social and economic policy adopted by Israeli governments for many decades in dealing with the Palestinian citizens of the state. Nonetheless, we do not suggest that these factors are unique to Palestinian women because many other minority women may face similar conditions, though to a different extent. In this category, we may include many of the Muslim women in Europe who live in highly segregated communities (e.g., Pakistani and Bangladeshi women in Britain) and are likely to face discrimination in the general labor market (Ahmad, Modood, & Lissenburgh, 2003). We also may include Catholic women in Northern Ireland as an example of a group who is residentially segregated and cannot compete with Protestant women over jobs in the predominantly Protestant areas. Thus, analyzing the Palestinian

I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 71–88. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

case can be relevant to understanding social and political forces that operate on both minority men and women within multi-national and multi-ethnic societies. With respect to Palestinian women in Israel, it has been argued that Palestinian women face a double state-imposed penalty (Herzog, 2004; Mazawi, 1996a), as part of a minority that is systematically denied access to the more desirable societal resources such as employment opportunities, and also as women who need to compete with men in a society where their male counterparts themselves face limited employment opportunities due to job discrimination in the Jewishcontrolled labor market, thereby intensifying pressure on the local labor market and making the competition much tougher (Khattab, 2005). In the few studies that have addressed the issue of Palestinian women in leading educational positions (Addi-Raccah, 2002; Addi-Raccah & Ayalon, 2002; Resh & Sa’da-Gerges, in press), many of the aforementioned factors have not received much attention. With the exception of a brief reference to the status of the Palestinian minority within Israeli society and their systemic social and economic exclusion, these studies have failed to adequately highlight the importance of such factors in shaping Palestinian women’s position within the Arab educational system in Israel. Thus, in this chapter, we examine their position as principals and educational leaders against the entire background affecting the socioeconomic and political status of Palestinian citizens in Israel. The chapter is organized as follows: In the first section below, we refer to some theoretical aspects and previous research. In the second section, we introduce the context of the study followed by up-to-date statistics about the percentages of women in management positions in the system as a whole and by school level (primary, intermediate, and secondary). Then, we go on to examine the questions of why Palestinian women are less likely to become principals than Palestinian men, and also why they are less likely than women in other societies to reach such positions. In this respect, a case study of a Palestinian woman in the position of principal is presented. The chapter ends with a brief summary and some conclusions about the position of Palestinian women as educational leaders. UNDERSTANDING MALE DOMINANCE IN MANAGERIAL ROLES IN EDUCATION

It is a well-established fact that women in the labor market in general are disadvantaged, occupying inferior positions and earning far less than men (Bradley, 1989; Halford, Savage, & Witz, 1997; Kraus, 2002; Padavic & Reskin, 2002; Reskin & Padavic, 1994). This situation applies in most labor market niches including education. Indeed, most studies on women and educational leadership have pointed out that women are far less likely than men to be appointed to principalship or other formal leadership positions (Addi-Raccah, 2002; Curry, 2000; Reynolds, 2002; Wilson, 1997; Young & Skrla, 2003). In explaining why women are less likely to move into formal leadership positions in schools, scholars very often rely on two main approaches: human capital and patriarchy.

72

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

Human Capital Theory According to the human capital approach, the labor market is an open arena in which workers are selected (by employers) to fill the different jobs available according to their qualifications, skills, training, and experience. The approach thereby suggests that the labor market usually operates in a non-discriminatory manner and rewards workers according to their productivity (Becker, 1964). The assumption here is that because of their other traditional roles as wives and mothers and the fact that they are expected and required by the wider society (men) to look after the whole family, women are less likely to be highly committed to their work, are more likely to work part-time, and are less likely to invest in their human capital via on-the-job training. Thus, women are less productive than men and acquire lower levels of human capital. Under these conditions, it is inevitable that men move into the most desirable jobs, whilst women are pushed towards the end of the line in the labor market, leaving them with the least attractive jobs. Although this theory remains important in analyzing gender relations in the workplace and explaining sex-segregation and sex-inequality in the labor market (Reskin & Padavic, 1994), the empirical facts have not, however, always supported the human capital approach (Bradley, 1989). In the case of Palestinian women in Israel, it is important to take this point into account when examining their position in the labor market in general, and in leadership positions in particular. This is crucial because of the initial differential access of both men and women to educational resources soon after the establishment of the State of Israel and throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Khattab, 2002b). However, in recent years, Palestinian women have not only closed the gap, but also in many cases have overtaken men. As we will see later, the educational achievement of Palestinian women does not translate into more women progressing to managerial positions, as it should happen according to the human capital approach. Patriarchy Theory Schools, like any organization, are shaped and colored by masculinity. According to the patriarchy approach, men comprise the dominant factor that facilitates and restricts women's access to various types of positions, including managerial ones. Patriarchy is seen as “a system of social structures and social practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women” (Walby, 1990, p. 20). In other words, it is a system in which men are the dominant actors, and women are subordinate to them in all aspects of social, economic, and political life. All key positions in all societies have historically and traditionally been held by men, and men were those who facilitated the access of women to their positions. Most families have a patriarchal structure, and the dominance of men is privately practiced, whereas patriarchy in the public sphere is practiced collectively by men over women by exploiting them in the labor market (Walby, 1990). This theory, in fact, argues that organizations are patriarchal by nature. Masculinity is seen as an integral and inherent part of the structure and culture of 73

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

organizations (Ferguson, 1984; cited in Halford et al., 1997). Thus, “gender is a key constitutive component of the field of social, economic and political relations that make up the terrain within which ways of organizing are forged and constructed” (Halford et al., p. 12). Men in such systems try to keep their control and to preserve their advantaged positions by excluding women from access to positions of power and even from obtaining various skills and training that allow them to enter these positions (Reskin & Padavic, 1994). If we apply this logic to the school system, then it is in men's interest to keep the managerial positions in their own hands, allowing women to occupy only the ordinary teaching positions. It is also logical to expect that the higher the position is, the lower the chances for women to gain access to it. For example, it will be less likely for women to hold principalship positions in secondary schools than in primary schools, as the former position is considered more prestigious than the latter. What is the Problem with These Theories? Both theories are somehow problematic, especially when taken separately. The human capital approach fails to account for the interests of various groups and their attempts to preserve these interests such as in the case of men and women, or middle class and working class, or immigrants and the host society. Regardless of the human capital of women or immigrants, there will always be discrimination against them by the dominant group, as part of their attempt to retain their power and control. The patriarchal approach is also problematic by failing to provide a convincing explanation for how men will continue to sustain their control and exclude women when those women are increasingly obtaining more qualifications and accumulating experience and other forms of human capital. In such circumstances, it will be more difficult for men to keep women away from power positions for a long time. Another problem with these theories becomes evident when we come to examine special communities such as the Palestinian community in Israel and perhaps other minority groups (Hill-Collins, 1990). In cases such as that of Palestinians in Israel, these theories overlook the collective subordination of minorities to dominant groups and the practices used by dominant groups that result in social, economic, and political marginalization and exclusion on the part of minorities. As a collective, minorities very often confront limited opportunities, are denied access to social resources, and face severe discrimination in employment and other life domains. In addition, these theories also fail to note other social forces and actors, such as the extended family within the Palestinian society, which play a very significant role in shaping many of the social, political, and perhaps economic processes within that society. 1 For these reasons, applying the human capital and patriarchal approaches without considering these realities or specific contexts can be hugely misleading.

74

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

Internal Colonialism Theory To account for these factors and to provide a better theoretical understanding, not only of our case, but also of other similar cases, we borrow some ideas from the theory of internal colonialism (Blauner, 1969; Zureik, 1979). Briefly, this approach attempts to analyze the position of minorities, particularly involuntary minorities, as well as the minority-majority relations, through a framework of colonizer (dominant group) and colonized (minority). According to this theory, the minority was brought in by force, its culture and social organization were controlled, and its lives as well as political and economic aspirations were shaped by ethnic outsiders (Blauner, 1969). After establishing their dominance, the colonizers (Jewish immigrants in our case) tend to maintain separate social, economic, and political systems, while exploiting the minority and controlling minority members' access to resources available to the dominant group. The separate systems for the minority often mean different resources and rewards and an asymmetrical economic relationship between the two groups. One of the inevitable results of this process is the creation of two different labor markets, one local and underdeveloped with limited resources and opportunities and the other well established, catering mainly to the dominant group. Very often, it happens that the majority (dominant group) controls the access of minority workers into the general labor market, while allowing some of them entrance, mainly to do dirty, demanding, and dangerous (DDD) jobs that the dominant workers do not want (Yinger, 1985). As we will see later on in this chapter, these ideas gain significant support from analyzing the case of Palestinian women as educational leaders. In what follows, we discuss the context of the study to provide further understanding on the status of Palestinians in Israel. THE CONTEXT

Over the past five decades, Palestinian society in Israel in general and particularly its educational system has witnessed rapid and dramatic change. On the economic front, the society has largely shifted from peasantry and a land-based economy to proletariat or "village proletariat" (Al-Haj, 1987; Al-Haj & Rosenfeld, 1990). As a result of massive land confiscation by the State of Israel on the one hand, and the decline in land importance as a social and economic resource on the other, many Palestinian men have sought jobs in the Israeli towns and cities as unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers (Shavit, 1992, 1993). However, the more educated Palestinian men have found non-manual jobs in the local labor market that began to emerge as state-based public services expanded within the Palestinian localities. Socially, the Palestinian population has evolved from a rural and uneducated population with the extended family type as the norm, into a diverse society with much higher levels of schooling where the nuclear family type has become the norm. Over the last four decades, especially from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the fertility rate among Palestinian women (especially Muslim and Druze) has

75

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

significantly declined from very high levels of about eight children per woman, to much lower levels of about four children per woman. The dramatic increase in educational levels among Palestinians in Israel has primarily resulted from three main processes: First, the legislation on compulsory education and its enforcement, albeit partial, compels families of low socioeconomic status to send their children (including girls) to school and to complete primary education. Second, since 1948, and especially in the 1970s and 1980s, many primary and secondary schools have been established in Palestinian localities, making schooling available not only to students from urban localities and from a high socioeconomic background, but also to students residing in villages and from the lower strata. Third, the demand for educated workers within the Palestinian localities has dramatically increased as a result of rapid social and economic changes that have been taking place over the last four decades. Thus, education has become an important resource and a key factor in determining one’s social status and the associated odds of upward social mobility. These processes have affected boys and girls alike. Both have gained similar access to education, and recent studies regarding the educational achievements of Palestinian students have reported that in some areas of the educational arena, girls have not only succeeded in reducing or removing the gap between themselves and boys, but they have even gained an advantage over boys (Khattab 2002a, 2002b; Mazawi, 1996b). One of the most important developments regarding the education of Palestinian girls was the rapid geographical expansion of post-secondary education (colleges) in Israel, especially during the 1990s. Thus, post-secondary education has become available to many Palestinian girls who, for different reasons, would otherwise not have achieved it. Larger numbers of educated women have imposed greater pressures on the local labor market as these educated women sought jobs. Over the years, more and more females in the labor force have joined the educational system as employees at all levels, yet in more significant numbers at the lower levels (primary education) than at the higher ones (secondary education). Interestingly, a previous study revealed that approximately one-third of the economically-active Palestinian female labor force is employed in the education system (Khattab, 2002a). It is worth mentioning at this point that the Palestinian population is not homogeneous, as it consists of three major religious groups. Muslims comprise 79% of the total Arab population, Christians about 12%, and the Druze about 9% (Khattab, 2003b). The three religious groups differ from each other culturally, residentially and socioeconomically. Christians, who tend to reside in urban localities, have a lower fertility rate, better educational opportunities, and considerably higher occupational status than that of the Muslims and Druze, who live in village localities and share a similar cultural background. In addition, since 1956, Druze males, unlike Muslims and Christians, have been conscripted into the Israeli military, which theoretically entitles them to better educational resources, better access to the labor market, and other financial benefits.

76

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

The internal religious division is also reflected in the organization of Israeli Arab education. For the most part, Muslim students attend Muslim schools, Druze attend mostly Druze schools, and Christians attend Christian church-run schools (Mazawi, 1996a). In fact, two national administrative bodies oversee the educational affairs of the Arab population: one public system catering mainly to Muslim students and another public system for Druze students. Christian students mostly attend elite private schools. The latter are independent, non-governmental schools, whereas the former are state-based schools run by the Ministry of Education. PALESTINIAN WOMEN IN TEACHING AND PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS: A STATISTICAL OUTLOOK

In this section we move on to describe the representation of Palestinian women in teaching as well as in principalship positions in education, and compare their position with that of Jewish women in the Jewish educational sector. Table 4.1 presents the percentage of both Palestinian and Jewish women in education by year and school level. As can be seen on this table, remarkable differences are evident between the groups in terms of their representation in education across the different levels: primary, intermediate, and secondary. Jewish women are much more represented in each of the levels than are Palestinian women. Table 4.1. Women in Jewish and Arab education systems in Israel by school level and year (percentages)

School level Primary Intermediate Secondary Primary Intermediate Secondary

Year 1970/71 1980/81 1985/86 1992/93 1997/98 1999/2000 Jewish education 75 85 89 90 88 87 — 69 74 78 83 82 — 60 62 65 67 70 Arab education 31 47 43 54 64 66 — 23 29 33 39 42 — 20 20 26 34 34

Note. Source: 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey, Tables 2 and 3 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

The feminization process in the Jewish system occurred much earlier than in the Arab system, whereas in the latter the process of feminization is continuing. For example, nowadays the majority of teachers in Jewish education are women, regarding primary, intermediate, and secondary education (87%, 82%, and 70% respectively). In Arab education, only at the primary level do women constitute a majority; at the intermediate level they constitute less than half (48%), and at the 77

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

secondary level they comprise only about a third (34%). Table 4.1 suggests that the proportion of Palestinian women in education is gradually and consistently increasing over the years. This increase is no doubt slower than in other systems such as the Jewish one, due to number of reasons. One of these reasons is that Jewish women have had access to education, and in particular to higher education, earlier than Palestinian women. As a result, Palestinian women have attained less education than Jewish women and have entered the labor market (including education) in significant numbers much later than Jewish women (see previous studies, e.g., Khattab, 2002a, and more detailed data in Khattab, 2002b). These trends can also be observed from the age distribution of women in education, presented in Table 4.2. 2 Table 4.2 shows that Palestinian women working in Arab education differ from their counterparts in Jewish education in terms of age distribution. Generally speaking, Palestinian women working in education are younger than their peers in the Jewish education system. Approximately half of Jewish women are aged 40 and over in both primary and post-primary education, whereas slightly less than a third of Palestinian women in primary education and about a quarter in postprimary education are aged 40 years or more. There is a clear difference at the other end of the age scale, namely the younger cohorts. For example, slightly less than one-fifth of Jewish women in primary education and slightly over one-tenth in post-primary education are 29 years or less. Yet, amongst Palestinian women, the percentages are 38% and 35%, respectively. Table 4.2. Women in Jewish and Arab education by school level and age in years (percentages)

School level Primary Post-primary Primary Post-primary

Age in years <24 25-29 30-39 40-49 50+ Jewish education 4 15 31 34 16 2 11 28 35 24 Arab education 10 28 31 26 5 8 27 41 19 5

Note. Source: 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey, Table 5 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

This suggests that Palestinian women have begun joining the labor market, including the teaching professions, much later than their Jewish counterparts. Because obtaining a job as a school teacher requires the candidate to possess suitable qualifications, this also indicates that Palestinian women have increased their educational attainment not only at a later stage in comparison with Jewish women but also, and more importantly, much later than Palestinian men. 78

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

Tables 4.1 and 4.2 suggest that Palestinian women are increasingly improving their representation within the Arab educational system, creating a new reality in which men are no longer the sole actors. In light of this new reality, the inevitable question is to what extent have women's increased numbers in Arab education influenced their representation in principalship positions within the system. In this respect, it is neither clear nor obvious that the increase in women’s education is resulting in more women's allocation to leadership positions in the education system. Indeed, many other social forces may hinder their organizational mobility within the system. Unsurprisingly, Table 4.3 shows that the proportion of women who hold leading positions either as principals or vice principals is far below what would be expected given their overall numbers in the system. In fact, this holds true for both the Jewish and the Arab systems, but the gap in the Arab system is much larger. If we take primary education as an example, where Palestinian women comprise about two-thirds of the teachers, the proportion of Palestinian women who are principals or vice principals is 19% and 24% respectively. At the post-primary level, Palestinian women hold as low as 8% of all principalship positions although they comprise over one-third of all teachers. This result is not surprising and coincides with what we know about women principals in general and about the special socio-political context of Palestinians in Israel in particular. Table 4.3. Men and women in leadership positions in Jewish and Arab education in Israel – 2000 (percentages) Jewish education Men Women Primary education 33 67 21 79

Position Principal Vice a Other Total

12 88 13 87 Post-primary education 57 43 34 66

Principal Vice a Other Total

23 26

75 74

Arab education Men Women 81 76

19 24

32 34

68 66

92 86

8 14

61 62

39 38

Note. Source: 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey, Table 7 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002). a

Other = teachers, class tutors, counselors.

Thus, the conclusion that Palestinian women, as principals, are underrepresented at all levels of the educational system is not unreasonable. Following

79

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

the logic of the human capital approach, one may argue that these women are less qualified than men. However, this point is refuted because the current underrepresentation of Palestinian women in leading positions within the educational system in Israel is not attributable to lower qualifications, as seen on Table 4.4, which shows that on the whole, women and men in Arab education possess very similar qualifications. The question then remains: Why, despite similar qualifications to men and considerable presence in education, are Palestinian women less likely to be principals? In order to answer this question, we need to consider the socio-political and economic context in which both Palestinian men and women live. We also need to explore how these contexts shape the future trajectories and aspirations of women, especially as far as leadership positions in education are concerned. First, we will examine the political and socioeconomic contexts, and then move on to explore the link between these contexts and the position of Palestinian women in the labor market in general and in principalship positions specifically. We will do this alongside and through a case study of one Palestinian woman principal in a primary school in a Palestinian town in Israel. This principal will be referred to as Hanadi (a pseudonym).

Table 4.4. Teachers in primary and post-primary education by sex and wage scale in Arab education (percentage)

Wage scale MA/PhD BA Senior Licensed Not licensed

Primary Men Women 3 25 52 10 10

1 22 52 14 11

Post-primary Men Women 11 52 23 11 3

5 56 21 13 5

Note. Source: 1999/2000 Teaching Staff Survey, Table 8 (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

Over the past few decades, the education level among Palestinians in Israel has appreciably increased, first among men and later on among women, thereby creating highly skilled and qualified persons who can enter the labor market and compete for the most desirable jobs in science, medicine, law, industry, and so on. Notwithstanding, men, rather than women, are still the main breadwinners among Palestinians in Israel. Only about one fifth of all Palestinian women are economically active (Khattab 2002a), though among the highly qualified women, this proportion extends beyond 80%. Substantial numbers of well-qualified people 80

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

and academics have stood in line to enter the labor market in recent decades. However, as a result of severe structural barriers and institutional discrimination against Palestinians in the Jewish-controlled labor market in Israel (Barzilai, 2003), the vast majority of these well-qualified men and women had no choice but to seek jobs within the local labor market (Palestinian enclave economy). Indeed, state and private Jewish employers in Israel (the dominant group) adopt different practices and policies toward Jews and Palestinians, which guarantee the latter's exclusion and deny access to the labor market's most desirable jobs while allowing full access to the less attractive unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. These practices fall within the dominant group's (colonizers') efforts to sustain the minority's subordinate status, as argued by Blauner (1969). Numerous economic niches in the labor market are closed to Palestinian workers, such as military-based industries, hi-tech industries that frequently work in association with the military industries, higher education institutes, and so on. Private employers whose activity is purely defined as civilian and not military may also require that candidates hold a military service certificate as a means of filtering out Palestinian candidates. In the local Palestinian enclave economy, job opportunities are rather limited, and the labor market as a whole is underdeveloped. Businesses in the Palestinian enclave very often cater to the local community, and the vast majority comprise extremely small establishments with very few or no employees at all (Kraus & Yonay, 2000). Well-qualified Palestinian men, who in an open and meritocratic labor market would reach managerial positions, are frequently found in non-managerial jobs as a result of the extremely limited opportunities within the Palestinian enclave on the one hand and job discrimination within the Jewish labor market on the other. In other words, Palestinian men are indeed are caught between limited opportunities locally and job discrimination nationally. These conditions create a great deal of pressure on the local labor market, in particular when a managerial position becomes available such as a principalship at a Palestinian school. Men may be reluctant, to some extent, to accept ordinary teaching jobs in primary schools, but a very different reaction evolves when the job concerns a principalship. Competition between men themselves 3 becomes very tough, let alone between men and women. It is obvious that women under these conditions are more likely to be pushed to the end of the line. For example, for any managerial job, there are always more male candidates than females and very often there are no females at all. This was also the case when Hanadi applied for the position of head teacher in her town. She was the only woman to apply for this job and, more importantly, the first woman in her town to do so. Recollecting this, she proudly stated: There are about 20 schools in this town. I was the first woman to hold a head teacher position in Baydar [fictional name] and I was even the first woman to apply for such a job. …However, today there are three women holding principalship positions out of 20 schools. Thus, Palestinian women are less likely than men to apply for principalship positions and are certainly much less likely to be appointed, because even when a 81

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

woman does apply, many difficulties may impair her chances of success. Some obstacles are grounded in the stereotypes of decision-makers (men) at the local level (local educational authorities); some are associated with the role of the state and its attempts to interfere in appointing and allocating candidates to such positions for the sake of political ends; and yet some other difficulties stem from the lack of employment opportunities available for highly qualified Palestinian men. Almost all these types of difficulties were faced by Hanadi, who commented: There were 17 candidates for this position and I was the only woman. …The local education authority gave its support to one of the men candidates as they had some reservations about my candidacy because I am a woman … The Ministry of Education wanted another man for this position due to political considerations. The relatively high number of male candidates for principalship can only be explained by the lack of other opportunities for Palestinian men to reach managerial positions and by the fact that for many well-qualified men, the education system offers the only channel for reaching such managerial positions. The role played by the state (represented by the Ministry of Education) is also significant in identifying some of these factors that hold women back. According to Hanadi, one of the candidates for her position was supported by the Ministry of Education, and it very often happens that the candidate with the Ministry’s backing wins the competition regardless of his (usually a man) qualifications. This scenario almost prevailed in the case of Hanadi’s appointment, as she explained: Honestly speaking, there is a clear general problem here and the Ministry of Education is part of it … that the candidacy and the appointment of people to positions in the Arab sector is not according to qualifications and skills but according to political considerations. …For example at the end of the selection process there were two candidates left, I was left and the other man who had the Ministry of Education's support, and although my qualifications are higher than his qualifications, he was about to be appointed to this position … but then after a very long struggle I was appointed as principal. Since the early stages of the state, exercising the appointment of teachers, and most certainly of principals, has been an important mechanism in its efforts to control the Palestinian community by filtering out elements identified as problematic (from the security point of view) and by rewarding individuals and/or families and groups for being loyal to the state or for giving their political support (in terms of votes in general elections) to the party in power (Abu-Saad, 2004; AlHaj, 1995; Mazawi, 1994). These rewards are very often in the form of appointing family or group members as teachers, and especially principals, in local schools. When this happens and the family is asked to name an appropriate candidate for a principalship position, the nominee is always male due to the common stereotypical assumption that women cannot be principals (Resh & Sa’da-Gerges, in press).

82

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

It should be noted here that the exclusion of women from principalship positions does not necessarily mean that a male conspiracy exists to exclude women, but rather exclusion occurs because of the constraints faced by society. In other words, like women in many other societies including western ones, Palestinian women may be subject to job discrimination by men, but what makes their position even worse in terms of employment opportunities is not the fact that Palestinian men are more likely than other men to be guided by their masculinity and consequently to operate tougher patriarchal arrangements, but rather because Palestinian men are themselves marginalized and very anxious about their image and self-esteem as well as their survival as the main breadwinners. They face severe job discrimination and extremely limited employment opportunities, and because managerial positions are so rare, principalships at schools become very attractive and desired. Unless the school concerned enrolls girls only, or is a primary school, men would consider themselves natural candidates for principalships, whereas women would not take this for granted. Having said that, we are not suggesting here that other factors, such as traditional stereotypes and discrimination against women, are not important. On the contrary, we believe they comprise concrete factors in women’s reduced opportunities. However, their influence is very much shaped by the specific economic and political contexts mentioned above, in addition, of course, to other social forces that constrain the general level of economic activity amongst women, such as family responsibilities (Addi-Raccah & Ayalon, 2002; Resh & Sa’da-Gerges, in press). This latter point was also mentioned by Hanadi when she went on to talk about the barriers that restrict Palestinian women from reaching leadership positions: The main barrier is grounded in life’s priorities for women which are home and children. …Many women mistakenly think that they cannot manage developing a professional career and looking after the house and children at the same time, but I cannot blame them, as the message that is delivered to young girls is that becoming a teacher is the best job for women and this makes girls think –be a teacher or nothing Indeed, some previous studies have shown that women’s employment opportunities (and to some extent, those of men) are likely to be molded at a very early stage, even before these women enter the labor market, namely through the socialization process and the formation of future employment aspirations and expectations (Ayalon, 1988; Khattab, 2002b; Schneider & Stevenson, 1999). It has been suggested that high school girls are aware of the labor market's gender segregation and are also aware of their future roles and responsibilities (at the home and family levels); therefore, girls tend to develop their future employment expectations in line with this awareness. In other words, their perceptions regarding schooling, employment, sex relations, and so on, which are constructed through the socialization process (Khattab, 2003a), are crucial in forming their employment expectations and, subsequently, their actual employment opportunities. In the case of Palestinians in Israel for example, about one third (30%) of all high school girls 83

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

aspire to jobs in education (Khattab, 2003b), and, in reality, a similar proportion of Palestinian women hold jobs in education (Khattab, 2002a). As far as principalship positions are concerned, as few as 1% of all girls who aspire to jobs in education expect to hold principalship positions. 4 These youngsters' initial low expectations may, amongst other things, explain the low proportion of women who actually hold leading positions in education: Women with low expectations may therefore be less willing to aggressively compete with men, especially in light of their other family responsibilities and the fact that they also need to battle the local as well as state systems, as mentioned earlier. Thus, given these social, political, and, to some extent, traditional forces, it is not surprising that most Palestinian women would prefer not to go against the "natural" flow of the system. Instead, they seem to acquiesce and behave in line with the reality that is dictated by lack of adequate employment opportunities for highly qualified Palestinian men, extensive selection and co-optation by the state, and the expectations that those women who do choose to work should hold jobs that do not conflict with their main roles as housewives. Only a very few women, like Hanadi, decide to challenge the system, and these exceptional women appear to differ in their access to other resources that remain unavailable to their sisters. In the case of Hanadi, her father was a school principal, which shaped her initial aspirations to become a school principal, and her husband considerably supported her aspirations. In her words: The main source of support and encouragement I receive is from my husband, who has encouraged me to apply for the position and supported me all the way through and is still doing so. Undoubtedly, women with similar aspirations need further resources to be able to take up leading positions and enter a system such as the Arab educational system in Israel. These women not only face a patriarchal system in which men are dominant and may wish to exclude women in order to preserve that dominance (as in many other societies including western ones), but women also struggle with traditional expectations that push them toward certain jobs (Abu-Baker, 2002). Furthermore, these women confront a severe lack of employment opportunities and must also "fight" against the state. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Palestinian women in general neither hold aspirations toward managerial positions, nor try to pursue those aspirations when they do exist, at least not in significant numbers. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

To sum up, previous studies 5 that looked at Palestinian women in principalship positions have linked the very low proportion of women in these leadership positions to cultural reasons, suggesting that family structure as well as the pressure of social norms and the patriarchal regime are responsible for the exclusion of women from the higher echelons of the state education system (AddiRaccah & Ayalon, 2002; Resh & Sa’da-Gerges, in press). Nonetheless, these factors alone cannot fully account for the position of women in the labor market in 84

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS

general and in education in particular, especially in light of the appreciable increase in their educational attainments and qualifications over the past two decades. The same forces operate in other societies; yet, the proportion of women in leading positions in education in these societies surpasses the proportion of Palestinian women, indicating that the explanation rests elsewhere and that other factors should be taken into account. We argued that the political and socioeconomic position of the Palestinians in Israel and their marginalization and systematic social exclusion render a major impact on the status of both men and women. The social exclusion of Palestinians through different mechanisms and practices accelerates the influence of the former factors by placing a great deal of pressure on the very limited local employment opportunities. Well-qualified persons (especially men) who cannot guarantee self-employment are actually trapped between becoming unemployed or entering the educational system, 6 very often as the only and least negative option. We argue that because men continue to act as the main breadwinners within the Palestinian community in Israel, this society, via different mechanisms such as the patriarchal regime, may deliberately act to rank men ahead of women as they stand in line to enter leading positions in education. These influences may operate at various stages of the life cycle, at schools and within families during the socialization process, and later in the selection process of candidates, which is largely controlled by men. Thus, the general labor market that is controlled by the dominant group (colonizers, to use the terminology of the internal colonialism theory), as well as the very limited local opportunities for guaranteeing adequate returns on their qualifications, are antagonistic toward women’s upward employment mobility. Under these circumstances, principalship and, to some extent, vice principalship positions become very attractive to men who, as explained earlier, are in better standing than women to compete and win these positions, de facto "leaving" women the ordinary teaching posts. As described above, women are also less likely than men to aspire to these positions, leaving the competition for leadership posts entirely to men. Discussion of the case of Palestinian women as educational leaders has unveiled a wide range of social and political forces that minority women in a similar position may face. It has revealed the role of the state or colonizer (according to Blauner, 1969) in shaping minority women’s professional careers and in restricting these through job discrimination in the general labor market. In this case, the dominant group not only sustains cultural or national divisions of labor in the general market, but also shapes the employment opportunities in the local labor market by supporting some sub-groups or communities for the sake of political capital, while excluding others. In some cases, this happens through the reinforcement of traditional structures and values by conducting coalitions with traditional leadership (families and groups). This study has suggested that women in internally colonized societies (involuntary minorities) face extra penalties in progressing toward more senior positions in the local labor market because of limited opportunities (especially for qualified men), let alone in the general labor market where discrimination constitutes well-established practice. However, one cannot generalize from this 85

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

study before further investigations are conducted to examine whether these arguments hold with regard to other involuntary minorities such as Blacks in America, Catholics in Northern Ireland, and Albanians in Macedonia, to name but a few. If we put aside this latter point, the current chapter showed that an explication of female under-representation in managerial positions (especially within minorities) must take into account macro-level factors such as the role of the dominant group (the state, in our case), the local and general employment opportunities for men and women, as well as the micro-level factors and the social and cultural contexts. And, finally, our analysis here shows that we cannot analyze the position of minority women in the labor market without doing so simultaneously for men. The status of minority men in the labor market and the employment opportunities available to them are likely to shape the employment opportunities that women can access. REFERENCES Abu-Baker, K. (1998). A rocky road: Arab women as political leaders in Israel. Ra'anana: Beit Berl Institute for Israeli Arab Studies. [Hebrew]. Abu-Baker, K. (2002). "Career women" or "working women?" Change versus stability for young Palestinian women in Israel. Journal of Israeli History, 21(1/2), 85-109. Abu-Saad, I. (2004). Separate and unequal: The role of the state educational system in maintaining the subordination of Israel's Palestinian Arab citizens. Social Identities, 10(1), 101-127. Addi-Raccah, A. (2002). The feminization of teaching and principalship in the Israeli educational system: A comparative study. Sociology of Education, 75(July), 231-248. Addi-Raccah, A.m & Ayalon, H. (2002). Gender inequality in leadership positions of teachers. British Journal of Sociology, 23(2), 157-177. Ahmad, F., Modood, T., & Lissenburgh, S. (2003). South Asian women and employment in Britain: The interaction of gender and ethnicity. London: Policy Studies Institute. Al-Haj, M. (1987). Social change and family processes: Arab communities in Shefar-Am. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Al-Haj, M. (1995). Education, empowerment, and control: The case of the Arabs in Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press. Al-Haj, M., & Rosenfeld, H. (1990). Arab local government in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ayalon, H. (1988). The future image: Economic perspectives of occupational aspirations of boys and girls. Megamot, 31(2), 133-151. [Hebrew]. Barzilai, G. (2003). Fantasies of liberalism and liberal jurisprudence: State law, politics, and the IsraeliArab-Palestinian community. Israel Law Review, 34(3), 425-451. Becker, G. S. (1964). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, Columbia University Press. Blauner, R. (1969). Internal colonialism and ghetto revolt. Social Problems, 16, 393-408. Bradley, H. (1989). Men's work, women's work: A sociological history of the sexual division of labor in employment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curry, B. K. (2000). Women in power: Pathways to leadership in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Halford, S., Savage, M., & Witz, A. (1997). Gender, career and organizations. London: Macmillan Press. Hall, V. (1993). Women in educational management: A review of research in Britain. In J. Ouston (Ed.), Women in educational management (pp. 23-46). Essex: Longman. Herzog, H. (2004). Both an Arab and a woman: Gendered, radicalized experiences of female Palestinian citizens of Israel. Social Identities, 10(1), 53-82.

86

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW PALESTANIAN WOMEN IN PRINCIPALSHIP POSITIONS Hill-Collins, P. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. (2002). Teaching staff survey 1999/2000. Publication No. 1193. [Hebrew]. Khattab, N. (2002a). Ethnicity and female labor market participation: A new look at the Palestinian enclave in Israel. Work Employment & Society, 16(1), 91-110. Khattab, N. (2002b). Fantasy, rationality or resistance: The social and gender construction of future orientations among Palestinian youth in Israel. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. [Hebrew]. Khattab, N. (2003a). Explaining educational aspirations of minority students: The role of social capital and students' perceptions. Social Psychology of Education, 6(4), 283-302. Khattab, N. (2003b). Segregation, ethnic labor market and the occupational expectations of Palestinian students in Israel. British Journal of Sociology, 54(2), 259-285. Khattab, N. (2005, September). Determinants of occupational attainment amongst Palestinian men and women in Israel: Rethinking inequalities. Paper presented at the 7th conference of the European Sociological Association, University of Torun, Poland. Kraus, V. (2002). Secondary breadwinners: Israeli women in the labor force. Westport, CN: Praeger. Kraus, V., & Yonay, Y. (2000). The power and limits of ethno nationalism: Palestinians and Eastern Jews in Israel, 1974-1991. British Journal of Sociology, 51(3), 525-551. Mazawi, A. (1994). Palestinian Arabs in Israel: Educational expansion, social mobility and political control. Compare, 24, 277-284. Mazawi, A. (1996a). Patterns of competition over school-management positions and the mediation of social inequalities: A case study of high court of justice petitions against the appointment of principals in public Arab schools in Israel. Israel Social Science Research, 11(1), 87-114. Mazawi, A. (1996b). The structure of equality of educational opportunities in the Arab educational system in Israel. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Israel. [Hebrew]. Padavic, I., & Reskin, B. F. (2002). Women and men at work (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Resh, N., & Sa'da-Gerges, V. (in press). Management in Arab schools: Where are the women? In E. Herzog, Z. Valdan, & A. Shubert-Pisate (Eds.), Qualified for teaching Shavit, Y.Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuhad. [Hebrew]. Reskin, B. F., & Padavic, I. (1994). Women and men at work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Reynolds, C. (2002). Women and school leadership: International perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press. Schneider, B., & Stevenson, D. (1999). The ambitious generation: America's teenagers, motivated but directionless. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shakeshaft, C. (1993). Women in educational management in the United States. In J. Ouston (Ed.), Women in educational management (pp. 47-63). Essex: Longman. Shavit, Y. (1992). Arabs in the Israeli economy: A study of the enclave hypothesis. Israel Social Science Research, 7(1&2), 45-66. Shavit, Y. (1993). From peasantry to proletariat: Changes in the educational stratification of Arabs in Israel. In Y. Shavit, & H. P. Blossfeld (Eds.), Persistent inequality: Changing educational attainment in thirteen countries (pp. 337-350). Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Walby, S. (1990). Theorizing patriarchy. Oxford, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, M. (Ed). (1997). Women in educational management: A European perspective. London: Paul Chapman. Yinger, M. (1985). Ethnicity. Annual Review of Sociology, 11, 151-181. Young, M. D., & Skrla, L. (2003). Reconsidering feminist research in educational leadership. Albany: State University of New York Press. Zureik, E. T. (1979). The Palestinians in Israel: A study in internal colonialism. London: Routledge.

87

KHATTAB & IBRAHIM

Nabil Khattab University of Bristol, England Jamil Ibrahim Van-Leer Institute Jerusalem, Israel

NOTES 1

An important example of the power of the extended family within Palestinian society can be seen during periods of local elections (for local authorities) and of local conflicts (between different families and clans). 2 The numbers included in this table refer only to the year 1999/2000 due to data constraints. 3 Sometimes this competition is not between different individuals on the basis of qualification but rather a collective one based on social and political power within the local social structure; see, for example, Resh & Sa'da-Gerges (2005). 4 The comparable percentage amongst boys is 8%, suggesting that boys are much more likely than girls to aspire to principalship positions. 5 As mentioned before, these studies are very few in number and have not addressed the influence of the socio-political and economic context on women. 6 The Ministry of Education is considered the largest employer in the Palestinian-Arab sector because many well-qualified persons who cannot find jobs in the general labor market are "forced" to accept jobs in the only field available to them, education.

88

IZHAR OPLATKA

5. EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

The Life Story of Secular Women Principals in Israel

INTRODUCTION

In 2004, while attending a session about gender and educational management, I heard the presenter indicate that Israel is the only western country she knows in which women comprise the majority of principals. Reporting about her visit to the Israeli educational system, she was astonished by the fact that men's underrepresentation in principalship is "natural and accepted by all." Asking for permission to comment on her conclusion, I explained that this ideal situation (in feminist terms) does not characterize all parts of Israel, but only the non-observant, modern Jewish group, which constitutes the majority of the Jewish population in Israel. I further explained that as far as the Arab and the religious Jewish groups are concerned, the situation is the opposite. Based on this book's assumption that women principals’ career experiences may be influenced by their micro-culture, as well as by their position as women, the current chapter displays the career development and leadership styles of female principals who work in the mainstream educational system in Israel. These nonobservant Jews (also termed "secular") live in a modern society that draws its values, by and large, from the western world, especially from the US. In this sense, with the exception of Jewish values (such as those emphasizing the central place of the family), their system of beliefs and norms is similar to that of most North Americans and Europeans, regarding liberalism, equity, equality, democracy, and so forth. Of special concern are the dominant cultural scripts in Israel's non-observant Jewish society, which I will connect here to major issues in women principals' careers, such as career entry, the induction stage in principalship, leadership style, role performance, etc. I believe that, beyond the influence of gender on their careers, many of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors at work appear to be associated with the liberal, democratic society in which they live and work. The chapter commences with a short description of Israel's modern, democratic society and the similarity of its culture to other western countries. It then goes on to present a research study concerning career issues among women principals. In closing, a cultural analysis of the women principals' life stories is suggested. I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 89–101. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

OPLATKA

Cultural Characteristics of the Non-Observant Jewish Sector The Jewish majority in Israel is diversified ethnically, religiously, culturally, and educationally, divisions that are not specific or unique to Israel's development and that reflect, at least in part, the historical and cultural contexts of the places from which many immigrant Jews arrived in Israel (Goldscheider, 1996). Apart from a division between immigrants and non-immigrants, Israeli Jews are divided into "religious" and "nonreligious" categories (Iram & Schmida, 1998). The nonreligious group at the focus of this chapter, known in Israel as "secular Jews," is the majority group in Israel. People from this group cope with the dilemmas and conflicts inherent to Israel's historical and socio-cultural conditions: tradition and modernity, nationalism and universalism, uniformity and pluralism, elitism and egalitarianism. All these dilemmas characterize many people in the modernist world and secular Arabs in Israel as well. Furthermore, like many people in North America and Europe, people in this group tend to be individualistically oriented: Many live life independently, mostly in a small nuclear family; their fertility pattern is characterized by a reduction in family size over time, currently around low levels of controlled fertility; and they believe in individualistic occupational achievement as an important channel for status attainment (Goldscheider, 1996). Secular Jewish women's rate of participation in the Israeli labor force is very high (see Adi-Raccah in this volume). But, at the same time, the structure and centrality of family life prevail in this group. Marriage and childrearing are central elements in these women's identity, and the divorce rate is lower than is the case in most western countries (Azmon & Izraeli, 1993). Generally speaking, cultural norms mandate that women be responsible for the household and most of the child care, calling women to select jobs that allow them to give priority to family life (Azmon & Izraeli, 1993). Working outside the home results in a "double burden" on women from this group, rather than in their empowerment and increased independence from the control of men and from their dependency on families (Goldscheider, 1996). Differences in religious observance have also resulted in the emergence of three Jewish school systems: state education, state-religious education, and the independent education of ultra-orthodox Jewry (see Addi-Raccah's and Abu RabiaQudar's chapters in this volume). Nonobservant (secular) Jews usually send their children to the state education system, the largest one in Israel. Congruent with western philosophies of education, a core belief of this system is that individuals should be developed to their fullest capacity. Education is considered to be a means toward social advancement and occupational achievement in the labor market. In light of the liberal, egalitarian, and meritocratic ideologies of the secular stream, this educational system serves a socially heterogeneous population with fairly universal, liberal attitudes, assuming that employees are evaluated and promoted according to their qualifications rather than on the basis of personal connections or status. In this regard, teachers and principals are trained, first and foremost, to be professionals and experts in their jobs (Chen, 1999). 90

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

A basic commitment in this educational system is to integration, equal educational opportunities, and “excellence in education” – the underlying egalitarian values on which this system is based. Thus, the secular schools perform a dual mission: They fulfill the social mission of providing equal educational opportunities to disadvantaged children, and they perform the national mission of integrating various groups of immigrants into the fabric of Israeli society (Iram & Schmida, 1998). The fulfillment of these and related values were assumed to be strengthened by the incorporation of market ideology in Tel Aviv, the largest "secular" city in Israel (Oplatka, 2002a). INTERVIEWS WITH WOMEN PRINCIPALS

The data presented in this chapter draw, mostly, on my research on women principals in mid-life (Oplatka, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2002b, 2003), which aimed at exploring the career development and stages of women principals and understanding their self-renewal and burnout processes. The study to be reported here was based on a life story strategy to document the career events, experiences, and turning points of women principals. We collected the life stories of 25 female elementary school principals aged 4352 years who held managerial positions for 8-14 years. The decision to interview women principals within this age range was based on Tamir’s (1991) findings that the mid-career stage occurs in parallel with the mid-life stage, usually between the ages of 40 and 50. These women principals came from three different educational districts in Israel. They represented a highly homogenous group, not only in terms of age and seniority, but also in other aspects. All were secular, most had bachelor degrees, and their educational careers spanned about 21-33 years within the Israeli state educational system. The women principals' life stories were divulged through an open interview, which exposed the interviewees' personal perspectives (Patton, 2002). The interviews were conducted face to face, usually in the principal's office, without predefined contents and evolution, thus resulting in some variations among the interviews. Interview contents included reflection on the principals' professional as well as personal lives, which in turn suggested some implications regarding the principals' abilities to restructure their past experiences in their profession and other life spheres. They were asked, for example, to indicate the most challenging task they faced in their first years of principalship, to depict their feelings in recent years, to reflect upon their first years of principalship, and so on. The data collected from the life story interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using inductive methods directed toward the development of a grounded theory. Analysis utilized complementary methods: a “thematic analysis” aimed at identifying central themes in the life stories (Luborsky, 1994) and “grounded theory” in which open and axial coding of the data engendered conceptual categories leading to the conceptualization of career issues grounded in the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

91

OPLATKA

In order to increase the data's credibility and authenticity, analysis was first conducted by one person and then strengthened by structured analysis and peer review, two common indicators qualitative researchers use to build confidence in their analytic procedures. However, consistent with most qualitative researchers who assume that their participants interpret reality from multiple perspectives for varying purposes (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993), I was interested in revealing principals’ subjective ideas of reality, rather than finding some objective reality. LINEAR CAREER ADVANCEMENT AND LACK OF GENDER-BASED OBSTACLES

The women principals' life stories reveal a "natural" passage to principalship, longterm aspirations for educational leadership, the construction of a managerial identity at an early career stage, a propensity to initiate and implement school changes, and expressions of burnout and weakness. These career issues, I argue, reflect and are underpinned by cultural scripts of the secular, liberal society in which these female principals live and work. Career Entry: A Lack of Reference to Gender in the Story Inductive analysis of the data elucidated scant explicit references to gender in the career advancement of women principals. None of these principals pointed to gender barriers or discrimination on their way to the principalship position, nor did any consider their womanhood to be a factor directly affecting their career entry or advancement. In contrast, when asked why they chose to be school principals, their answers were gender-neutral, implicitly indicating a career development that resembles men principals. Some always aspired for principalship and planned their career advancement, whereas others described their appointment to principalship as an unplanned, even casual event in their career. A similar distinction was illuminated in Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz's (1996) study. To begin with the former group who described long-term aspirations, socialization processes that probably comprised gender equality, liberalism, and human rights likely supported these women's development of ambitions for leadership positions. Their career accounts explicitly emphasized their long wait for the principalship: I have always known that one day I would be a principal, ever since my first day in teaching. I am an idealist, I have my ideology, the missions I want to fulfill, and principalship is a vehicle for that. As opposed to strictly gender-divided societies, the secular Jewish society as a culture "permits" these women to strive toward career progress, to succeed in a career, and to promote themselves, as long as their children and family are not impeded. Similarly, the values of gender equality underlying their society made it very reasonable for their supervisors and superintendents to offer them the post of principalship regardless of gender. One of the women principals who had never previously thought of becoming a principal said: 92

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

Before I entered the principalship, I thought to take a sabbatical year off. A new school was being opened in my city, and the [male] supervisor emphatically persuaded me to compete for it [the principalship]. In fact, I saw that as a good solution for my circumstances, for my personality, because I didn't want to leave the school, but I couldn't work with my principal anymore. Note that in many traditional gender-divided societies, this kind of offer could never have occurred. Put differently, the western liberal values underpinning the mainstream sector in Israel appear to facilitate female teachers' "smooth" entry into managerial positions for which male teachers may also be competing. This is not to say, however, that easy entry into principalship characterizes women teachers aspiring for principalship in this sector, but rather to emphasize the relative absence of the gender-based barrier in their career advancement due to the egalitarian values dominating western societies. First Years in Principalship: The Construction of Managerial Identity Interestingly, despite the gender-neutral career advancement typifying the secular Jewish sector, the process of managerial identity building remains embedded, explicitly and implicitly, with gender and culture issues. A recurring characteristic of the early period of principalship, which appears coherently in women's stories, can be summed up in one word – difficulties. Most of the women principals interviewed here used a similar sentence to initiate discussion about this period, such as: “Oh, it was a very hard period, a very difficult one” or “I can’t remember what I loved in the first years but I can tell you what my difficulties were.” One type of difficulty referred to concerns about issues of control and legitimacy for women who assumed their principalship after a long period of working as a teacher in the same school. A second type appeared in the early years for women who assumed principalship after working as teachers in other schools; they usually experienced many conflicts and obstacles deriving mainly from their determination to implement urgent changes in their new schools. A third type related to difficulties typically encountered by newcomers to any organization, such as stress, tension, self-doubt, and confusion. For the purpose of this chapter, I would like to highlight the latter two kinds of difficulties, which may be related to gender and culture. In the aforementioned third type of difficulty, the female principals reported facing problems common to newcomers in any profession, such as anxiety, lack of control, and low self-efficacy. Yet, at the same time, they recounted receiving considerable support from staff, parents, and stakeholders. Thus, their early difficulties did not seem to derive from severe conflicts engendered by others’ resistance to the appearance of a woman in the principal's office, but rather from the stress, tension, and overload that new managers to any workplace are likely to encounter regardless of their gender. Nevertheless, all of them attached high importance to their cooperation with staff, parents, and parent associations in the

93

OPLATKA

early years of their managerial career, a view corresponding to a relational, "feminine" leadership orientation (e.g., Regan & Brooks, 1995; Shakeshaft, 1989). The remarks by various principles suggested that their difficulties were accompanied by a supportive environment, with the collaboration and empathy of their constituencies: I didn’t have conflicts or distance between the staff and me. They were okay, very gentle and kind. I felt that three teachers felt threatened, but it didn’t turn into a rift or anything like that. I didn’t have rigorous conflicts. The staff accepted me. We were like a family, a domestic atmosphere, and I got warmth and support from the parents. Notably, however, as opposed to women principals from minorities discussed in this book, the difficulties outlined thus far do not derive from gender discrimination or cultural values of gender inequality, but rather represent career issues that are usually common to both men and women principals. The staff, parents, supervisor, or stakeholders were not likely to resist their entry because of gender or due to a societal belief in women's managerial incompetence. If resistance occurred, it was related to human nature, fear of changes in school policy, and the like. This comprised the aforementioned second type of difficulty of interest for this chapter. The interviewed female principals who were appointed to a principalship in a new workplace retrospectively emphasized their firm standing against the “negative” impacts of their staff in those years. They negatively perceived the school’s condition, as evident in the following excerpt: Many, many things that I saw bothered me.…First, the school yard, no lawn, no flowers, only arid ground…no pictures in the halls, old books in the library…a school in conditions of stagnation indeed. Not surprisingly, the combination of high aspirations, being an outsider, and having a negative image of the school’s condition impelled the principals to persist in the face of many conflicts with their staff and with the parents. The conflicts originated, in their view, from many obstacles and constraints imposed by parents and staff as well as from the principal’s persistence to urgently change and implement innovations in the school according to her own educational vision. The consequences of these conflicts were depicted in their life accounts in terms borrowed from the military world: “fights,” “war,” “combat,” “battlefield,” all of which characterize the "masculine" world of militarism in Israeli society. Many of these principals evidenced an autocratic leadership style that prevented real collaboration or a democratic school environment, resulting in “brutal fights” with the disobedient and even the elimination of many teachers in one case: I had difficult fights with parents and staff…terrible quarrels on control and power over the school, on my innovative curriculum programs, on

94

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

everything….I didn’t give up, I won, many teachers left the school, but I did what I wanted to….Look, the school was in crisis, there was no other way to save it. She, like the other women principals, was culturally "permitted" to manifest this kind of managerial behavior, without expecting any formal or informal sanction. Indeed, although masculine-like behaviors among women are not seen positively in many traditional societies, the liberal spirit and gender equality values that dominate secular western society allow these women principals to express stereotypically "masculine" responses (e.g., determination, exertion of power, assertiveness) with scant likelihood of social sanction due to gender. Mull over what could happen to this principal if she managed a school in a traditional maledominated society of any kind. Later Years: It is Okay to Say I am Weak and Burnt Out In a modern, liberal, and open society, the individual is not expected to deny his or her internal feelings, weaknesses, or self-expressions for the sake of the group, as might happen in some religious or tribal communities. The self constitutes a core component of the civil rights movement; accordingly, every person has a basic right to express his/her uniqueness and experiences without fear of social sanctions. This situation strikingly contrasts with the use of shunning as a means of social control over individuals, which characterizes many ultra-orthodox Jewish communities in Israel even today (see Chapter Six in this volume to elaborate this point). Given this system of social values in the secular women principals' sector, some of the interviewees here reported feeling burnout and frustration. They described themselves as in a state of emotional and physical fatigue as well as suffering, to a certain extent, from reduced personal accomplishments in their role. One principal explicitly and adamantly expressed the energy-depletion process she has undergone: I am exhausted, exhausted! I feel it is very hard for me, I feel it is very difficult for me, and I also feel that things that I used to do faster, today take me a lot of time. Another principal manifested her fatigue through a description of the workload in the managerial role: I want to quit because I think that the principalship is overwhelming, an increasing burden on the role incumbent…more responsibility, more tasks to perform. It is not becoming easier from year to year another, it is becoming harder and harder. The reader is encouraged to imagine how such a self-confession would look in a society that either sanctifies schooling (e.g., ultra-orthodox Jewish society) or resists women's participation in leadership positions due to their managerial 95

OPLATKA

incompetence. Yet, the women principals in this study were unhesitant to express not only their physical fatigue but also their emotional fatigue, a sensitive issue for every person. This element was expressed as impatience and anger, as demonstrated in the following excerpt: I have the physical strength to cope with the pressure and stress, but, sometimes, I feel that I used to listen to mothers’ complaints more patiently in the past than today. That means that I am more burnt out today. It irritates me more today, and it should not irritate me. Sometimes I blow up, and that should not happen, but it does happen, and that symbolizes that I am emotionally exhausted. Emotional and physical fatigue was associated by the women principals with their reduced personal accomplishments in mid-career. This decreased personal accomplishment was expressed as an inclination to refrain from proactive involvement in some school issues: I invested a lot of energy, a lot of time into work.… I feel emotional and physical fatigue, and I even sometimes tell myself: Leave it; what do I need it for? Why should I have to do it? It is likely that the women principals are socially legitimized to express their distress and to report on decreased role performance; otherwise, they would not allow themselves to raise such feelings above the surface. Speculatively speaking, in a traditional society, such self-awareness about personal weaknesses, let alone a confession of low job performance, could not happen, lest the person be blamed for breaking the social order and impeding the community's mission. Beyond these cultural influences, the gender influence on women's career experiences is also prominent. For instance, these women principals recurrently highlighted the limited influence of their burnout and related weaknesses upon the schooling process in general and the pupils in particular. One of the principals stated: I think that I honestly said that I am emotionally exhausted, but as I already said, if this fatigue would affect my accomplishments, I would have to quit. It must not affect the school activities. But that is not the situation right now. I feel I still can lead the staff, and even if I am exhausted, beautiful things and activities still happen in school. Coinciding with the social constructions of motherhood, this woman principal restated her commitment to the growth of young children, admittedly, a part of the female world (Bernard, 1981). MASCULINE AND FEMININE LEADERSHIP STYLE

According to some feminist researchers and scholars (e.g., Shakeshaft, 1989), women leaders are likely to manifest what they term "feminine" leadership style, while male leaders are expected to employ a "masculine" leadership style. Despite 96

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

criticisms of the binary and dichotomous construction of reality (the reader is addressed to Chapter One for further reading of this controversy), I will use these concepts here to associate between the cultural scripts underlying modern liberal society and women principals' leadership styles and orientations. An inductive analysis of the life stories shows that these women principals' retrospective description of their relationship with the staff in the early career stage resembled a "masculine" management style (i.e., they were centralist, assertive, and dominant), whereas they adopted an entirely different leadership style in midcareer. In this respect, they became more patient and tolerant towards others’ needs and desires, less centralist in their decision-making process, and more open to the staff’s voices. For example, one principal who persisted in the face of many conflicts and difficulties in her first years in the role, leading her to the adoption of an assertive and coercive leadership style, indicated that her leadership style changed in mid-career following a reflection upon her life and career: First of all, I am much calmer, not nervous, very patient, with sensitivity towards people, much more than I was when I began principalship. Less coercive, also more confident that processes can be slow and that haste is bad…more attentive to what is happening in the arena, peoples’ sensitivities… Having said that, she added: For example, we decided this year that the major aim of the school would be the weak and the strong students, so, in the past I used to tell everybody what to do, how to do it… I used to come back from in-service training and tell everybody, you will do this, and you that…Today I ask everybody for their opinions, ask why should we do that, what for… I let them decide the aim, I didn’t even participate in their meetings… By the same token, another principal who was considered by her community to be authoritative and tough reflectively described her shift in leadership style: I tell myself, not everyone is like you; every work day for me is a new day, a new beginning. Like ten years ago when I entered the principalship full of energy and motivation to do a lot of things. I am in the same condition today, so why not to listen to more and more teachers, why not be considerate of others’ needs…I find it very right to wait, to get advice… As some readers may interpret the transition from a "masculine" style to a "feminine" one as an expression of the women principals' resistance to accepting the dominant "masculine" constructions of leadership and a desire to blend their femininity with their leadership, there is another aspect of this story that I would like to develop here. The fact that they could change their leadership style because of discretionary decisions, not due to external societal expectations, is, in my view, a consequence of the liberal culture in which they live and work. Support for this argument comes from some of the women principals' accounts. These women principals retrospectively depicted their relationships with staff in 97

OPLATKA

their early career stage in terms of consideration, lack of conflict, and emotionality, all of which referred to the "feminine" leadership style. In mid-career, these principals reported developing a new attitude toward their leadership style. They became less emotional and more "rational," in their words, more assertive and less other-oriented. Furthermore, their commitment to their families lessened during that period and they felt more independent and more self-confident. One of them commented: It is very important not to be emotionally involved…It is very difficult, but I have to be less emotionally involved and act as if it were happening to somebody else. I stand at the side, looking at things and making my own decisions and considerations. These principals perceive themselves as more assertive and less vulnerable than in the past. This sense is expressed in many ways: They feel more confident in their interactions with parents and feel more determined to carry through with their decisions, to even reprimand a teacher if necessary, and not to try to satisfy everybody. It is likely, then, that the lack of strict norms and dictations in modern society, coupled with the great deal of freedom and autonomy given to the individual in this kind of society, enabled the women principals to adopt either "masculine" or "feminine" leadership style, and alter it whenever they reached the decision to do so. Living and working in a culture of liberalism means having sufficient discretion to delegate tasks to other members of the staff, change how they spoke with staff, and even establish social connections with the teachers. In modern liberal society, no strict norms exist to prevent this kind of autonomy or change at work, admittedly a situation largely different from that of women principals in Arab, Bedouin, or ultra-orthodox Jewish societies in Israel, in which individuals in general and women in particular are expected to follow a strict system of norms and behaviors. THE CENTRALITY OF CHANGE AND INNOVATION IN SCHOOL

Change was also a prominent element in the women principals' life accounts, not only in terms of personal, internal change, but also essential school changes and innovations. This is hardly surprising given the glorification and centrality of change in modern technological society, which sanctifies progress and innovation rather than the stagnation and conservatism underpinning the cultures of traditional societies. In modern western society, the principal's role was conceived as central and indispensable to promoting or inhibiting change, and the principal seemed to be the key to change (Fullan, 1991). Initiation or implementation of new changes in school was presented as the "natural" mode of leadership in the women principals' life stories, and sometimes even as the pivotal meaning of school leadership. For example, one principal depicted her work at the end of every school year:

98

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

Innovation is also routine…Every year we ask ourselves what next, what should we change, innovate, because we can’t stay stagnant…We always strive to change, in education you can’t stay in place. Other women principals explicitly attached high significance to school changes: [Schooling] is a process that you cannot discontinue. You simply can’t stop, because if I stop at a certain point, it will be a retreat, it will damage the kids. Take a plant, plant it, it will grow, but if you stop watering it, it will die, and you must not let that happen, you always have to develop it, to look after it, and today we have many new things we are doing…Internet, for example, teaching via the net, an incredible change, and now I am thinking about the next innovation… [School] is an organization that needs to be changed constantly, you can’t stay behind. Today, for example, the issue of computers and Internet is the hot issue, and I strive to have as many computers as I can in my school. Given the important place attached to school changes in the life stories, the women principals displayed a large variety of innovative projects and school changes they managed effectively in their careers. One principal emphasized the instructional innovation she undertook in mid-life: During the last four years we joined the experimental schools project, which is something entirely different from what we have known in the past. That required changing the structures of many school subjects….We increased the hours dedicated to English as a foreign language…we added 200 hours, you understand what it means to me, to recruit new staff, to plan new rooms, to do everything to make it happen. Other interviewees described a wide variety of educational projects they initiated or adopted in their schools, such as projects for the promotion of disadvantaged students, the provision of equal education opportunities to all, civic education, and the like, all of which reflected the major tasks and values of their state educational system and society (e.g., egalitarianism, integration). Change as a challenge and a central element in their subjective role definition could less likely appear in the career accounts of male or female principals who live and work in a traditional, conservative society, unless they are its pathfinders. In other words, these interviewees' professional identity has been constructed and molded in light of values that favor change; therefore, school change is highlighted in their career stories as an indispensable and important role aspect. They simply seem to incorporate modern society's common positive beliefs about changes, progress, and innovations into their construction of effective principalship. CONCLUDING REMARKS

What can be learned about culture, gender, and managerial identity from these women principals' life accounts? Obviously, we cannot conclude any strict and 99

OPLATKA

sharp corollaries regarding this kind of question. Yet, the data imply some associations between women principals' career experiences and behaviors and the values underlying modern society. This is not to say, of course, that gender has no influence upon their career. In fact, some of the experiences discussed in this chapter could be interpreted as also manifesting a "female" world, as constructed in the dichotomous, binary conceptualizations of manhood and womanhood (Phoenix & Woollett, 1994). However, gender certainly does not comprise the sole factor affecting women principals' career experiences, and culture also plays a key role in their careers. In this sense, the "smooth" career advancement and entry into principalship, the aspiration for leadership positions, the above-surface awareness of personal weaknesses, and the absence of gender-related resistance to their arrival are all linked to the egalitarian, liberal, and democratic core values of modern society. This is the value system that reduced gender's importance in the educational system, curtailing the degree of gender discrimination and gender basedconsiderations in the career advancement of women teachers. In no way, however, do I claim a lack of gender discrimination in the modern, secular society of Israel. Perhaps, the life accounts of senior female teachers who failed to enter principalship could illuminate this phenomenon. Along the same lines, perhaps those women who managed to reach a leadership position deny or underestimate the influence of gender upon their successful career development once in office. This issue should be examined in further research. The employment of both masculine and feminine leadership styles along the career cycle expresses values of human rights, freedom of thought, equity, and pluralism. Women principals have not been expected to follow a strict, sole leadership style that is socially perceived to be acceptable and "right." To the contrary, in their democratic, professional-based society, women principals were socially granted the prerogative to decide upon their own way of leading as long as they do not harm others. Therefore, probably, the career stories are embedded with the internal reflections they have undergone prior to altering their leadership style, and with ostensibly contradictory leadership styles. The major value of autonomy, both in personal and professional lives, seems to give women principals the "social right" to initiate and implement school changes and innovations. In closing, the secular modernist women principals' career stories are similar to those of their counterparts from other western countries (see Chapter One for a comparison). They have experienced school changes, participative leadership, assertive attitudes, and difficulties in the early career stage. However, unlike research reports from the US and UK, exclusion of women from educational leadership is not reported. Indeed, notions of equality and equity arise from these life stories, both with respect to their own career advancement and their leadership styles. In addition, their accounts support critics of gender dichotomy, supporting androgynous models of leadership (Hall, 1993) rather than the adoption of an appropriate style for each gender. Autonomy seems to enable the employment of a rich variety of styles in principalship. 100

EQUALITY, AUTONOMY, AND INNOVATIVENESS

REFERENCES Azmon, Y., & Izraeli, D. N. (Eds.). (1993). Women in Israel. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Bernard, J. (1981). The female world. New York: Free Press. Chen, M. (1999). Leadership and management in education. In H. Paldi (Ed.), Israel's anniversary (pp. 301-327). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture. [Hebrew]. Fuchs, I., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1996). Transition from teacher to principal: Israeli women's perspective. Megamot, 37(3), 292-314. [Hebrew]. Fullan, M. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. New York: Teacher College Press. Goldscheider, C. (1996). Israel's changing society: Population, ethnicity, and development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hall, V. (1993). Women in educational management: A review of research in Britain. In J. Ouston (Ed.), Women in educational management (pp. 23-46). Harlow, Essex: Longman. Iram, Y., & Schmida, M. (1998). The educational system of Israel. Westport: Greenwood Press. LeCompte, M. D., & Preissle, J. (1993). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. San Diego: Academic Press. Luborsky, M. R. (1994). The identification and analysis of themes and patterns. In J. F. Gubium, & A. Smakar (Eds.), Qualitative methods in aging research (pp. 189-210). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Oplatka, I. (2001a). I changed my management style: The cross gender transition of women headteachers in mid-career. School Leadership and Management, 21(2), 219-233. Oplatka, I. (2001b). Self-renewal and inter-organizational transition among women principals. Journal of Career Development, 28(1), 59-75. Oplatka, I. (2001c). Types of difficulties in the induction stage: Retrospective voices of women principals. Planning and Changing, 32(1/2), 1-12. Oplatka, I. (2002a). The emergence of educational marketing: Lessons from the experiences of Israeli principals. Comparative Education Review, 46(2), 211-233. Oplatka, I. (2002b). Women principals and the concept of burnout: An alternative voice? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 5(3), 211-226. Oplatka, I. (2003). School change and self-renewal: Some reflections from life stories of women principals. Journal of Educational Change, 4(1), 25-43. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation method. Newbury Park: Sage. Phoenix, A., & Woollett, A. (1994). Motherhood: social construction, politics and psychology. In A. Phoenix, A. Woollett, & E. Lloyd (Eds.), Motherhood: Meanings, practices and ideologies (pp. 1327). London: Sage. Regan, H. B., & Brooks, G. H. (1995). Out of women’s experience: Creating relational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Shakeshaft, K. (1989). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park: Corwin Press. Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tamir, L. M. (1991). Men in their forties: The transition to middle age. New York: Springer.

Izhar Oplatka Department of Education Ben Gurion University, Israel

101

MIRA KARNIELI

6. THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP A Story of Ultra-Orthodox Female Principal

INTRODUCTION

Ultra-orthodox society is a minority within Jewish society both in Israel and in the Diaspora. By ideology and lifestyle, it is a counter-culture to the one surrounding it. Among its unique features are its perception of Jewish life, the management of its society and institutions, and its dress code (Kaplan, 2003). Israel’s ultra-orthodox community is deeply conservative, with sharply defined gender roles. The ultra-orthodox perception that accords highest worth to its “community of scholars,” who are men, places the main responsibility for earning a living on women (Friedman, 1995; Shai, 2002). While their husbands steep themselves ever more deeply in religious studies, women go to work, internalizing the importance of getting ahead economically and of the education that makes enhanced economic and social status possible (Sheleg, 1998). This study examines women ultra-orthodox principals with a focus on the special history and educational perceptions of Deborah, 29, who runs an ultra-orthodox secondary school for girls, Ganim, in a central Israeli city. This relatively new school's special activities and scholastic achievements have given it a glowing reputation. The present study attempts to listen to Deborah’s perceptions as an educator shaping her students’ development in present-day ultra-orthodox society. The Ultra-Orthodox Community The professional literature calls this community "ultra-orthodox" because they are the group most extreme in their beliefs and in scrupulous observance of religious Commandments (Gombo & Schwartz, 1989; Goshen-Gottstein, 1987; Kaplan, 2003; Levi, 1988). Although it encompasses more or less extreme and even antiZionist groups, the community has a common and defined value system (Gombo & Schwartz, 1989; Kaplan, 2003). The ultra-orthodox community has a collectivist orientation based on mutual dependency and cooperation among its members, particularly its women. Religion determines the significance of every aspect of life (Goshen-Gottstein, 1987; Orian, 1997). The religious ethos preaches solidarity, and the Jewish world view condones and even compels intervention in private and community life (Cohen, 1975 in Gombo & Schwartz, 1989 and in Orian, 1997; Rotem, 1992). The society thereby I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 103–122. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

KARNIELI

protects itself from outside influences. Both social interactions and supervision over them are intense (Orian, 1997). Other community characteristics include restraining conformism, obedience to social norms, and severe censure for sexual permissiveness and hedonism. Education in Ultra-Orthodox Society A basic ultra-orthodox perception is the obligation to hand down traditions to succeeding generations: “to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee” (Gen. 17: 7). Naturally, to this end, education is of utmost importance. It is a conscious, directed, religiously motivated process, to impart traditions to children. Education is based on the belief that the covenant at Mount Sinai between Israel and its God was made with the unborn generations as well. Hence, every generation is obliged to pass on the content of the covenant to its children, for them to keep. In the Jewish tradition, there are three ways to educate: 1. Emulation: Children see life around them and learn what to do and how to live. 2. Experience: Children participate alongside their parents. 3. Teaching: Parents and religious functionaries teach children the important beliefs and customs. These methods function from the child’s earliest years, the first two when home and family are dominant, after which they are joined by the school. All work together to hand the tradition on to the next generation in the sense of “Moses commanded us a law, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob” (Deut. 33: 4). Ultra-orthodox communities preserve their own independent school system, which is only partially funded by the state. This separation aims mainly to maintain complete autonomy as regards curriculum and supervision of its content. Not only are boys’ and girls’ classes separated, so are their curricula, in preparation for their different social roles. Girls study more secular subjects, and by ordinary secular criteria would be thought better educated. The ancient dictum that “Whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he taught her folly” barred girls from the study of the Gemara, 1 the most significant educational-religious material in Judaism, leaving room for secular learning. For boys, studying Torah is perceived to have the highest religious worth (Ben-Haim, 2002). It is learning for its own sake, and the ideal society is “a community of scholars” (Friedman, 1991; BenHaim, 2002). For girls, however, learning is perceived mainly as an instrument for running a proper Jewish home, and for working outside the home to help support a husband whose learning is his "trade." That implies that boys are not ever expected to terminate their studies. Education of Ultra-Orthodox Girls For the past century, questions of the importance and the desirable extent of girls’ education have occupied the ultra-orthodox world. Historical analysis shows that

104

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

despite the yeshiva world's continuous development in Eastern Europe during the 19th century girls’ education underwent no change and stagnated (Kaplan, 2003). The ultra-orthodox perception is that the woman has the most important role of building the inner tissue of the Jewish people. She molds the character and upbringing of the children and the character of the home, creating the quality of life itself. This means that even a woman who works outside must understand that her main role is to construct a true Jewish home, whereas the man’s principal role is outside the home. Over the years, more and more ultra-orthodox women have been going to work, most as teachers. At work, they internalize the importance of the education that offers the chance for economic and social advancement (Sheleg, 1998). However, as their education broadens, so does concern over the possible influences and implications of too much exposure to the secular world (Swirski, Konor, & Yaron, 1998). Preparation in childhood and adolescence for adult life is thus perceived as supremely important. In the process of preserving the social structure, ultraorthodox society tries to erase women’s individuality and impel them to conform to a uniform group profile of a helpmate and instrument whose sole purpose is to free the man for his proper business of Torah study (Levi, 1988). The foregoing background is presented to make possible a better understanding of the world view guiding Deborah today as principal of an ultra-orthodox girls’ school. METHOD

The method used in this study is based on the qualitative research paradigm and especially on the life history strategy. The basic premise of life history research is the individual as a creator and a teller of stories (Cortazzi, 1993). Everyone has a life history that reflects his or her identity and perception of interrelationships with the surroundings (Bar-On, 1994; Rosenthal, 1993). The assumption is that the narrative strategy used to relate the history, once the researcher identifies it, will reflect the significance the narrator accords to what s/he experiences and the way chosen to transmit this significance to the researcher (Bar-On, 1994; Rosenthal, 1993). The "story line" can help decode the significance that the narrator gives to his or her life (Yeheskel, 1999). As a rule, researchers decide how to analyze the history and define the story line. Involving the research participants in analysis is complex and time-consuming, besides introducing value-related issues (Tutty, Rothery & Grinnell, 1996). Yet, when the participants are not involved in the data analysis, there is a risk that the story line they selected will not fit the significance attributed by the narrator. To eliminate this possibility, Lincoln and Guba (1985) recommend returning to the participants to verify the findings at the end of the analytical process. Inasmuch as I was investigating a society quite unfamiliar to me, and wanted to be as accurate and credible as possible, I asked Deborah to read the study, including the interpretations, and to respond. Thus, she could be a full partner not

105

KARNIELI

only in giving information but in confronting it, as Lincoln and Guba (1985) indicated. THE STORY OF DEBORAH: A WOMAN AND PRINCIPAL IN ULTRA-ORTHODOX SOCIETY

Deborah lives in a large town in central Israel with her husband and son, in a neighborhood of ultra-orthodox, traditional, and secular Jews, who do not interfere with her family’s scrupulously religious lifestyle. Deborah’s Childhood and Adolescence Regarding her greater orthodoxy, Deborah related that she was the eldest daughter of a family she defined as “Mizrahist,” 2 who gradually moved deeper into orthodoxy. As a child, Deborah was an excellent pupil and a talented pianist and accordionist. She also had the energy, initiative, and sense of mission that helped her blaze her own trail in her community as an ultra-orthodox young woman, a true believer. Playing an instrument both provided an income and opened doors. One such opening was becoming a counselor and coordinator in the Arachim 3 (values) youth movement, which enabled Deborah to identify her own special qualities. In her own words: I got to the Arachim movement through music; they heard about me as a pianist. I came to the seminar to play for 100 children, and I ran the program. The people in charge were amazed at what I could do, and so I came to the first seminar to play the piano, to the second one as a child minder, after half a day I became a kindergarten teacher, and the next day I was the counselor for the older girls. This was when I first came close to teaching. Even at her first Arachim seminar, she instituted a change. Although the purpose of the seminar was to strengthen their parents' ties to Judaism, Deborah wanted the girls, too, to be heard at the closing assembly, and to describe their own experiences: There was a symposium where the families related what they’d learned in this new world. The children were not supposed to take part. This time, for the first time, my girls went up on the stage and said they wanted to study in a school with values. … By the end of Grade 9, I was the coordinator for girls older than I was, a job that required a lot of planning. I was on my way.

106

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

Deborah as Teacher and Principal The teacher training phase. Deborah’s first choice was to continue developing in her music. Her parents, however, chose differently and sent her to study education at the ultra-orthodox seminar that trained women for scrupulous religious observance and stronger faith, in the outlying development town of Ofakim. Her studies there in a residential framework decisively influenced her path as an adult and as a school principal. In her own words: When I finished Grade 12, I entered the ultra-orthodox residential college in Ofakim to study education. I didn’t want to but my parents pushed me. Education wasn’t my thing: I studied teaching but didn’t plan to work at it. Deborah’s two years in the college greatly influenced the way she would live as an adult. The unequivocal, uncompromising doctrinaire approach to education of that institution is what molded her as an ultra-orthodox woman and educator who adheres to a rigid, conservative, traditional, and gender-based life-style. At Ofakim, they taught me my future role as a housekeeper and wife within the family, and to adapt to the framework. I’d always decided what to do: There, they gave me a framework, taught me that I was not the only one. This process helped me a lot; otherwise I wouldn’t have reached an understanding of my home and my relationship with my husband. There, they prepared me for life. Deborah as a teacher. After two years of study and having received a grade school teaching license, Deborah decided to combine studies for the B. Ed. degree 4 with her teaching. She asked a relative to put her in touch with a principal of an ultraorthodox school in a town with a mixed population and not far from the college: After two years I planned to continue studying and I looked for work … I wanted a halftime job so I could study. The principal wanted me fulltime. He pressured me to take on Grade 4 girls for a year. That same year, on my own initiative, I set up choirs. I brought in music, and we had the most terrific closing exercises. I also taught music and photography as an after school club. In the middle of the year, the principal offered me three choices for the next year: I could teach music as a specialist and he would make me a music room, or I could be a homeroom teacher for a higher grade, or I could teach Grade 1 boys, because of the siddur [prayer book] party. 5 Among the ultra-orthodox, receiving the siddur and becoming familiar with the prayers is a most significant step in educating children to religion. The principal, who noticed Deborah’s musical and organizational talents and her teaching ability after only half a year, asked her to take on Grade 1 and the siddur celebration. I took the Grade 1 boys and we made the siddur party. We were five Grade 1 classes, boys and girls, and I ran the party by myself.

107

KARNIELI

Parallel to her teaching, Deborah married and established a home. Housekeeping, ultra-orthodox style, and working for a demanding principal were not an easy combination. She planned to leave that particular school and go to another, less demanding one. Her principal, eager to keep her on, modified his demands: He let me take a year off from classroom teaching and just teach music, so that I’d agree to stay. The school grew from 45 to 100 pupils. That year I taught music, photography, and handiwork in Grades 7 and 8, but didn’t have a homeroom or a fulltime position. With the growth of the elementary school, the principal realized that the male graduates would enroll in yeshivas but the female graduates 6 would need a place to continue their studies. Thus, he decided to establish a high school for girls, and chose Deborah to teach there, despite her youth and limited formal education. The principal knew he was going to open a high school, and in the first class, Grade 9 girls, I was homeroom teacher. In the meantime, I got my high school teaching license. In the third year, the coordinator left and two years ago I took on the administration [of the school]. At 27, I was a principal. I’m now finishing my second year, and I’m homeroom teacher in Grades 9 and 12. Deborah as a principal. Deborah’s environment and lifestyle are quite different from those of school principals in the main educational stream of Israeli society. In the main Israeli education system, the principal's role has pedagogical and administrative elements, with some aspects connected to the supervisory level, to social democracy, and to the market economy (Grace, 1995). In addition, principals of the modern school confront social, cultural, and educational pluralism. Students come with different levels of knowledge and are exposed to many sources of information, all of which affects the status of both teacher and student. There is no clear agreement on how to educate the child, or on educational ethics, but rather multiple voices, methods, and identities that make it hard to structure the work of education (see Gur Ze’ev, 1997). By contrast, in the ultra-orthodox sector, both ends and means are clearly defined. Deborah is well aware of woman’s role in her own society as the creator of the inner tissue of the Jewish people, a molder of children’s character and education, and of the ambience of the home. Hence, she believes it is most important to educate girls for their true role and destiny – building a Jewish home. With that, she follows a clear, authoritarian path to high scholastic achievements that will lead to a well-paying occupation allowing the graduate’s husband to devote himself to Torah study. Deborah was a founder of the secondary school and a significant partner in determining its educational, moral, and social course. 7 In the few years in which she taught elementary school, the principal was already planning a growing secondary section, 8 and Deborah received the first class, Grade 9 girls. In her third 108

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

year, she replaced the principal who resigned. She was only 27, had taught just a few years, and had neither administrative training nor an academic degree (she is completing one now). Answering my question as to how she was made principal so soon and so young, an appointment impossible in the secular sector with her qualifications, she said: In the ultra-orthodox sector, degrees aren’t so important. If they find the right candidate inside, someone who knows the system and communicates well, that’s what counts. It is virtually certain that the combination of a solid educational perception, administrative abilities, and the ultra-orthodox approach to appointments, which selects those who can transmit the values and traditions of their community, led to Deborah's selection for this managerial and administrative post. Within this hierarchical, conservative society with its sharply defined gender roles, it was taken for granted that Deborah's management would strictly adhere to the society's conservative perspectives and values. Indeed, as principal, Deborah’s central goals are to educate the girls to keep the religious Commandments and lead a moral Jewish life, together with scholastic success. She perceives her role and those of her teachers as holistic: Teachers must know each student personally and follow up on them outside the classroom. This coincides with the collectivist orientation of the ultra-orthodox community, with its intense social interactions and social supervision (Orian, 1997). Deborah goes on to describe the school and its achievements: Our main direction is education in values. 9 Jewish studies come first. Another main purpose is to maintain a high academic level of four or five points [advanced level matriculation] in mathematics and English. The general studies material is taught in the most precise, detailed, and comprehensive way. The teachers have to participate in inservice training. Our matriculation average is 80, and more than 99% of the students matriculated. Moral education. Unsurprisingly, Deborah stressed repeatedly that moral education is her school’s main aim. That perception of the educator’s role grew much sharper when she was a student in Ofakim. Living in the school residence underscored religious "strengthening" 10 as a way of life, along with the place and gender role of women, in line with the uniform, collective profile of them as providers and builders of the Jewish home (Friedman, 1995; Levi, 1988; Shai, 2002). To achieve moral education, Deborah constructed an original plan that gained her wide esteem. It expresses her personality, professional and religious perceptions, and her musical and organizational talent. Her model has aroused commitment, interest, and motivation among the teachers, the students, and their families. It won attention throughout the ultra-orthodox sector and has become an educational prototype. She calls her model FFY, Fund For You. This acronym is based on the Gemara phrase meaning that your good acts in the present world act 109

KARNIELI

as an “investment fund” to be claimed in the next world. The FFY provides a basis for suitable education and conduct, as she sees them: The school’s central task is to advance the girls in Judaism, that is, in how to keep its Commandments. We bring in as much Judaism as possible into the school in different ways, not only in lessons. There are lectures by rabbis and rabbis’ wives, and individual conversations. In Sabbath seminars, in a concentrated, pleasant way, we introduce the central purpose – education, not suffocation. Our interest is in strengthening the girls, not in straddling a fence. FFY comprises an ongoing plan for all classes, from the beginning of the school year until Passover in the springtime. It revolves around a central theme, modesty in dress and speech for example, with varied activities after class as well, designed to internalize desired values further and strengthen the girls in their faith. Co-opting the parents. So as to complete the process and maximize its influence, the parents participate. Deborah chose to include the parents by first informing them of the activities concerning the central theme at the school, and by later inviting them to Sabbath seminars at vacation resorts where rabbis, teachers, and other experts took part. The daughters remain at home with their younger siblings. This reinforces contacts between school and home, particularly as regards religious observance. In addition, Deborah makes random calls to the homes from time to time to find out if parents are informed about school activities. These are open microphone calls with other teachers present, so that they receive immediate feedback, as Deborah describes: We called homes. We put the phone on a loudspeaker and asked the parents about the school project for the year. Ninety-nine percent knew about it, were delighted with it, and congratulated us. This was a revolution, and the parents were with us. This program gave the school a lot of publicity. The parents, fathers and mothers, came; we had a symposium. The parents revealed problems with their daughters, and we helped them solve the problems. The parents don’t stop thanking us. Our policy is not to compel, but not to let the girls do just whatever they feel like doing, but rather to act according to [the Torah text], We shall do and we shall heed. That is one of our achievements. We’re not trying to start revolts at home, but rather to develop the girls’ personality, make them more steadfast in their views, so they don’t follow the crowd but have an opinion and attitude of their own. After that there was a Shabbat for the daughters. Communication was excellent. Many girls had much better communication [with their parents] and all this is besides their studies, where there are no compromises. To my question as to whether Deborah finds her work difficult, she replied:

110

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

It’s not a difficult position. The only difficulty is to transmit values. They have to know why things are done. [I get] lots of encouraging phone calls, at home too, I know the girls personally, I know all of them and try to be at their side. Deborah is consistently focused on the goals she set herself, stronger faith and scholastic achievement. And so she works from early morning to night, available by phone at all times throughout the year, including summer holidays, to forestall unwanted negative influences on her girls. We don’t compromise: If a girl comes to school not dressed according to [our] rules of modesty, first she is warned orally, then in writing, and after that she is out. The same thing is true of studies: We are very strict. If someone is having difficulty, though, she gets tutoring. If a girl makes an effort, we try hard for her to take the matriculation exams and, if not, then at least the school graduation certificate. Deborah’s plan, now in effect for the second year, is original and creative. She keeps looking for ways to stimulate motivation, interest, and creativity; a competitive atmosphere is one of these. There is no room for chance or improvisation, as Deborah and her staff are careful to structure a plan where every detail is thought out. Evaluations of conduct are made at unexpected times and places. In this way, Deborah increases the chances of a change in conduct outside school, with the cooperation of parents and community. This approach of hers, drawn to the attention of rabbis and rabbis’ wives, specialists, and other members of the community, brings luster to the school’s name and greatly reinforces the status of Deborah, its principal. Deborah’s administrative perception is centralized, keeping full responsibility for the school, the pupils, the teachers, the parents, and the links with the community in her own hands. She does not delegate authority, only personal responsibility, and remains involved in every detail. As she noted: “As principal, I do everything alone, I don’t delegate authority.” Moreover, she sees her role as a whole system, perceiving herself as having general responsibility for the girls’ education. To make sure she carries it out, she educates the parents through conversations, home visits, and the Sabbath study days where they try to solve problems arising at home. In keeping with her holistic view of their education, the girls are active in the summer, too, as day camp counselors for the girls at the adjacent elementary school, and afterwards at their own summer camp. Deborah and the teachers are on the scene, involved and supervising. Such an ever-watchful eye fits in well with the general ultra-orthodox approach. Deborah is the figure of an authoritarian director: All the knowledge and all the responsibility remain in her hands. She demands full compliance from the teachers, in an administrative structure described by Arieli (1997) and Ball (1987).

111

KARNIELI

The teaching staff. Deborah thinks very highly of her staff, praising teachers for personal investment and involvement in the school, and for internalizing the role that requires them to assume responsibility for the students’ scholastic achievements, moral education, and for their lives as a whole. To obtain such an attitude, Deborah insists on clear, defined work relationships and a complete command of the material they have to teach, as well as inservice training. Moreover, she demands blameless conduct from teachers, as an example to the students. As principal, Deborah is centralized, acts alone, and does not involve them in the administrative process. The teachers are under her close supervision, and those who do not meet her standards or do not fulfill their obligations as she thinks they should are reprimanded or even dismissed. Deborah believes in personal example and demands it of the entire staff. In the ultra-orthodox community, the approach is "love thy neighbor as thyself," which means helping and supervising the public. A teacher has to know the material well even without a university degree. The material has to be taught properly so that people aren’t fooled or robbed. I choose teachers according to their ability to control (that means to run the class, maintain discipline, order and learning) and their command of what they teach. We educate by personal example, and I am very strict. Teachers must reflect [our standards] in their appearance and speech. We don’t teach and go home. You are there for [the student]. Relating individually is typical of our school. The students come to me too, but with more respect, they always use the third person. 11 I insist on discipline – I don’t tolerate coming late. I ask teachers not to attend to personal matters in class time. With me, they follow rules. I’m satisfied with the teachers generally; they’re involved and they cooperate. We have 14 teachers. Some work only a few hours, but not one tries to evade her work. Usually they [the teachers] are fine, and the work is pleasant. When [something] doesn’t work, I change the approach. Just as Deborah sees herself as responsible for her students, so she sees herself as responsible for the teachers: They must work according to her standards. Those teachers who do not manage to do so cannot continue working in the school. This strictness of approach helps Deborah put across the plans she believes in, through the personal example and compliance from the staff, which adhere to the ultraorthodox perception of complete supervision of the individual’s life.

112

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

The students. Deborah’s attitude to and her relationship with her students, totalling 92 in the year 2003, interested me. Deborah and her staff focus on the girl’s moralreligious education and preparation for life according to ultra-orthodox perceptions. These are their primary goal and main purpose. This is accomplished by taking full responsibility for the students and remaining at their side all through the school years. The staff also encourages their students' academic potential so that the graduates will later be able to support their families and allow their husbands to abide orthodox Judaism by studying. Deborah said: A small school with a warm atmosphere is important for us. When there is a personal relationship, then everything at the school is transparent. A pupil can go to her teachers in any situation – social, domestic, family, and moral difficulties or questions about Judaism. First, they go to their homeroom teachers, who invest a great deal in conversations with their students. At home, girls may be having a hard time because Father has become too extremely religious, or the opposite. Then we meet to help her with the problem of Father – we consult rabbis, etc. For admission into [our] Grade 9, there is an entrance test and a personal interview. If a candidate fails the test, she gets a make-up test at the end of the summer, after tutoring. We make a point of taking girls from a religious but not ultra-orthodox background. These girls "strengthen" their families, and this we see as success. Deborah outlined the curriculum structure as emphasizing religion studies. Out of 42 class hours a week, 25 are devoted to sacred and Jewish religion studies. Further, there are 3 to 4 units in mathematics, 3 to 5 in English, and 3 to 5 in computers. I tried to ascertain what she considered success, and what she saw as failure for the school’s graduates. Success she defined without hesitation: The graduates: The most important thing is that they should establish a true Jewish home based on strict observance of the Commandments, and marry devout men who have no doubts in Jewish matters. Regarding those who do not marry immediately after graduation, she replied: Those who continue studying are directed to appropriate frameworks in Ofakim, Bnei Brak, and Jerusalem that stress how to establish a Jewish home. They study subjects like architecture and interior decoration – not all study teaching – office management, bookkeeping, alternative medicine, special education, accountancy. We take care to guide them to good places, ultraorthodoxy with higher education. They grab up our girls 12 with their high marks. When asked what she considered to be failure, she answered:

113

KARNIELI

A girl who went into National Service [non-military national service, not in uniform, for religious girls] is a failure as far as we’re concerned. That’s because we didn’t succeed, but a case where a girl wanted to join the army and then went over to National Service is a success. Asked to explain, Deborah replied: The problem is the spiritual danger to the girl who leaves the parental framework for mixed frameworks, which means there’s a risk of spiritual decline. National Service and the army are problematical, because they mix with other populations and may fall under alien influences. But they can volunteer in Ezer Me-Zion and Arachim. These are concerned frameworks, so that we can keep an eye on them. Where there’s no supervision, there are problems at this unstable age. Secular Israelis living in a democratic society whose highest value is free choice find it hard to accept Deborah’s perceptions. The principal of a secular high school that educates students toward good citizenship considers it a success when female graduates enlist in the national military service and do their duty as citizens. By contrast, in the ultra-orthodox sector, strict observance and responsibility in keeping the Commandments prepare the girl to live a proper Jewish life, which overrides any other commitments. According to Deborah: That’s why there are no strikes in the ultra-orthodox sector. You don’t endanger lives. You don’t leave the wounded on the field [an Israeli saying, from a standing order of the Israeli armed forces]. That means no relaxing of control and supervision, lest alien influences creep in. Nothing in the Ganim School is left to chance. Everything that goes on there improves its reputation, and graduates have no trouble continuing their education in ultraorthodox institutions. Deborah proudly notes: The first graduating class was last year. At first it was hard to get the girls into continuing education, but this year they were grabbed up – I didn’t believe it. The school helps the process along, we guide them, and the [post secondary] schools really gobbled them up. Finally, Deborah’s offered her perception of the school role vis-à-vis its students in metaphor: The school is in an old, compact building that gives no sign of what is inside. Inside is a diamond workshop that polishes each and every girl, who arrives with a lot of dross sticking to her but comes out absolutely gleaming. She compares the school to a diamond workshop whose drab exterior belies what goes on inside. The girls’ inner soul is metaphorically compared to diamonds, and the staff members are thus compared to diamond polishers. Inasmuch as diamonds do not shine unless grinded, the teachers’ task is to grind and polish, to 114

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

make the diamonds gleam like crystal, with no accretions and no foreign interference. The polishing includes broadening the girl's education and fully preparing her to raise a family in the milieu defined as a Jewish home, plus enabling her to procure a respected profession providing an income that allows the husband to fulfill his destiny as a Torah scholar whose learning is his trade. CONCLUSIONS

Meeting Deborah provided a fascinating trip into an unknown region, across the distance that separates us, although we are of the same people and religion and citizens of the same country. To understand, rather than to judge or criticize Deborah’s perceptions and lifestyle, I first had to set aside prior knowledge, personal opinions, and prevailing stereotypes and to see her history as she does. Deborah is the principal of a girls’ secondary school in the independent ultraorthodox educational system, which wants full autonomy regarding curriculum and has a cardinal purpose of keeping the roles of boys and of girls separate. The independent stream grows from year to year. Just as the genders are separated physically, so are educational content and gender roles in ultra-orthodox society. Girls’ education is perceived as an instrument for maintaining a proper Jewish home, which includes the need to train girls toward occupations that will provide for that home. Deborah is well aware of the role imposed on women, and acts according to its norms. Deborah is an intelligent, dynamic young woman. Despite her young age and incomplete formal education, she appears to stride along a familiar, well-prepared path of religious observance, and to regard her principalship as a mission. All she must do is dispatch the teachers successfully as performers of the mission and involve the girls and their parents as its learners. This is the train of thought that guides her work and, by her own evaluation, brought her to where she is today. Present-day perceptions of ambiguity and relativity have no meaning for her. She sees her biography as a summation of this viewpoint: My story looks like a matter of chance [but] it’s all from Heaven. Everything happens to me because Heaven has a plan. I didn’t plan to be a teacher; there are no coincidences. All is known and choice is given. There are goals and the only choice man has is how to reach them. Deborah’s choice of words to express her lifestyle is indicative of her deep faith in the Creator who determines ends, while human choice can only select the road to serve as the means. “We will do and we will heed” dictates her deeds. The Commandments are there, the laws are inscribed. Teachers need only teach them, and students need only learn to carry them out meticulously so they can be part of ultra-orthodox society. Deborah will meet that society’s demands. She perceives her role as undertaking comprehensive responsibility for each student for four years or longer, remaining at the student’s side all day long year round, and maintaining close contact with the

115

KARNIELI

home. Within these guidelines predetermined by ultra-orthodox society, she forges ahead uncompromisingly. The reader may find it difficult to accept Deborah’s school management concepts as suitable and applicable to modern western schools. In general, the ultra-orthodox school management structure is far more authoritative, conservative, and gender defined. This structure is less flexible in accepting changes and does not encourage creativity or deviation from the predetermined guidelines. The milestones put forward as criteria for achieving Deborah’s aims – the orthodox education values – are clear-cut and repeated often. Some of Deborah’s management concepts resemble those previously outlined by Friedman (2001): – Powered distance: Deborah underscores the status differences and organization hierarchy within the school; – Uncertainty avoidance: Deborah shows “zero” tolerance for unclear/unplanned situation(s) in her school, or deviation from the expected behavior or plan that each and every teacher and pupil are expected to follow; – Collective individualism: This underlines the concept that each society member has an undisputable and high rank commitment to protect the orthodox society from foreign (modern society's) influences This value predetermines and justifies Deborah's and her staff's involvement in every facet of their students’ lives both within and outside school's formal activity hours. Deborah’s activity patterns fit Orian’s (1997) description of a collectively oriented society, based on mutual dependence and cooperation among its members, especially its female members. Orian maintained that collectivism protects religious society against external influences. Every interview with Deborah emphasized this. Moreover, her narrative showed that in this society all interactions, including social control, are intensive. She related how she did not hesitate to dismiss a teacher who spoke on her mobile phone at her classroom door, or to attach a written reprimand to the personal file of another who failed to excuse herself on time from attending a meeting, or to expel a girl who did not meet the modesty standards Deborah demands of her students and herself. Her criteria are supported by and depend on the perception that the religious element determines discipline standards in all areas of life (Goshen-Gottstein, 1987). The way Deborah describes her administrative style and close supervision fits in with Gombo and Schwartz (1989, p. 337), who asserted that within ultra-orthodox society, “A hierarchy of values is created where the criterion for the importance of any value is its significance and importance in the religious context.” The religious ethos preaches solidarity and collectivism, while the Jewish world view not only permits but requires intervention in individual and community life (Gombo & Schwartz, 1989 and in Orian, 1997; Rotem, 1992). Thus, Deborah sees total supervision and responsibility as her professional duty. This model is not exclusive to Jewish ultraorthodoxy, but rather characterizes all traditional, closed societies striving to preserve their nature and destiny. In accordance, then, with the accepted guiding principles of restraining conformity, obedience to social norms, and severity toward sexual permissiveness and hedonism, Deborah adheres strictly to all of her society's regulations and 116

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

conventions. Of teachers, she demands circumspect, responsible conduct, with no compromises. To help her students internalize values and commandments, she looks for creative and challenging ways to teach content while insisting on observance. Girls who do not meet these rigid standards do not remain in the system. Their potentially dangerous influence on others outweighs the chances of changing them. Deborah’s perception stresses self-control, conformity to norms, and upholding the traditions of the past (Gombo & Schwartz, 1989). Religion is what organizes life; individual perception is neither the central nor the only standard. Rather, the individual realizes herself through belonging, and through interrelationships with society (Gombo & Schwartz, 1989). Successful organizational management, according to Samuels (1996) is tested by its ability to function effectively and purposefully and is reflected in symbols showing its institutionalization within society: prestige, reputation, social support, and the goodwill of the public. This is true of the Ganim School. An organization is not an egalitarian society. The right to make binding decisions is concentrated in its highest managerial echelon, which may delegate more of less of it to its lower ranks. In highly centralized organizations, the managerial summit decides on most issues. So Deborah does as a principal who concentrates authority in her own hands. This authoritarian method permits the high degree of control accepted in her community. While this research has not examined it, teachers, too, may be assumed to accept an attitude so widespread in ultra-orthodox society, which demands obedience of its members. There is an assertion that religious people attach less importance to achievement (Frishman, 1979); yet, Deborah’s activity indicates otherwise. Following parents’ demands, she presents the school as an institution striving for high academic achievement and matriculation certificates. In a society where the wife bears the economic burden, parents demand academic studies that will give their daughters entry into an appropriate profession. As one who knows the rewards of formal education as expressed in a better quality of life, Deborah works towards this end. Hence, alongside strict moral education, she sets high academic standards. One is not at the expense of the other. Girls having difficulties but whose conduct is adequately religious are supported and tutored: Some have to make do with a school graduation certificate rather than full matriculation. Deborah takes pride in the success of the school she views as an amazing diamond-polishing workshop. As proof, she points to the prestigious institutions that accept her graduates, who have shown themselves to be good students, and well raised besides. In her view, academic achievement is measured by matriculation, and a high percentage of the school’s candidates have reached this standard. The higher the educational level of ultra-orthodox girls and the broader their secular education, the greater the concern for excessive openness to the secular world and its pernicious influences (Swirski, Konor, & Yaron., 1998). Hence, preparation for adult life in childhood and adolescence is seen as most important. Deborah has taken that role upon herself by virtue of the authority vested in her. Its most important aspect is maximum socialization to the society the girl belongs to, an often-neglected educational element in Israeli society in general. From what she 117

KARNIELI

does and what she says, Deborah believes in educating girls so they can advance in their current roles as family providers in ultra-orthodox society. Deborah is fully aware of her role as the principal at the head of an educational system. She is aware, too, of the power of education. She understands that the future of her society is in the hands of these girls, tomorrow’s graduates, and so regards her work as a mission, an imperative of her society. With rational direction and emotion in perfect harmony, she appears to have no difficulty devoting herself completely to her educational and social role. She knows the values of her society and believes in them. Moreover, she is highly intelligent, sees the long-term process, is an able administrator and organizer, diligent, and focused, and also has considerable musical talent. Maintaining that all is from Heaven, she accepts its “decree” and uses her talents to carry out her mission. As she perceives it, only with true acceptance and purpose can an educational and social mission be optimally fulfilled. Today the administration of educational institutions follows a continuum from centralized and authoritarian at one end to fully participatory at the other. Ultraorthodoxy is a closed society striving for self-preservation while trying to avoid any outside influence, a situation in which broad social supervision and responsibility is essential. That society is far from making women the equals of men in the religious domain (Sheleg, 1998). Further, no deviation from the pre determined values is allowed. Although Deborah’s administrative style seems unsuitable for most schools in a democratic society that espouses educating children for free choice and individual responsibility, some important lessons can be learned. At a time when modern youth is highly exposed to influences like violence, drugs, and negative socialization, Deborah's management style contains elements that may be potentially very helpful to the principal/director of any educational organization, as follows. Setting Aims and Goals Every educational system should have a credo as its basis for the long-term process and as an organizational principle whose qualitative influence is examined periodically. Around this, students’ lives and studies can be focused, for without purpose study has no meaning (Postman, 1995). Principals who are certain about the purposes of their schools can organize academic, moral, social, and educational goals clearly and systematically, and can follow up on the milestones until their completion. Thus, current ambiguities will not impede the educational process, but rather will help update and modify it in order to achieve the predetermined education goals. Basic Responsibility for Each Student Throughout the Learning Period This is particularly important in the secondary school, where teacher-student contact is relatively limited. Principals should know their students and not only feel

118

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP

responsible for their studies, but also "be there" for them in personal and social situations, so as to enable them to realize their maximum scholastic potential (Hargreaves, 2001; Nodding, 1992). It is thus imperative for the teachers to recognize their students’ informal "street culture," their out-of-school activities, and their peer group influences, and to adjust their teaching approach accordingly. The sense that teachers are accepting responsibility and accountability will ease students' tension, anxiety, and anger, and will enhance their trust in their teachers and the school system. Contact with Parents Teachers should get to know the community of parents, their culture, and their economic situation, so they can help children integrate the school and home cultures, and thus promote scholastic achievement. Corroborating this, Banks and Lynch (1986) and Banks (1989) stated that the original culture of school children, their age, residential environment, parents’ education, and environmental attitudes to learning all affect scholastic motivation and success. It has been shown in an immigrant society like Israel that significant, functional learning that meets the expectations of the absorbing society occurs when learning content and teaching methods are congruent with the cultural cognitive style of the learner (Eisikovits & Beck, 1990; Eisikovits & Karnieli, 1992). Learning and the Community Culture The school as a central instrument of socialization should operate in accordance with community values, so that, together, they work for the good of the coming generations. The community where students live has a great effect on their upbringing, and conflicts that may confuse students and force them to choose one culture over the other should be avoided (Karnieli, 2000). As a basis for the educational-instructional perception of the educational organization, these community values will be most effective in promoting the school's goals – in helping the students to feel more comfortable and more welcomed in their school without harming democratic values, education for responsibility, or free choice. From the external vantage point of the post modern era, which undermines conventions, questions basic values, and wonders how to go about educating, we recommend learning from Deborah how important it is to establish an educational goal to guide our teaching and education. It is equally important for the principal to redefine the extent of his or her role and that of the teaching staff who, under the principal’s direction, will together build a model suitable for the school population and the community. This will almost certainly do much to advance teaching and learning.

119

KARNIELI

REFERENCES Arieli, M. (1997). The school principal. In I. Kashti, M. Arieli, & S. Shlasky (Eds.), Teaching and education: An Israeli lexicon (pp. 273-274). Ramat-Aviv: Ramot Tel Aviv University Press. [Hebrew]. Ball, S. J. (1987). The micro-politics of the school: Toward a theory of school organization. London: Methuen. Banks, C. M., (1989). Parents and teachers: Partners in multicultural education. In J. A. Banks, & C. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues & perspectives (pp. 305-322). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Banks, J. A., & Lynch, J. (Eds.). (1986). Multi cultural education in western society. London: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Bar-On, D. (1995). Fear and hope: Life-stories of five Israeli families of holocaust survivors, three generations in a family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ben-Haim, A. (2002, August 12). Ultra-orthodox education: Boys against girls. Haaretz, p. 20. [Hebrew]. Cortazzi M. (1993). Narrative analysis. Washington, DC: Falmer Press. Eisikovits, R. A., & Beck, R. H. (1990). The educational treatment of immigrant students: Two Israeli models. Comparative Educational Review, 34(2), 125-147. Eisikovits, R. A., & Karnieli, M. (1992). Acquiring conflict resolution skills as culture learning: An Israeli example. Higher Education, 23, 183-194. Friedman, M (1991) The Haredi ultra-orthodox society: Sources, trends and processes. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies [Hebrew]. Friedman, M. (1995) Haredi (ultra orthodox) women. In Y. Azmon (Ed.), Jewish women in the Mediterranean communities (pp. 273-290). Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center [Hebrew]. Friedman, M. (2001) Haredi socialization: From family to institutes. In J. Mali (Ed.), Wars, revolutions and generational identity (pp. 166-181). Tel Aviv: Am-Oved. [Hebrew]. Frishman, B. (1979). Attitudes of ultra-orthodox and secular girls to marriage, pregnancy and childbirth. Hevrah u-Ravaha, 2(1), 64-70. [Hebrew]. Gombo, P., & Schwartz, S. (1989). A comparative perspective on the value system of ultra-orthodox girls. Megamot, 32(3), 332-360. [Hebrew]. Goshen-Gottstein, E. R. (1987). Mental health implications of living in an ultra-orthodox Jewish subculture. Israel Journal of Psychiatry Relation Science. 24(3), 145-166. [Hebrew]. Grace, G. (1995). School leadership beyond education management. London: Falmer Press. Gur Ze’ev, A. (1997). Post modernism and education. In I. Kashti, M. Arieli, & S. Shlasky (Eds.), Teaching and education: An Israeli lexicon (pp. 301-302). Ramat-Aviv: Ramot Tel Aviv University Press. [Hebrew]. Hargreaves, A. (2001). Teaching in a box: Emotional geography of teaching. In T. Ariav, A. Keinan, & R. Zuzovsky (Eds.), Ongoing development of teacher education: Exchange of ideas. Tel Aviv: Mofet Institute. [Hebrew]. Kaplan, K. (2003). A study of ultra-orthodox society in Israel: Characteristics, achievements and challenges. In E. Sivan, & K. Kapan (Eds.), The ultra-orthodox in Israel: Integration without assimilation? (pp. 224-277). Jerusalem: Hakibbutz Hameuhad-Van Leer Institute. [Hebrew]. Karnieli, M. (2000). Invest in your children’s education the way you invest in your goats: Systematic educational intervention in a traditional Bedouin community – from theory into practice. Educational Action Research, 8(1), 15-41. Levi, A. (1988). The ultra-orthodox. Jerusalem: Keter. [Hebrew]. Lincoln Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985) Naturalistic inquiry. London: Sage. Nodding, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Orian, S. (1997). Modest language – a modest soul: Patterns of verbal communication among ultraorthodox girls and women. Balshanut Ivrit,.41-42, 7-19. [Hebrew]. Postman, N., (1995). The end of education. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

120

THE DIAMOND WORKSHOP Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstruction of life stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews. In R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), The narrative study of lives (pp. 59-91). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Rotem, Y. (1992). Oh my sister. Tel Aviv: Steimatzky. [Hebrew]. Samuels, Y. (1996). Organizations, characteristics, structures and processes. Haifa: Haifa University Press. [Hebrew]. Shai, D. (2002). Working women/cloistered men: A family development approach to marriage arrangements among ultra-orthodox Jews. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 33, 97-115. Sheleg, Y. (1998). The new ultra-orthodox. Panim, 4, 43-48. [Hebrew]. Swirski, S., Konor, E., & Yaron, Y. (1998). Government allocations to the ultra-orthodox (Haredi) sector in Israel. Tel Aviv: Advah Center for Social Studies. [Hebrew]. Tutty, L. M., Rothery, M. A., & Grinnell, R. M. (1996) .Qualitative research for social workers. Boston: Allyn & Bacon . Yeheskel, A. (1999). Weaving the story of one’s life: Re-biography of holocaust survivors. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. [Hebrew].

Mira Karnieli Department of Education Oranim College of Education Haifa, Israel

NOTES 1

The volumes of the Sages’ commentaries on the post-biblical Oral Law, completed about 600 C.E. The Religious Labor Movement, whose men wear the crocheted rather than black skullcap. 3 The Arachim movement was founded in the 1980s by religious scientists and educators, in response to a distancing from religion in Israeli society. It seeks to transmit the foundations of Judaism to its adult members by means of unique, short, faith-strengthening conferences. Meanwhile, during such study days, a youth movement led by child minders, kindergarten teachers, counselors, and a coordinator looks after the participants' children. 4 The degree given by teachers’ colleges. 5 The siddur contains all the weekday and Sabbath prayers, the blessings for all occasions, and the special prayers for life cycle events. 6 Girls often learn in high schools nearest home. Deborah’s town then had no ultra-orthodox girls’ high school. 7 In secular Israeli society today, many girls her age are not yet working in a profession or beginning a family. They serve some two years in the army and afterwards most work to save for an extended trip abroad, and to qualify for the army’s discharge bonus to discharged soldiers working in a preferred occupation. They generally begin an ordered course of study only at age 26-28. 8 As head of the elementary school, this principal initiated the girls’ secondary school now attached to it. He directs both schools, with Deborah as principal of the high school. 9 "Values" in this context refers to scrupulous observance of the Law. 10 In ultra-orthodox education, "strengthening" refers to an intensification of religious practice and faith. 11 Addressing a superior in the third person is a form of respect borrowed from German and other European languages. 12 Deborah succeeded in building the school’s educational-moral and religious reputation by bringing well-known rabbis and rabbis’ wives into its activities. This, together with the school’s fine matriculation grades, speedily opened doors for graduates. 2

121

SARAB ABURABIA-QUEDER

7. “THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE” First Woman Principal in a Bedouin Tribal Society

INTRODUCTION

Women’s entry into the public sphere in western countries, either in higher education or in employment, was accompanied by enormous struggles that were documented in feminist history (Littelfield, 1999). These struggles were a consequence of women's entrance into roles that until then had been male jobs only. That is why any entry by any woman from any society has been considered a challenge to the male status quo and to the existing social order (Charlton, 1999; Pascall & Cox, 1993). These first women had difficulty being accepted into workplaces that were previously male domains only. Different perceptions of maleness and femaleness reproached these women with the view that it was not appropriate for them to work in public spaces. A woman who entered those spaces suffered from loneliness, disrespect, and lack of support from male colleagues, especially when the job had a higher status, such as administration (Gillet, 1987). The obstacles for Arab women in the Middle East for entry into education or employment have been harsher and all the more difficult because women's appearance in the public sphere violates the traditional feminine role of the Arab woman who is supposed, according to this model, to remain within the confines of her home (Shukri, 1999). In Bedouin society in the Negev region of Israel, this entry is extremely difficult because in this tribal, patriarchal culture women suffer from double discrimination: as a discriminated Arab minority within a Jewish majority, and as women in a male dominated society. This chapter will examine the story of Amira (pseudonym), who recently (2002) became the first woman principal in the Bedouin tribal, traditional society. The chapter will first give the background of the political, social, and educational context of the Bedouins as a minority group in the State of Israel. Next, the life narrative methodology will be described, and the different stages of Amira's professional life will be presented within her specific culture, with its particular gender characteristics. Bedouin women face enormous obstacles when they apply for a man's position. This non-traditional professional move poses a threat to male I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 123–137. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ABURABIA-QUEDER

dominance and challenges the appropriate feminine norms and behaviors of their society. Amira's voice will be heard in many citations from the in-depth interview with her. Major issues that emerged from her story will be discussed in this chapter. Amira’s story reflects three main factors: culture, femininity, and the meaning of taking (raping) a “male” job. These factors raise central questions: What is the meaning of being a Bedouin woman who for the first time struggles for and achieves a higher status “male” job? And how does this struggle affect the Bedouin woman's leadership style? The question of the struggle for a “male” job is very significant in Bedouin society, inasmuch as only two women have succeeded in becoming school principals in recent years. The rarity and novelty of this achievement in Bedouin society thus enables the writer to examine several issues through Amira's life story: How did she manage to attain the principalship? What were the means she used? How did she perform her roles? Did her leadership style stem from her femininity? Or does it stem from a reaction to cultural norms? The Negev Bedouin: A Nomadic Minority in Israel The term "Bedouin" derives from the Arabic word "badia," which means desert, i.e., the Bedouin’s dwelling place. The Bedouin are Arab by nationality and Muslim by religion (Abu-Rabia, 2001). The Negev Bedouin are part of the Palestinian Arab people who remained in their country after the 1948 war, and today they constitute part of an ethnic minority within the State of Israel, numbering 140,000. Nomadism or semi-nomadism is their way of life; they are divided into tribes, raise sheep, and work in agriculture seasonally (Madrell, 1990). In the late 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, the Israeli government built seven villages for them in the Negev Desert in order to resettle and modernize them. These villages, called “permanent settlements,” were populated by about 50% of the Bedouin, but only at the beginning of the 1990s. The other half stayed on their lands, in a move considered illegal by the Israeli state. Those remaining illegally on the land did not benefit from any basic services such as running water, electricity, sewage, or schools. These approximately 40 “unrecognized villages” are not marked on any map. Their residents use generators instead of electricity, have containers instead of plumbing, and fear imminent destruction of their homes at any given moment (Human Rights Watch, 2001). As a result, schools in the unrecognized villages were built on a makeshift basis; that is, not as part of recognition of the villages, but in response to an immediate need for temporary education, not for the long term. These schools were built from shacks, lacking any electricity or water, and lacking any educational equipment such as libraries, laboratories, or teaching equipment. The roads to these schools were not paved, and students could not attend school year round because their attendance depended on road conditions. Thus, most students did not benefit from normative learning conditions (Meir, 1999).

124

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

Consequently, female education started later, too. Only in 1988 was the first female Bedouin admitted to university. By 1998, only 12 women had finished their first degrees, the author of this chapter being one of them (Negev Center for Regional Development, 2004). Public employment of women in the Bedouin community began only in the last three decades, especially in women’s leadership in education, and subsequently only two women have succeeded in ascending into educational administration in the last five years. Bedouin women’s entry into the public sphere is a new issue, accompanied by struggles within the traditional society – like women from other Middle Eastern countries. The struggles are all the more difficult when woman pursue leading jobs. Along with these characteristics of the struggle, Nadia Hijab (1988) claimed that not only culturally dominated tradition is to blame. She asserted that the Arab world must face many issues at the same time: Is women’s role in society private or public? The struggle for economic and political independence. Hijab added that the answer to the question of why Arab women are placed at the bottom of the public job hierarchy derives from three conditions (need, opportunity, and ability) at two levels: popular and political. At the political level, the term "need" refers to the state’s demands for human resources; "opportunity" refers to the institutional efforts to create an appropriate environment for employment through planning and legislation; and "ability" refers to the state’s effort to train people in the needed qualifications. At the popular level, the term "need" refers to the family’s or individual’s demand for income; "opportunity" refers to the cultural-social obstacles that prevent women working in the public sphere' and "ability" refers to the individual’s appropriate skills. These conditions must exist before women in Arab society can enter the employment sphere. An examination of Bedouin society reveals that these conditions do not exist, because Bedouin society has been discriminated against in the post-modern era. The Israeli state does not invest sufficient resources in creating employment for the Bedouin in general and for women in particular. At the popular level, we can see that the Bedouin family has undergoing changes with the transformation to permanent villages. With this transformation, women’s productive and useful roles in the desert – as responsible for milking goats, producing food, and building the tent – have been taken from her (Fenster, 1999). The only role left to her is her traditional role as mother and wife; hence, she became un-useful in her own home. In addition, educational processes among Bedouin women started only at the beginning of the 1980s; therefore, the Bedouin community lacks needs and abilities. For opportunities, Bedouin society is undergoing massive transformation from tradition to modernity, and the lack of needs and opportunities at the political level makes it hard to find opportunities at the popular level. The result is that most women in Arab society in Israel work in teaching, but only a few have succeeded in reaching the level of school administration (Bader-Araf, 1995). As mentioned above, only two Bedouin women have attained this job at the end of the twentieth century. In the face of all these conditions, Bedouin women have had to struggle, and this chapter presents the narrative of that struggle as told by the first Bedouin

125

ABURABIA-QUEDER

woman who succeeded in becoming a school principal. Her story informs us on how her culturally-based struggle has affected her management style. METHODOLOGY

The current study conducted an in-depth interview with one woman – Amira. She was selected for the interview because she was in a unique position and a unique cultural context. She decided to apply for a principalship position, and once she was selected, she decided to go ahead and accept this high position despite the resistance she faced. Her story is one of pathfinders in a highly patriarchic society. By choosing her story, we connect to the post-positivistic approach and to the narrative study methodology, in a combination of narrative and life story methods. Amira is a person who created a story that constructs her identity; she fits the definition of a narrative study because it focuses on the interviewee's interpretations of his/her life (Lieblich, Zilber, & Toval-Mashih, 1995). Researchers whose main focus is narrative study (see Bertux & Kohli, 1984; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) indicate that with narratives we discover and understand the inner world of the individual. Life stories represented by the narrators give us an entrance into their identity and personality. The story is the person’s identity within a cultural context; the story is created and narrates by life. The interviewee discovers her self and her identity, for herself and for others, through the stories she tells. Through the interview with Amira, I would like to examine the meanings of her life experience and her constructions of those experiences as the first woman principal in this tribal, traditional society. The Interviewee: Amira Amira was born in a Bedouin tribe that resides in the southern part of the country, near the Jewish city of Beer-Sheva. She was the first of her ten brothers and sisters. Her father was working as a salesperson and her mother was a housekeeper. Amira’s family is a traditional Muslim family but not a religiously observant one. Her father is a very unique person and has an important place in her life story. Although he is not very educated, he values education and thus was the first and the only man among his tribe who sent his daughter to another Bedouin village to complete her high school studies. After she finished secondary school, he sent her to study teaching in a teachers college at the nearby Jewish city. Amira is in her late thirties, married to a teacher, mother for four children, and has completed 17 years of study. Interview Structure I conducted three interviews with Amira during the first three years of her principalship: one at the end of her first year as principal, another during her second year, and the third at the end of her third year. The first interview was conducted at the university as a neutral place where we could speak freely with no 126

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

interruptions. The second and the third interviews were conducted at her school at the end of the teaching day, when there were no teachers present. The first interview had two parts: First she was asked to tell her professional life story without my interference, and second I asked more specific questions that aimed to learn more about her subjective feelings as a principal, such as: “Tell me about your feelings as a principal.” At the two additional interviews, I asked questions to learn more about her management style and about her confrontations and negotiations with the Bedouin cultural context in general and educational systems in particular. Questions were asked such as: “What are your difficulties as a principal?” or “How do you confront these difficulties?” Each interview lasted about three hours. The interviews were conducted in Arabic, which is the mother tongue for both of us, and I translated them into Hebrew. Interview Analysis The life story of Amira was analyzed using the holistic approach that relates to the whole life story, where some parts of the context are interpreted by other parts of the narrative (Lieblich et al., 1998) . According to this approach, the narrative can be analyzed for content and for structure. This study focused on both the exposed and the hidden levels of content. The exposed holistic analyses of content (based on the interviewee’s perceptions) focused on questions such as: What happened? Why? Who participated in the event? The hidden holistic analyses of content focused on the latent meaning of the narrative text through questions such as: What sort of motives or characters are presented in her story? What sorts of images is the narrator using? How should I perceive and analyze her behaviors and leadership style? (Rosenthal, 1993). AMIRA’S LIFE NARRATIVE: A VOICE THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE

Two main issues characterize Amira’s life narrative. First, she depicted her struggle to attain the leadership position of becoming a school principal. Second, she described her behaviors and style as a principal after she decided not to give up the position and actually to become a principal. The Struggle With her first entrance into education as a teacher after graduating a teacher college program, Amira already had to confront the harsh male control mechanisms according to which girls are not allowed to study or work far away from home or their extended family. In the first stage of her adult life, when Amira was 18 years old, she decided to continue her studies in the teachers college. This decision was not a traditional one, and Amira had to struggle in order to leave her village to study in a Jewish city. Yet, in that struggle to get a college education, her strategy took the form of being passive and silent and, especially, of satisfying others, namely, the collective tribal 127

ABURABIA-QUEDER

males. As she explained: “When I went to high school, it was expected that I be a silent, honorable girl according to their beliefs, so I acted the honorable girl by being silent.” This was also her strategy when she continued her higher education: “My real true personality was not visible. I had to play this role, because this role satisfies the society, satisfies others.” Amira was able to remain silent largely because her father supported her decision to pursue higher education, which was perceived by others as conflicting with tribal-collective values and control. In Arab society, the support of men in the family, namely, the father’s or brother’s support, is crucial for the daughter’s decisions about major steps in her life, particularly marriage, education, and career choices (Cubillo & Brown, 2003; Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shapira, 2005). However, later in her life, when it came to her struggle to attain the principalship position, her father’s approval was not enough. This decision was so beyond the norms of her society that she faced criticism from the entire male community who opposed her entry into principalship. They perceived her managerial aspirations as a threat to male-dominance and ardently strived to nominate a male teacher for this position. Throughout her life, Amira continually exercised self-restraint and acted as an honorable Bedouin woman, as expected by traditional norms. That is, in public, she acted submissively and humbly, showed respect toward males, dressed modestly, and avoided impudent behavior. This behavior was difficult but essential, as she described, “I didn’t feel I was doing things for myself, I felt I was doing things for others.” Honorable behavior by women is necessary in the public sphere because a woman who does not behave according to traditional, feminine, expected norms might be considered rebellious and could be condemned to expulsion from traditional tribal limits (Abu-Lughod, 1998). Therefore, Amira’s decorum was crucial for her, despite its difficulty, as she indicated: “There were things I lost. But those things I lost were the price I paid for what I am today, to get where I wanted.” Administrative Job as Compensation for Her Silence In her early thirties, Amira, who was silent most of her life while her fundamental rights were taken from her – such as studying without any threats from her tribe, or falling in love – decided to stop giving up and giving in. She decided to claim her rights by challenging the norms of her tribe. She fought for the powerful status of a male job position. She believed that by reaching the principalship she could make a change. Amira decided to apply for the principalship role that had been until her nomination an exclusively male job. She considered this would be a way to compensate herself for her silence and suffering during her lost years, and for the personal, educational, and professional discrimination she had experienced: When I heard the results that I was nominated for the job, nothing could move me or force me to give up anything. All the people and the threats and the phone calls and everything – nothing could change my mind to go ahead,

128

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

because I have been hurt in the past. All the way, I did what they wanted, even in my marriage, which is the most intimate thing in our lives. Now I don’t think I should have to ask anyone. It seems that despite all the resistance she faced, her struggle for the principal’s job made her feel invulnerable. Her inner feelings had absorbed all the suffering of the past years, and she channeled all that suffering into the power that she is now using to be a principal. Inside me, I had some anger toward my society. I took revenge on male society by the mere fact that I had a position that was considered to be for men only. I felt their looks, but something inside me told me, "You are right and they are wrong," and I continued my progress. If you ask me where I got all the support and trust from, I would answer you: It’s true that I have a supportive family, but I had also support from inside [mental power], very strong inner support. Nonetheless, despite this inner strength that drove her to struggle and continue to face enormous obstacles, Amira also experienced hesitation and even fear because, on a daily basis, she was opposing the existing social order. Fears and Dilemmas Amira's main dilemmas in seeking the principalship concerned the contradiction between her professional role as principal and her culturally-expected femininity: Before filling in the forms to apply for the position, I had a dilemma with what people might say.… People like us [women] have to be a humble lamb. As long as you are quiet and obey the mainstream norms, you are ok. But if you go against them you are wrong. At that point in my life, I went against the mainstream. Once Amira began competing for a male job and actually got it, she was acting against the social order. She identified her situation as having "raped a role that was not supposed to be mine." Using the term “rape” shows the maleness of the act – it is not what women do – as well as its aggression against society. Amira was concerned about how males in her society would react to her roles as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife: They already criticize us when we are teachers, saying that we aren't performing our duties, that we aren't the best wives and mothers in our homes, so what will happen when I become a principal? It seems that Amira’s fears may derive from her socialization of femininity, which she had to internalize over the years. Shakeshaft (1987) suggested that patriarchal society makes women who apply for high administrative positions think and believe that such positions might interfere with a woman’s role and oppose the social order. However, as seen by Amira, this socialization was not fully 129

ABURABIA-QUEDER

internalized, and Amira rebelled against the discrimination underlying them: "Instead of frightening me, those threats empowered me." Despite her fears and dilemmas, Amira ran for the job. Nevertheless, her pursuit of this position put her family at risk: “Imagine what it means when someone threatens your father that you need to give up the job, or threatens my brother. When that happened, I really feared for them.” However, these threats only strengthened her resolve not to give up her principal position: When the “revolution” happened [winning the job], all the men in the community called me to tell me to "give it up, give it up" and threatened me on the phone, but instead of frightening me, those threats empowered me. I felt that I deserve and I am able to be a principal . The many obstacles facing Amira’s career development into principalship included elements that are also reported in the management literature, such as: policy, patriarchy, lack of feminine role models, family obligations, lack of experience, and lack of management skills (Brown, 1993; Blackmoore, 1999). Amira experienced most of those obstacles, but in her case they did not prevent her from applying for the job. To the contrary, they emboldened, empowered, and strengthened her. Brown (1993), in a study of nine women principals, found that, like Amira, women show self-confidence when confronting hostile male surroundings. One of these women principals said: “When I was chosen, men didn’t think I was capable of doing it. They waited to see if I would fall. This made me determined to prove them wrong… Things don’t stop me. They are not barriers because I don’t allow them to be. There are lots of negatives in everything – I just ride them over” (p. 286). Although research indicates that under-representation of women in principalship jobs makes women conclude that their chances to succeed are weak (Davidson & Burke, 1994), women like Amira demonstrate that the power that drives and strengthens her against threatening obstacles is the power of challenging the male surroundings, and a strong will to prove them wrong. Other studies in Israeli society have also exhibited that Muslim Arab women in growing numbers are determined to obtain positions of leadership (Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shapira , 2005; also see Chapters Two and Three in this book). Father, Please Forgive Me, But Don’t Intervene in This Matter: Amira’s Means of Struggle Despite her struggle that challenged the social Bedouin hierarchy, the means of Amira's struggle combined the traditional and the revolutionary. In her educational career before becoming a principal, she behaved silently and passively as a strategy to gain higher education while continuing to be seen as honorable and conforming. However, once she moved to the next stage of pursuing the principalship, she became much more active and revolutionary in her strategies. The main difference between the two stages in her life was her dependence on family support. In 130

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

attaining her secondary and college education, she needed and asked for her father’s support. In the case of attaining the principal position, she purposely disconnected herself from her family's support. She prevented her father and brother from showing active support and protection. Instead, she decided to be her own protector, claiming that it was her own struggle, not the family’s: I came to my father and told him "Listen, Father, please forgive me, but don’t intervene in this matter. I want to solve it. It’s my challenge and my fight, and I feel it is a righteous fight. Even in the Shig [men’s meeting place], when men come up to you and ask you to tell your daughter to give up, please don’t intervene… One of my brothers who is very educated told me: "How can we not intervene? How can we hear someone talking about my sister and just do nothing? Do you know what a sister is for me? You are my sister; I must intervene. I can’t let anyone hurt you, and for me all the books and education are nothing when it comes to my sister. I must treat them like one Bedouin man to another Bedouin man." When I saw my brother angry and out of control, claiming that he was going to act like the traditional Bedouin behavior, I had to stop him. I told him: "Listen, Brother, when you reach a high status job, I will not intervene. I don’t want you intervening in my fight, please." In this action, Amira used a highly courageous strategy because she was turning her struggle into a personal one rather than a collective family issue as is the norm in Bedouin culture (Kressel, 1993). Indeed, she deserted the honorable passive woman’s image she held for many years by adopting the revolutionary strategy of constricting her protectors (her family’s men, i.e., her father or brother), and asking them to let her carry her struggle alone. It seems that these two strategies– exerting independence and strength while maintaining her honor as a moral woman – eventually rewarded her when one of the men who had threatened her came to apologize for his behavior: “Three months after I became a principal, he knocked on my door and asked the secretary to meet me. I was amazed…as he apologized to a woman. I felt he was sorry from his heart for every word he had said.” Amira felt he actually expressed admiration for her actions in proving that a woman can change the social order and yet remain honorable. Maintaining honorableness is a strategy that utilizes feminine power against the male society that does not accept women as powerful. Amira used her power tenderly, showing “power from within,” as seen in Indian culture: “Individual’s value of every person and the inner strength for this image [of power from within] comes from individuals connecting with other and their environment” (Lips, 1991, p. 9). This power involves acceptable ways for a woman to show her power such that her image as a woman will not be harmed, and in this way the world perceives her as a contributor to work and society.

131

ABURABIA-QUEDER

Amira’s Management Style: Reactive to Gender-Cultural Expectations After the entire stressful process of competing for the principalship, Amira certainly felt she had to prove herself as a professional principal: “You always have to be the best.” She added: As you know, being a woman in Bedouin society is difficult in itself. How is it then to keep your management status? You always have to prove that you are capable of doing the job, because they are waiting for you in the corner to find anything bad about you so they can prove you incapable of being a principal as a woman. Likewise, she described her leadership style as very demanding: I insist on a date for submitting the planning program for the year or the semester… I want to educate the teachers to respect time. If the teacher is unorganized or sloppy, then how can he educate his students to be organized? I also insist on publishing exam results on the teachers’ board and even putting the teachers’ names with their results in order to encourage competition among the teachers. Although they complained about it and did not want this to be published, I insisted on doing it, and they had no choice but to accept it. Her style of leadership does not seem to be democratic, nor is it based on a feminine style or on collaborative management. She is very formal and autocratic in her relationships with the school staff: I don’t mix professional and personal. We should know how to separate the two. I don’t let any teacher feel that she is my best friend in school. Inside school, I am a principal, outside it I am everyone’s friend. This autocratic style manifests itself in Amira's ruling out teachers' participation in decision making on various issues, such as determining breakfast time. Amira uses a strategy she developed, which she terms “pseudo” collaboration: I let them be part of the decision when I have already decided, so I act as if I am letting them decide. When I open the discussion, I direct the discussion fully, in a way that guides them to reach my own decision. I don’t think they should be a partner in all decisions. For instance, if I have decided that breakfast time is after the second lesson, in a meeting I present them with the problem and with what might happen if the breakfast is later: The children will be hungry. So we analyzed the whole situation, then I asked them ‘How would you feel if breakfast time is at 10 o’clock?’ This way their collaboration with implementing the decision is more useful. Some researchers claim that autocratic and pseudo-collaborative leadership styles are more common management styles in third world countries and traditional Muslim societies, due to the belief that an authoritarian leadership style will

132

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

accomplish the stated goals better than a democratic style in certain societies (Oplatka, 2004). To balance this autocratic style, Amira fosters good relationships among the teaching staff by initiating social activities among the staff members. For example: I use a lot of means in order to keep up good professional relationships, such as tours, trips, joint meals in school, participation in school events. When I attained tenure, I invited all the teachers to a personal picnic in the park. I also invited the female teachers to my home. In these ways, I let them feel very close as a team. What makes Amira’s case so unique is that she belongs to the community in which she works, which negatively affects her relationships with the community: “You want to be loyal to your professional principles, but this comes at the expense of your personal relationships with the community. This made me move to another village after two years in my position.” In front of men, she is tough and very professional because a polite woman who tries to persuade, talk to people, and be nice could be perceived as a weak woman, and a weak woman could be perceived as a weak principal. Amira shared a story with me about a young man who used to trespass on school property and bother the female teachers and the children in the playground and in outdoor physical education classes. After many occasions where she warned him politely with no results, she invited him to her office. She then held a broom against him and threatened to hit him with the broom, and then she asked how he would feel to have a woman hit him. Could he face the shame? From that day, he never returned. Amira is very concerned about being perceived as a weak female in her society “because, as a woman, they think you are weak since it’s a male dominated society.” Importantly, despite Amira's rigid and masculine style of leadership toward her staff and men in her society, she maintains her honorable style of leadership toward women and children in her school and in the community. In front of them, she is motherly, caring, and protective and will even overstep professional boundaries for them. Thus, in contrast with her autocratic style to her staff and men, she demonstrates a maternal style toward Bedouin groups who suffer discrimination, such as mothers and children. She identifies with the mothers because they are also discriminated women, as she is. With this feminine tender style, she uses her professional power as a principal in order to help those discriminated against, as she explained: There is a great advantage to being a woman in this job; I have a more direct bond with mothers, who are closer to their children than their fathers. Now mothers come very often to school, it was not like that when the principal was a man. I feel like I am empowering these women through school. The advantage, of course, is being a woman and once a teacher myself. This way, I am closer to children; I have more compassion for them than the last male principal had. I remember when I was teacher; the last principal never hugged any child. Today, I am more maternal with children. Could this happen when 133

ABURABIA-QUEDER

the principal is a man? There was even a child who had urinated on himself; I went to my home and brought him new pants from my son’s clothes. Sometimes I feel I am a social worker, not a principal. DISCUSSION

The story of a woman principal in the patriarchal Bedouin society highlights the uniqueness of principalship in this culture. The uniqueness of leadership in a tribalpatriarchal society defines the sort of struggle for career advancement and leadership orientations that can be analyzed by the social role theory. This theory analyzes the leadership by means of sexual role expectations of a certain culture (Eagly & Caril, 2003; Ridgeway, 2001). Eagly and her colleagues claimed that people usually tend to act according to gender expectations, meaning. In other words, men and women would act as expected from them by their culturally defined gender roles (Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). Men would be more “masculine” and women would be more “feminine.” In Amira’s narrative, we can see that Amira did act according to her culture's gender expectations at both stages, during her struggle for the principalship and while in that position. However, her conduct differed from what social role theory suggests. During the struggle stage, in line with cultural expectations in Bedouin society that women should behave honorably, passively, and silently, Amira showed such decorum but not because she believed in these norms. Rather, this behavior constituted a strategy by which she could persuade society that her opposition of the mainstream (in her struggle for the male-dominated principalship) was an honorable one. Her strategy was certainly effective in that she received the leadership job in her school. Several studies (Kark, 2004; Schein, 2001; Schein, Mueller, & Liu, 1996) in the management literature suggest that being “out of one's gender role” may decrease the efficiency of a leader’s position. Inasmuch as Amira was in a preleadership position at the struggle stage, she appeared weak to society and needed community support; therefore, she had to act according to expected gender roles. Thus, she maintained the role of an honorable Bedouin woman as expected by the traditional feminine model, which proved to be an appropriate behavior that helped her become principal. Once she entered the principalship stage, in her first three years, Amira continued to behave according to expected gender roles, but shifted from those roles that are expected from her feminine position as a Bedouin woman to those roles expected from her managerial (“male”) position. The literature suggests that in such cultures managerial positions are for men only (Schein, 2001); therefore, as principal, Amira began to act "out of role," according to the expected stereotypical male behaviors. As a woman principal, male society doubts her professional abilities and perceives her managerial position as something that does not fit with her being a woman. Indeed, she became autocratic and authoritative in her management style in order to fit the professional male role expectations. She did not establish a connection between her femininity and her male position. 134

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE”

This gender-specific behavior is also reflected in her different management styles toward the two gender communities; towards men (teachers and fathers) she adopts a “male” style and towards women she is tender and feminine. To interpret her behavior in power terms (see Cubillo & Brown, 2003; Fennell, 1999; Gupton & Slick, 1996), we can say that Amira uses power "over" the male community and school staff (both sexes), as reflected in her total control over school decisions. This “male” style stems from her gender-cultural position in a society that does not value a woman in leadership positions. Any polite “feminine” behavior could be perceived by Bedouin male society as weakness and lack of professionalism. Acting in an autocratic style proves to society that she is professional and as worthy of the position as men principals. As part of her masculine power, she acts in a manipulative, dominant way. As opposed to the former style in school, she challenges this style by concurrently using a power "with" style that typifies women principals, which includes cooperation and caring. Use of this style emerges from the connections between power, gender, and culture. Her offer of help to Bedouin mothers and their children who are outside her professional obligations stems from her discriminated feminine position in Bedouin society. As a woman in a powerful position, she uses this power and position in order to help other discriminated females. This help resembles Brown’s (1993) study of women principals who perceived their professional power as a means to empowering themselves and others (men and women alike). These women felt empowered by satisfying other’s needs, but differently from these principals, Amira uses her power only to empower women and children. It seems that Amira’s behavior in her position is irregular to the management literature that claims that if men and women who are at the same managerial position act out of role (men become more feminine and women become more masculine), they will be less valued and less successful in their leadership position. This is true especially in traditional societies such as in Schein’s (2001) study in China, where great gender discrimination exists. In China, if a woman principal acts out of her expected gender roles, she is labeled a non-feminine “iron” woman. In the Bedouin case in this study, the opposite is true. The honorable feminine image in a “male” position is not valued and is even mocked. Men in this society more highly value a strong masculine woman. This issue, however, is left for further inquiry of female leadership in Moslem and tribal societies. As a Bedouin woman myself who experienced several leadership positions, especially in nonprofit organizations, I can understand Amira’s autocratic style and sympathize with her. Inasmuch as very few Bedouin women hold leadership positions that are perceived by society as “only for men,” women are expected to be more tender and feminine, meaning unprofessional. Maintaining typically professional standards in front of the male community, i.e., acting in a masculine style, strengthens the speciallity of management by women in a society that has just begun to cultivate and allow for feminine leadership.

135

ABURABIA-QUEDER

REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, L. (1998). Remaking women: Feminism and modernity in the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Abu-Rabia, A. (2001). Bedouin century: Education and development among the Negev tribes in the twentieth century. New York: Berghahn Books. Bader-Araf, K. (1995). Arab woman in Israel toward the 21st century. Hamizrah Hachadash, 37, 213218. [Hebrew]. Bertux, D., & Kohli, M. (1984). The life story approach: A continental view. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, 215-237. Blackmoore, J. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, leadership and educational change. British Journal of Sociology, 16, 21-36. Brown, C. (1993). Power for midwife women written on the breeze. In P. Munhall (Ed.), Women’s experiences (pp. 43-89). New York: National League for Nursing Press. Charlton, K. (1999). Women, religion and education in early modern England. London: Routledge. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14. Coubillo, L., & Brown, M. (2003). Women into educational leadership and management: International differences? Journal of Educational Administration, 41(3), 278-291. Curry, B. (2000). Women in power: Pathways to leadership in education. London: Columbia University Teachers College. Davidson, M., & Burke, R. (1994). Women in management: Current research issues. London: Sage. Eagly, A., & Johannesen-Schmidt, M. (2001). The leadership styles of women and men. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 781-798. Eagly, H. & Caril, L. (2003). The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence. The Leadership Quarterly, 14, 807-834. Fennell, H. (1999). Power in the principalship: Four women’s experiences. Journal of Educational Administration, 37(1), 23-49. Fenster, T. (1999). Space for gender: Cultural roles of the forbidden and the permitted. Environment and Planning: D. Society and Space, 17, 227-246. Gillet, M. (1987). We walked very warily: A history of women at McGill. Ontario, Canada: Eden. Gupton, S. L., & Slick, G. A. (1996). Highly successful women administration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Shapira, T. (2005). Muslim women’s life stories: Building leadership. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 36(2), 1-67. Hijab, N. (1988). Woman power. New York: Cambridge University. Human Rights Watch. (2001). Second class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children in Israel’s schools. Washington DC: Author. Kark, R. (2004). The transformational leader: Who is (s)he? Feminist perspective. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 17(2),160-176. Kressel, G. (1993). Shame and gender. Anthropological Quarterly, 65(1), 34-46. Leiblich, A., Zilber, T., & Toval-Mashih, R. (1995). Searching and finding: Generalization and distinction in life stories. Psychology, 1(26), 84-95. [Hebrew]. Leiblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research: Reading, analyzing and interpreting. London: Sage. Lip, S. (1991). Women, men and power. . San Francisco, CA: Mayfield. Littelfield, V. (1999). To do the next needing thing: Jeans 111teachers in the southern United States. In K. Weiler, & S. Middleton (Eds.), Telling women’s lives: Narrative inquiries in the history of women’s education (pp. 130-146). Buckingham, PA: Open University. Madrell, P. (1990). The Bedouin of the Negev. (Minority Rights Group Report No. 81). London. Meir, A. (1999). Negev Bedouins and the state’s tension: Policy and reality. Jerusalem: Phlorshaimer Institute for Policy Studies. [Hebrew].

136

“THEY FELT I RAPED A ROLE THAT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MINE” Negev Center for Regional Development. ( 2004). Statistical yearbook for Negev Bedouin. BeerSheva: Center for Bedouin Studies & Development – Konrad Adenauer Foundation. [Hebrew]. Oplatka, I. (2004). The principalship in developing countries: Context, characteristics and reality. Comparative Education, 40(3), 427-448. Pascall, G., & Cox, R. (1993). Women returning to higher education. Bristol: Society for Research into Higher Education – Open University Press. Ridgeway, C. (2001). Gender, status and leadership. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 637-655. Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstructing of life stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews. In R. Josselson, & A. Lieblich (Eds.), The narrative study of lives (pp. 30-59). London: Sage. Schein, V. (2001). A global look at psychological barriers to women’s progress in management. Journal of Social Issues, 57(4), 657-688. Schein, V., Mueller, R., & Liu, J. (1996). Think manager - think male: A global phenomenon? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17(2), 33-41. Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in educational administration. London: Sage. Shukri, J. (1999). Social changes and women in the Middle East: State policy, education, economics and development. Sydney: Ashgate.

Sarab Aburabia-Queder Department of Education Ben Gurion University, Israel

137

DEVORAH EDEN AND DEVORAH KALEKIN-FISHMAN

8. LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL Does Gender Matter?

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this article is to examine female leadership in a multicultural context (school setting). The question that arises is: Is there a woman-specific way of leading? Is there a relationship between multicultural education and female leadership? We explore the characteristics of female leadership in a multicultural elementary school. The school (grades 1 to 6) is located in the center of Israel in a poor neighborhood. Its student population, with four distinct cultural groups, is unique in its diversity. It includes native Israelis, mostly from Jewish families of low SES, and some children of mixed Arab-Jewish families. A second group consists of children of immigrants, mostly from the former Soviet Union; some of them not recognized as Jews and therefore not entitled to educational services as are Jewish immigrants. A third population group is that of children of Palestinians who collaborated with the Israeli authorities and were then brought to Israel after Israel's withdrawal of its army from some of the occupied territories. The fourth and largest group consists of the children of temporary immigrant workers, most of them residing in the country illegally. Until 2000, they did not have any rights, except for the right to attend school. As a result, they were ignored by the establishment. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Female Leadership The question “Is there a woman-specific style of doing things?” lies at the core of writings about women in the marketplace. Apart from essentialist ideas of gender difference, researchers have examined cultural, organizational, and economic factors likely to affect women's style. Attributing gender differences to patriarchal traditions that marginalize women, Shakeshaft (1987) stated that women are more "caring and sharing" and stress personal relations with subordinates. Such differences are significant in the educational administrator’s work, affecting styles of leadership and communication, conflict resolution, and work environment. Kruger (1995), in a I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 139–154. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

study of women educationists in the Netherlands, found that women emphasize processes intrinsic to the profession such as instruction, whereas men focus on extrinsic concerns such as promotion and status. The presumed natural differences between women and men are heightened by life experiences as a member of a given class or race. Women, for example, have different experiences due to their color (Butler, 2001). Indeed, Mertz and McNeely (1998) found differences between the work styles of white and black female school principals, where the latter experience racial discrimination. Culture may also affect leadership style. Hofstede (1980) analyzed work-related values along four dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, and masculinity/femininity. He found national cultural differences within IBM’s organizational culture in forty countries. By the same token, the social background and environment may have an impact on school principals more than gender does. There is also evidence, on the other hand, that bureaucratic organizational structures elide gender differences. Mertz and McNeely (1997) suggested that role influences work style more than gender does. They found no gender difference in the use of autocratic styles by men and women school administrators. Bolman and Deal (1992) analyzed leaders'/managers' cognitive behavior in the USA and in Singapore, through four theoretical “frames:” managerial, human resources, political, and symbolic. They found no difference in the frames used by men and women, but women were perceived more likely to succeed if they practiced a managerial style. Thus, they concluded that “women and men in similar jobs have often learned to behave in similar ways – but not always with similar results” (p. 327). Nir (1999) found no gender differences in time perception in strategic planning in the organization, but he did find influences of echelon. Their findings confirm those of Kanter (1977), who studied women in corporations. She suggested that low-aspiration, low-motivation work behavior is typical of workers with low promotion opportunities. Thus, the opportunity structure of the organization shapes the work behavior of individuals. These differences surface among aspirants to leadership as well. In a study of principals in Israel, Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz (1996) found gender differences in the patterns of entry into principalship. Among their important findings was the discovery that female administrators were aware of having to choose between a "masculine" leadership style, with its autocratic and self-confident behaviors, and what they saw as "femininity:" skepticism, empathy, and lack of self-confidence. Laws of the labor market are also seen to affect gender differences in performance. Like Rieger (1993), who attributes feminine and masculine traits to bourgeois ideology, Reay and Ball (2000) attribute administrators’ style to the conditions of industrial capitalism, which is characterized by competition, insecurity, and an emphasis on individualism. Because market conditions necessarily influence modes for operating schools, these values are likely to be reshaping both male and female administrators’ management style in schools as well. The rising corporations of the nineteenth century required bureaucratic practices, wherein hierarchies characterized by rationalized role differentiation 140

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

were filled by middle-class men. As a result, it is claimed, traits of reason and logic were attributed to men, and “feminine” traits, such as "feeling" and "intuition," were assigned to bourgeois women. To prevent the entry of women into the workplace, the “cult of domesticity” was inculcated in bourgeois families (Blackmore, 1993, p. 31). In sum, the literature shows three approaches. One maintains that gender differences are an outcome of the inequity generated by patriarchy. Two alternative interpretations recognize, however, that "female" style can be found in other social groups because the style is an outcome of structural conditions. For one thing, the organizational division of labor is likely to impose similarity of behaviors on both men and women who are incumbents of similar roles and face similar limitations on promotion. More comprehensively, gender differences can be ascribed to the logic of industrial capitalism. Some of the findings indicate that culture – organizational or "personal" – is also likely to shape a set of beliefs about what constitutes good leadership. An examination of women's leadership in schools is one way of putting these different theorizations to the test. This is especially important in schools with populations of students from diverse cultural groups. Multicultural Education With the steady rise in international migration during the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a significant diversification of populations in schools. A perspective on the possibility that men and women in positions of leadership approach schooling in different ways is important for planning how to deal with the challenges posed by this flux in the realm of education. For the most part, the implications of schooling for diverse cultural groups has been examined to date from the point of view of what is taught and how this is likely to affect pupils in the future. Overall, despite well-publicized efforts at instituting supportive programs, education still seems to be failing pupils of the lower classes, often populated by immigrants (Apple, 1979, 1982a, 1982b; Kalekin-Fishman, 2004; Whitty, 1985; Young & Whitty, 1981). Critical theorists (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985; Giroux, 1992; Giroux & MacLaren, 1989; Kalantzis & Cope, 1990) have centered on social structure as the stumbling block to the integration of student groups of diverse origins. This approach explains the failure of the educational system to ensure equity and social mobility. Hence, the conclusion is to take steps for empowering minority groups, while uprooting stereotyping, and/or promoting inter-group relations in the widest sense. Bernstein (1996) pointed out that there are basic differences between the restricted codes of communication that children of many class, ethnic, and religious groups acquire in their home environments and the elaborated code that is accepted as the school norm. In his view, schools can discover the sources of difficulties that arise from differences between codes and can develop ways of moderating those difficulties for the students. Modes of classifying knowledge and of framing 141

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

learning as distinct subjects may ease acquisition of the required communicative code among children from different backgrounds. This is rarely accomplished, however. Banks and Banks (1995) proposed to view multicultural education as coming to terms with four central principles: principles underlying the complexities of knowledge construction, principles that center on the reduction of prejudice, principles that underlie a pedagogy of equity, and principles that enable teachers to create an empowering school culture. In the practices of multicultural education, these principles have been applied differentially to three pedagogical approaches: – the “contributions” approach, which turns students’ attention to heroes, foods, and, occasionally, exotic community events; – the “additive” approach, in which special units of study are added to the syllabus; thus, the historical or contemporary peculiarities of "others" are “taught” and “tested;” – the “transformation” approach, which is anchored in the conception that there are alternative modes of gaining a perspective on a swiftly changing world. This approach entails looking at environmental factors from different points of view, revising historical accounts in light of diverse interests, exploring various aesthetics of sensory experiences, and so on. According to Banks and Banks (1995), the most satisfactory from an ideological point of view, there is a fourth, the “action” approach, i.e., an approach that encourages students to weigh different points of view and to make decisions about what kinds of actions are suitable in order to (re)construct their world. This approach acknowledges the necessity of participation and collaboration of the community, is based on anti-racist education rooted in equity and egalitarianism, and requires a complete revamping of both the form and content of curricula. In looking at how gender can make a difference in school leadership, it is important to explore connections between pedagogical approaches to the challenges of multiculturalism and gender. The principal whose orientation is examined in this study (pseudonym-Amy) is the head of an institution that cannot be compared to any other school in Israel because of its unique student population. Therefore, the analysis refers to the literature cited above. We examined the “what”, that is her educational philosophy and the factors that influenced her; then, we examined the “how”, that is, the multicultural education that she developed and the leadership style she used to lead her school. THE RESEARCH

Methods As noted, our intention was, first, to examine how Amy prepared for the cultural diversity. Then, we wanted to explore how she led the staff to practice her multicultural educational philosophy. A detailed description of the research methods and setting for the exploration of multicultural education are given 142

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

elsewhere (Eden & Kalekin-Fishman, 2002). In the present study, we examined her leadership as a link to the multicultural education she implemented in school. Observations were conducted at a number of sites in the school for five weeks. They included walking in the halls and in the schoolyard during recess to explore the attitude of the staff towards the students in their free time; it also included observations in the teachers’ lounge, when teachers are “behind the curtains” (Eden, 2001). In such situations, teachers express their stress by stating their negative views about students (Keinan, 1996). Also observed were staff meetings, with outside experts, to see the issues that were on the school’s agenda. A teacherparent conference was observed to see how the school managed interaction with the parents, most of whom did not speak Hebrew. Observations were also conducted in classes to follow the interaction of the teacher with the students when they were behind the closed doors of the classroom (Lortie, 1975). A series of interviews was conducted with Amy and with members of her staff in 1999. This included interviews with homeroom teachers, a psychodrama teacher, and an outsider who guided teachers in teaching methods. The interviews took place in school. The principal came to school on her free day for the first interview with her. The interviews were open-ended, and interviewees were asked about their perceived role; about their feelings and understandings of teaching a unique student population; and about what was important for them. A follow-up interview with Amy was conducted four and a half years later, in January, 2004, after she had retired. The aim of the follow-up interview was two-fold: first, to obtain information about new developments regarding children of foreign workers and, second, to enable her to say things that she might have wanted to say but could not say as a state employee during the first interview. It took place in her home and lasted 90 minutes. All the interviews were taped and transcribed. Analysis Content analysis of different kinds of documents enhanced our understanding. These included: school documents and documents from the National Council for the Child, as well as minutes from the Knesset Record; newspaper reports on Amy and the school; and a doctoral dissertation that was based on an extensive ethnography of events in School 'B' (Ben-Yossef, 2003). Triangulation of the interviews and observations, and content analysis of the documents, enabled us to make comparisons, contrasts, and confirmations of findings in light of the relevant literature. FINDINGS

Four themes were disclosed through the data analysis: the factors that influenced and shaped Amy’s educational philosophy, the elements of her educational philosophy, her approach to multicultural education, and a practical vision of how to lead.

143

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

Influences on Amy’s Educational Philosophy Amy ascribed her pedagogical philosophy to two sources: her general world-view, deriving from her own cultural background, and motherhood. Amy was born into a particular socio-cultural milieu – an Israeli kibbutz. When she was born, the kibbutz, with its conscious socialist orientation, strove for a just distribution of resources both within the community and in the whole of Israeli society. The kibbutz has to be understood as the ecosystem, so to speak, that nurtured Amy's childhood and youth, the structured system of meaning that preceded her birth and shaped her growth. Her educational orientation and her administrative skills, as an adult, should be understood in terms of this background. Her world-view led her to join the peace movement and to participate in ArabJewish activities to promote co-existence and peace. Her world-view intensified throughout the years, especially in view of the violent demonstrations that contested the policies of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995 and his later assassination. Her trajectory was similar to that of school leaders researched in the United Kingdom. Gold, Evans, Earley, Halpin, and Collarbone (2003) found that excellent school leaders in ten UK schools had a social-democratic or liberal humanist world-view; they were also concerned with inclusivity, equal opportunities, and equity or justice. When asked specifically about other influences such as gender, Amy referred to her motherhood. Amy has four biological children and one adopted child. In her view, because of her family, she has learned to be sensitive to the needs and the suffering of children in general. This sensitivity is manifested in school in collecting clothing for the children and feeding the hungry students (“We feel who the hungry students are”). Sensitivity to the needs of the teaching staff and their children is also part of the design. “Having a mother’s awareness,” as she called it, Amy disclosed that on September 1, when the school year starts, "I regularly sent teachers who were mothers home so that they could accompany their own children to school. I had their classes covered by substitutes." In sum, Amy attributed the influences on her educational philosophy to her leftwing political and social outlook that led her to support peace, equality, and to her being a mother that led her to be responsive and sensitive to children's needs. Educational Philosophy Amy’s educational philosophy consisted of three elements that she called “the existential triangle” (see Figure 8.1). These elements included, first, the equality of human worth; that is, all people were born equal and therefore all have the same rights. Second, every person has a space, meaning a space to be oneself and to practice one's culture. From this axiom, Amy concludes that people are irreplaceable because every person is unique and there are no two identical human beings. Third, everybody has the right to succeed; that is, we must give every person equal chances to succeed. This means also that everyone has the potential of succeeding in something. Amy stated: “Disadvantage is not an incurable disease,” 144

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

and disadvantaged students can make headway. This set of beliefs leads to a total acceptance of the child, expressed repeatedly by Amy and by the staff: “A child is a child is a child.” No child is bad or evil; the child is not to be blamed for failures or for bad behavior but is to be taught. This corresponds with Noddings’ (1992) notion of “caring,” meaning an open, nonselective receptivity to the cared-for (p. 15). This philosophy was formulated years before Amy came to School ‘B’ and was realized through her involvement in activities for social equity, co-existence and peace. Equality through diversity was the cornerstone of her educational philosophy. Amy criticized the Ministry of Education for not allowing the children of Russian immigrants to speak Russian or the Ethiopian children to follow the practices of their own culture, and for ignoring the children of temporary immigrant workers. 1 In this context, Amy allowed students in her school to do some of the writing work in their native language (Ben-Yossef, 2003). All people are born equal

Everyone has a space in the world (people are irreplaceable)

Everyone has the right to succeed

Total acceptance of the child: “A child is a child is a child” (Adapted from Ben-Yossef, 2003, p. 116) Figure 8.1. The existential triangle

This behavior reflects her ethical standards. In her opinion, the historical legacy of the Jews obliges them to be more humane than any other nation “Being persecuted throughout history requires us to be committed to especially high moral standards, because we need to be more sensitive to social wrongs.” She soon gave an example of how her ideological world-view guided her in family relations. Her son served in the army at a check-point on the West Bank, and could not face seeing how his peers related to the Palestinian civilian population, so he defected and was put in jail for six weeks. “My husband and I supported him.” In regard to the students in the school, Amy’s main complaint concerned the state’s differentiated attitudes toward diverse student groups. “When it is time to get gas masks [in the Gulf War], some students get them and some don’t.” She is convinced that this kind of inequity has a negative moral impact on all the students.

145

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

Multicultural Education Amy designed an alternative education appropriate to the school’s diversity and student needs. Her orientation to multicultural education contained the following elements: the image of the educator; the role perception of the educator; the conceptualization of the curriculum; and areas of commitment of the educator. The image of the educator. All the teachers were qualified and licensed to teach, and some of them had a Masters degree. Nevertheless, Amy saw teaching multicultural classes not as a matter of technical proficiency but of outlook, with the teacher possessing an awareness of the students’ diversity and sensitivity to the students as human beings. She believed that educating meant first giving respect and warmth, motivating students, showing humanness, imparting them with values and social skills, and sometimes replacing family members as role models. For these purposes, knowing one of the native languages of students at the school was considered a major resource for a teacher. The role perception of the teacher. Amy perceived their role as one of social and pedagogical missionaries (Schwartz, 1996). Noddings (1992) asserted that today children suffer from social instability in family life. Therefore, school should not concentrate only on academic matters but also on commitment to care for children so that they will be prepared, in turn, to care for others. In School ‘B,’ Amy and her staff identified two sets of needs. The most urgent needs were emotional, because the children lived in poverty and fear, which prevented learning. Thus, satisfying emotional needs was detected as urgent and the basis for satisfying instrumental (learning) needs. The teachers did not punish students who could not fulfill all the requirements, but they required that pupils do the best they could at each point in their lives at school. Pupils were enabled to express their fears and hopes in their own language in long talks with teachers. The physical needs of the students were cared for by locating the children who were needy and providing them with basics (food and clothing). According to Noddings (1992), the idea of caring is not antiintellectual but rather supplies the cared-for with means that enable them to achieve intellectual goals. The curriculum. School 'B' maintained the particularistic elements of the curriculum, perceived to be especially important in Israel, but added universalistic values. Inasmuch as they were free to choose texts for use in lessons for reading comprehension, teachers stressed universalistic elements. They brought materials from different sources, among them the Workers’ Hotline, into the classroom. 2 The visibility of other cultures was also apparent in the universalistic interpretation of ethnocentric ceremonies such as the Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day. Teachers took the time, as Amy insisted, to point out parallels in other societies. Also, the school nurtured teamwork in class, with the veteran students helping the newcomers by translating difficult words and clarifying instructions. 146

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

Areas of responsibility of the educator. Lipsky (1980, p. 149) maintained that street-level bureaucrats, such as educators of state schools, handle the difficulties of their work by personally changing the range of their responsibility. They limit their power and thus avoid taking responsibility for the results. Contradicting Lipsky's theorization, Amy had a deep perception of her commitment to the child rather than to the system that employed her. Areas of interest began and ended with the child, and included everything that affected the child’s ability to learn, be it the school, the parents, the community, or the state. With regard to parent-school relations, Amy designed these in three phases. The first step was to formalize the relations. When she came to school, she learned that parents used to come uninvited straight into the classrooms, demanding to talk to the teachers in the middle of the lesson. There were even incidents where teachers and children were beaten. “It was chaos.” Therefore, she first built a fence around the school with a security guard, and instituted a rule that parents could not come to school uninvited. The second step was to strengthen the parents and cooperate with them. Knowing that many of the parents did not speak Hebrew, the staff were careful not to undermine the parents’ authority. Therefore, communication with the children’s families was conducted in their own languages. The school also planned joint activities with the parents, and this furthered solidarity of the family unit (Fishbein, 1997). The third step was to enlist parents' help in activities with external organizations. When Amy could not act herself, she involved the parents: “The chair of the Parents’ Association has contacts with the Citizens’ Rights Association. She is in contact with them regarding the children who are status-less because I am not allowed to do this as a state employee.” Amy also worked toward re-defining the community as a whole. She perceived the community as extending beyond the parents and the neighborhood to include any factor that exerted an influence on the students’ lives. The boundaries of her work were not the school but the child him/herself, that is, the boundary of the profession and not the organization (school). She felt committed to all areas that affected the child’s wellbeing and influenced the child in class: the family, the child's legal status, state laws. The school maintained contact with the police, and Amy reached an agreement that the police would not arrest undocumented workers near the school or in front of their children. In addition, there was an arrangement that the school would not be obliged to provide the police with addresses of illegal immigrant workers. Amy also maintained close relations with the municipality where the school is located. Inasmuch as the Ministry of Education did not recognize children of non-Jewish immigrants and foreign workers at that time, they were not included in the school budget. However, she knew how to persuade municipal officials and, in her words, “harassed them” incessantly, so they "were forced" to allot the missing funds to overcome the discrimination. Amy recruited support for the school in order to place the issue of the children of temporary immigrant workers on the public 147

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

agenda. She appeared on radio programs and on television talk shows and encouraged interested groups, official and unofficial, to visit the school. In 1998, she helped the students of the Mandell Institute for Educational Leadership write a report about children of foreign workers. They submitted the publication to the Director General of the Ministry of Education in an attempt to persuade the Ministry of the need to ease restrictions, but to no avail. When Yossi Sarid 3 was appointed Minister of Education, she approached him too, and he arranged that the children be registered and acknowledged by the Ministry, so that they could get some funding. In 2000, public interest in the temporary immigrant workers and their children was at a peak, and discussions were conducted in several forums. Amy was invited to these forums to discuss the issue; where she was paid, she contributed the money to the school. During that same year, she finally succeeded in obtaining the allocation of immigrants’ rights to the children of temporary immigrant workers. School Leadership Amy’s philosophy translated into a comprehensive approach to leadership. This can be seen in her description of a leader's characteristics and in her account of her leadership style. Characteristics of an educational leader. When asked how she succeeded in bringing her staff to follow her lead, Amy mentioned several personality traits, among them integrity, flexibility, and readiness to listen, together with authoritativeness and assertivity. In her view, integrity is most important, that is: “If I preach one thing and then behave differently, it won’t work.” Then, “I have to have a clear world-view yet at the same time I have to be flexible enough to change things that don’t fit reality, to make adjustments.” In this connection, the ability to listen to followers was stated as an important personality trait: Some soldiers are conscientious objectors, arguing that our army is an army of occupation. Their officers condemn them, saying that it’s a political act. I say to them: You should listen to your soldiers first, to reach them from where they stand, not from where you stand. Authority is something that either you have or you do not. The teachers knew that they could express their opinions. But they also knew that the responsibility was hers. So, in cases of unresolved disputes, she was the one who decided the issues. They knew, too, that Amy felt: “I am goal-oriented….I care about good educational results, not the means.” Assertivity is most important in order to achieve her demands from outside bodies. She got money from the municipality because “I am assertive, I am a leech; they give us money just to get rid of me.” Like the school leaders in the research of Gold et al. (2003) noted above, Amy’s style is characterized by openness, accessibility, compassion, honesty, integrity, consistency, decisiveness.

148

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

Leadership style. In discussing leadership style, Amy talked about responsibilities in the school and caring for the staff, as well as furthering staff development. With regard to caring for the staff, when she was appointed principal of the school, Amy realized that: The curriculum, the teaching patterns and the school culture – all were unbearable. The teachers were scarred after so many years of failures. They had gone through five principals in eight years. She believed that caring for the staff and supporting them first would improve their self-image, and that would foster their professional development; this, in turn, would have an impact on the students. Thus, she was accessible to the staff, she worked together with them, and trusted them professionally right from the beginning. I let them know from the start that I wouldn’t enter a class of a teacher who did not want me to. I wouldn’t impose myself. I also told teachers to send me those students that they couldn’t cope with. An atmosphere of trust was reported by Gold et al. (2003) as an important component of excellent leadership. This was a central concern of Amy’s. She developed informal friendly relations with the staff. She went to social events that the teachers organized: “I would go to the winery and dance on tables with them, I went on bonfires with them, I was their friend.” In 1994, when the school won the President’s award for achievement, Amy used some of the award money to take her staff for a full day's outing (Lavie, 2003). Amy made efforts to increase the teachers’ faith in themselves and their selfworth. For that purpose, she organized a two-day workshop in a hotel, financed by the municipality. This workshop was devoted to clarifying the implications of the Pygmalion effect, explaining that the children (like teachers) would become what we think they can become. She worked with the teachers on how to cope with parents’ anger towards them: The more their self-worth about being good, successful teachers grew, the less they took parents’ attacks personally. They could welcome the parent and say: "Sir, I understand what you feel, I can sense your feelings, I know you hurt" and let the parents get it out of their system. On the other hand, Amy had no patience with uncaring teachers. She had no compunctions about firing a teacher who refused to hug an Arab student. Among the consequences of the investment in care were the reactions of the teachers' families. “Husbands of female teachers said to me: I don’t know what you did to my wife but she is a different person now. She is a different woman, a different mother.” Amy practiced “caring” with her staff as she did with students. Noddings (1992) explained “caring” as a continuous relation focusing on the construction of trust between the caring person and the cared-for, aimed at conveying the same trust to the relations between staff and students. This relation involves nonselective 149

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

acceptance of the cared-for. Amy expressed this relation by acceptance of the staff as they were when she assumed principalship instead of replacing them with new staff. The same attitude is evidenced in the often-heard sentence in the school: “A child is a child is a child.” One important element in caring is feeling, manifested in hugging the students. This was also an essential element in the school pedagogy. Professional Staff Development After improving teachers’ self-worth, Amy led the teachers to professionalization, meaning, to become specialist teachers. She invited a variety of outside consultants to the school during the first two years of her term of office: image consultants who taught female teachers how to dress and put on make-up; social workers who taught them how to cope with children of low SES. She also brought in a consultant who worked with the teachers on how to engage in constructive dialogues. A strong tradition of in-service is also mentioned by Gold and colleagues (2003) as a component of excellent leadership.

Cultural background: Kibbutz

General world-view: " Existential triangle"

Motherhood

Leadership style for multicultural education Figure 8.2. Amy ’s leadership.

Then Amy said to the teachers: “None of us is a superwoman, if we want to do things right, none of us can do everything.” She suggested that they divide every grade level so that one homeroom teacher would teach math, science, and the life sciences, and the other homeroom teacher would teach subjects connected with the humanities. The teachers had discretion in deciding about their specialization and 150

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL

about the division of labor between them. Then the students were assigned to ability groups and the school year was divided into four quarters instead of three trimesters. The purpose of the change was to enable the teachers more frequent assessment and thus regularly to give the students opportunities to move to a higher ability group. In sum, on the basis of her general world-view and her personal experience, Amy developed an approach to multicultural education and to school leadership that effected a transformation of the school. She changed the way the teachers perceived themselves, raised their self-confidence, and increased their selfexpectations (Burns, 1978). She also increased the learning level of the school by increasing the opportunities of the students to realize their potential. DISCUSSION

Commenting on the award she received from the Municipality as a Distinguished Citizen of the City, Knesset Member Sarid, former Education Minister, wrote about Amy: "She chose to head School 'B,' a school that had been known for a long time as one of the most backward schools in town. She led it to excellence and became a source of inspiration to other educators around the country. Amy proved the power of educational leadership” (Sarid, 2004). Our findings show how she did it. Amy’s educational credo led her to formulate a special educational philosophy in School 'B,' one appropriate to the unique multicultural student population and one that teachers could agree with, and adopt as a basis for pedagogical action. Was this type of education responsive to the needs of the school; in other words, was it a multicultural education? The program of education developed in School 'B' reflected the belief that every child is born equal, and has special abilities and aspirations: therefore, the system must provide everybody with opportunities to succeed. Amy extended her commitment to overcome discriminatory practices exercised by the state towards some of the students. She also gave them a sense of empowerment by listening to their problems and by allowing them to express themselves in their own languages (Banks & Banks, 1995). This was achieved through a multicultural curriculum, through designing the role of the teacher as a social missionary, through encouraging teachers to have an enhanced perception of their roles, and through relations with the extended community. Thus, Amy was responsive to the demands for a multicultural education in a diversely populated school. Amy’s leadership stressed the importance of the staff as human beings. This was done by caring and cultivating their self-worth personally and professionally, by supporting them in their contacts with parents, by providing them with learning opportunities in a variety of subjects, by encouraging informal relations and providing extraordinary support. Did Amy exert a “woman’s way of doing things?" Amy stressed intrinsic processes, believed to be natural to female principals, but she also emphasized extrinsic elements in education, elements generally believed to particularly male traits (Kruger, 1995). She emphasized informal relations, open 151

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN

communication, and participation, as women are believed to act, but also kept management functions to herself and was authoritative when she thought it necessary, contrary to Shakeshaft’s (1987) studies. Amy was assertive and selfconfident inside school and outside in her encounters with male officials and politicians, contrary to the findings of Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz (1996). She was highly motivated when she was a teacher before becoming a principal, in a system that does not offer many opportunities for promotion, and thus counters Kanter’s (1977) conclusions noted above. Amy practiced three leadership frames suggested by Bolman and Deal (1992) – the structural, human relations, and political frames – but used each frame in different circumstances. In sum, Amy exerted female and male leadership styles interchangeably, denying that there are gender leadership styles and that gender had an influence on her work behavior. Amy did not practice the "new managerialism" style that is gaining dominance in school leadership today. This trend stems from the values of industrial capitalism and emphasizes competition and individualism (Reay & Ball, 2000; Rieger, 1993). Instead, she was committed to the values of social equity and solidarity, as were the excellent principals in the UK (Gold et al., 2003). Is there a connection between multicultural education and leadership? Amy came to School 'B' with a clear world-view, and was adamant that this was the major influence on her actions at work and on her behavior as well as her sensitivity to children and mothers due to her being a biological and adoptive mother herself. Multicultural education in this school was accomplished through a contextsensitive application of a "transformative approach" (Banks & Banks, 1995). This approach was embodied in an educational philosophy that stressed equality, humanity, respect, and dignity of teachers and students, as well as in the implementation of a type of leadership that transformed students and teachers alike. Amy did not exert a female or male leadership style. She was committed to social values and perceived herself as a social missionary and not just a proficient administrator. REFERENCES Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Apple, M. (1982a). Education and power. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Apple, M. (Ed.) (1982b). Cultural and economic reproduction in education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. A. (1985). Education under siege: The conservative, liberal, and radical debates over schooling. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. M. (Eds.). (1995). Handbook of research on multicultural education. New York: Macmillan. Ben-Yossef, E. (2003). What does it take to learn to read? A story of a school with love. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Hofstra University. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. London: Taylor & Francis.

152

LEADERSHIP IN A MULTICULTURAL SCHOOL Blackmore, J. (1993). "In the shadow of men:" The historical construction of educational administration as a "masculinist" enterprise. In J. Blackmore, & J. Kenway (Eds.), Gender matters in educational administration and policy (pp. 27-48). London: Falmer Press. Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1992). Leading and managing: Effects of context, culture, and gender. Educational Administration Quarterly, 28(3), 314-29. Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Butler, J. (2001). Transforming the curriculum: Teaching about women of color. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (pp.174-194). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Eden, D., & Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2002). The teacher between bureaucracy and mission. Intercultural Education, 13(2), 117-136. Eden, D. (2001). Overt and covert control of teachers. Educational Management & Administration. 29(1), 97-111. Fishbein, Y. (1997). A child is a child is a child. Hed Hahinuch, 8-10. [Hebrew]. Fuchs, I., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1996). Being a school principal in Israel. Megamot. 37(3), 293-313. [Hebrew]. Giroux, H. A. (1992). Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education. New York: Routledge. Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. L. (Eds.). (1989). Critical pedagogy, the state and cultural struggle. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gold, A., Evans, J., Earley, P., Halpin, D., & Collarbone, P. (2003). Principled principals? Valuesdriven leadership: Evidence from ten case studies of "outstanding " school leaders. Educational Management & Administration, 31(2), 127-138. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills: Sage. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (1990). The experience of multicultural education in Australia: Six case studies [Occasional Paper Series No. 20]. Wollongong, NSW: Centre for Multicultural Studies, University of Wollongong. Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2004). Ideology, policy and practice: Education for immigrants and minorities in Israel today. Norwell, MA: Kluwer. Kanter Moss, R. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books. Keinan, A. (1996). The teachers’ lounge: The professional culture of teachers. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press. [Hebrew]. Kruger, M. L. (1995). Gender issues in school headship: Quality versus power? European Journal of Education 31(4), 447-61. Lavie, A. (2003, August 29). What I learned in school. Haaretz (Supplement), pp. 22-26. [Hebrew]. Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mandell Institute for Educational Leadership. (1998). Error Code 445 - Foreign children in Israel: A policy proposal submitted by the students. Jerusalem: Author. [Hebrew]. Mertz, N. T., & McNeely, S. R. (1997, October). Exploring the boundaries of gender and role in administrative decision-making. Paper presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the University Council for Educational Administration, Orlando, FL. Mertz, N. T., & McNeely, S. R. (1998). Women on the job: A study of female school principals. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34(2), 196-222. Nir, A. (1999). Time perspectives of strategic planning processes and plans as a function of gender and echelon socialization. Sex Roles, 41(9/10), 737-752. Noddings, N. (1992). The challenge to care in schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Reay, D., & Ball, S. (2000). Essentials of female management: Women's ways of working in the educational marketplace? Educational Management & Administration, 28(2), 145-161.

153

EDEN & KALEKIN-FISHMAN Rieger, K. (1993). The gender dynamics of organizations: A historical account. In J. Blackmore, & J. Kenway (Eds.), Gender matters in educational administration and policy (pp. 17-26). London: Falmer Press. Sarid, Y. (2004, January 2). An amazing principal. Ha'ir, p. 34. [Hebrew]. Schwartz, Y. (1996). A teacher for life: The reform in teacher training, the image of the teacher and his/her status. In O. Braneis (Ed.), The third vault (pp. 260-271). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education. [Hebrew]. Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Whitty, G. (1985). Sociology and school knowledge: Curriculum theory, research and politics. London: Methuen. Young, M., & Whitty, G. (Eds.). (1981). Society, state and schooling: Readings on the possibilities for a radical education. Sussex: Falmer Press.

Devorah Eden Department of Education Western Galilee College Acre, Israel Devorah Kalekin-Fishman Faculty of Education Haifa University, Israel

NOTES 1

The Ministry has since changed its treatment of those children (see below). 2 Workers' Hotline is a voluntary non-profit organization set up especially to provide temporary immigrant workers with information and to help them in realizing their legal rights. 3 From MERETZ, the citizens rights political party.

154

ANIT SOMECH

9. WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS Understanding Participative Leadership from a Cross-Cultural Perspective

INTRODUCTION

The influence of culture on leadership style is tacitly accepted, but its translation into daily practices is little recognized. This chapter seeks to enrich our understanding of women as leaders from a cultural perspective. Specifically, it addresses the issue of women as participative leaders and explores how culture shapes the philosophy and strategy of their participative leadership. This is important because, despite repeated calls in the educational administration literature for more attention to context (e.g., Dimmock & Walker, 1998; Hallinger & Leithwood, 1996), comparative educational administration research is relatively undeveloped. The main argument is that research should stretch beyond its current near-exclusive grounding in western theory and move toward including more diverse perspectives from the multiple cultural contexts within which educational administration takes place. As Hallinger and Leithwood noted, "This trend towards multiculturalism has implications for the management of schools and for the knowledge base underlying school leadership" (1996, p. 6). This chapter focuses on two sectors in Israel: the kibbutz sector, which is characterized as a more collectivistic subculture, and the urban sector, which represents a more individualistic subculture (Erez & Somech, 1996; Kurman, 2001). Qualitative data are presented that demonstrate what is universal and what is culture-specific regarding women’s participative leadership in three main domains: principals’ motives for participation, the degree that principals tend to involve teachers, and the structures and processes of participation. Participative Leadership Participative leadership, defined as joint decision-making, or at least shared influence in decision-making by a superior and his or her employees (Koopman & Wierdsma, 1998; Yukl & Fu, 1999), is a central theme of research, policy, and practice (e.g., Brouillette, 1997; O’Hair & Reitzug, 1997). This movement is rooted in the management approach, focuses on decentralization of decisionmaking and sharing of power, and has been widely promoted as a means of formalizing a new conceptualization of management to bring about school improvement. Participation is thought to improve the quality of educational I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 155–171. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

SOMECH

decision-making (White, 1992) and to contribute to the quality of the teacher’s work life (Conley, Schmidle, & Shedd, 1988). In addition, participation has been promoted on ethical grounds for “professionalizing” teaching and “democratizing” school workplaces (Murphy & Beck, 1995; Smylie, Lazarus, & Brownlee-Conyers, 1996). These trends towards participation in organizations are shifting the paradigm of thinking away from traditional hierarchical models of organization and management towards what some organizational researchers would say is a feminist or woman-centered approach (Betters-Reed & Moore, 1995). A concern for relationships has been traditionally ascribed to women, while in a leadership context; this has reportedly influenced women to develop their human relations skills and participative leadership style (Fairhurst, 1993). Accordingly, women bring their own unique ways of managing to organizations, by viewing authority and the use of power differently from the traditional hierarchical model. The woman’s “voice” reflects a more collaborative style of working across organizational departments to create an environment of open models of communication among all employees for the purpose of improved learning and performance (Fennell, 1997; Rosener, 1990; Senge, 1993; Shakeshaft, 1989). Specifically, in this chapter, I focus on women principals’ motives for using participative leadership (rationale), and how and when they employ participation in decision making (structure, degree of participation, and domain of participation). This approach can contribute by examining the interrelations of the different dimensions of women’s participative leadership, and facilitating a more comprehensive understanding of the construct (Somech, 2002). However, most existing models of female participative leadership have been developed in the West and do not take the aspect of cultural differences into consideration. Culture provides the standards for evaluating certain managerial strategies as positive, neutral, or negative. I propose that participative leadership is interpreted, shaped, and implemented differently in different cultural environments. Participative Leadership and Culture: The Kibbutz Versus the Urban Sector Culture is relevant for understanding the concept of participative leadership. It provides a backdrop to the power relations and influences that galvanize or constrain people in their interactions and performance at work (Maddock, 1999). In the context of organizations, values are embedded in the strategies and tactics through which the job gets done, and they shape leadership style and leadership preferences. I suggest that researchers in homogeneous cultures remain unaware of how far their thinking and attitudes are rooted in their own culture until they encounter differences between themselves and other people. Understanding of the connection between culture and participative management – and its implications for organizational behavior – is just beginning to develop. One can deduce some broad cultural differences regarding participative management. For example, inasmuch as collectivism means group members working together toward achievement of collective goals, one can expect more 156

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

cooperation among collectivists than among individualists (Chen, Chen, & Meindl, 1998). In fact, such a generalization has some validity, for scholars have shown that collectivists compared with individualists enjoy working together more, are generally more cooperative, and are less inclined to be "free riders" (e.g., Earley, 1993; Erez & Somech, 1996). However, our cultural understanding of participative management needs to go deeper. To the extent that any optimal level of participation is necessary for all societies, regardless of their cultural orientations, we need to explore how participation is achieved differently in different cultures. Exploring and contrasting culturally linked participation mechanisms will generate knowledge helpful in gaining an understanding of both intra- and intercultural participative management. Accordingly, I propose a culturally contingent model of participative leadership, by focusing on one well-established cultural construct, namely, the individualism–collectivism spectrum (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1995; Wagner, 1995). Individualism–collectivism is an analytical dimension that captures the relative importance people accord to personal interests and to shared pursuits (Wagner, 1995). Individualistic cultures emphasize self-reliance, autonomy, control, and priority of personal goals, which may or may not be consistent with in-group goals. An individual feels proud of his or her own accomplishments and derives satisfaction with performance based on his or her own achievements. By contrast, in collective cultures, people will subordinate their personal interests to the goals of their in-group. An individual belongs to only a few in-groups, and behavior within the group emphasizes goal attainment, cooperation, and group welfare and harmony. Thus, pleasure and satisfaction derive from group accomplishment (Lam, Chen, & Schaubroeck, 2002; Triandis, 1995) . These differences imply that variations in individualism–collectivism should influence personal tendencies to cooperate in group situations. For individualists, whose self-definition arouses interest in the pursuit of personal gains, participation should prove attractive only if working with others leads to the attainment of personal benefits that cannot be obtained by working alone. In contrast, participation is consistent with the selfdefinition of collectivists who favor the pursuit of group interests. In attending to group performance and well being, collectivists are likely to seek out and contribute to participative endeavors that benefit their groups, irrespective of the immediate personal implications of these endeavors (Kemmelmeier et al., 2003; Wagner, 1995). Israel is unique in terms of comparative cultural research. The kibbutz and the urban sector represent two distinct subcultures. These differ in their emphasis on collectivist and individualist values, and in the practice of these values, as evinced in their principles of organization and conduct (Erez & Somech, 1996; Kurman, 2001). The kibbutz is a communal settlement based on socialistic ideology. All kibbutz members share the same facilities, including dining room, laundry, cars, medical care, and education (Leviatan, 1984; Rosner & Getz, 1996). A few examples of the principles of the communal life of the kibbutz are:

157

SOMECH

– Communal rather than individual production goals; communal rather than hierarchically centralized decision-making processes; and communal consumption, which means communally decided priorities in the use of accumulated resources. – Equality in need fulfillment and in effort sharing, based on the Marxist principle: to each according to his (or her) needs and from each according to his (or her) capabilities, together with dissociation of contribution and effort from distribution of rewards, so that position and status do not determine material rewards. – Exercise of direct democracy by an organizational structure that puts the highest authority concerning all kibbutz matters in the hands of the general meeting (usually convened once a week) in which every member has a vote. – Rotation of office after predetermined periods of time ranging from one to five years, and a communal system of education and child rearing whereby the community takes responsibility for the education of its members' children. – Total life security for each member in the domain of economics, education, health, and care of dependents, together with a social structure that depends solely on voluntary participation and cooperation in adherence to its norms and has no formal enforcement mechanisms (Rosner, 1993) . Note, however, that the social, economic, and institutional structures of the kibbutz communities have undergone numerous changes during the last two decades, and recently an alternative conception of the New Kibbutz has been developed. The starting point was in 1985, when an economic crisis hit Israel and the kibbutz communities. Economic growth took a dramatic downturn, demand and profits declined, and economic survival was threatened. The most basic feature of this alternative is that, overall, management of the economic activities of the kibbutz should be based on market principles, while implementation of the egalitarian and democratic principles of the kibbutz should be confined to the community (Don, 1995; Palgi, 1994). These changes notwithstanding, the kibbutz community remains collectivistic as compared with the urban sector in Israel (Erez & Somech, 1996; Kurman, 2001). In contrast to the kibbutz setting, the urban sector is individualistically oriented. Individuals live their lives independently, mostly in family units. Each person or family has its own resources, and is responsible for decisions concerning the creation and consumption of resources. Every citizen has rights and duties as defined by the national laws and by the municipality . Accordingly, the urban educational system is a typical "western" system of education. Although practices vary, there is a common core in this philosophy of education whereby individuals should be developed to fullest of their capacity. In the individual–community dichotomy, a fundamental assumption exists that the ultimate goal of a nation is no more than serving and satisfying its individual members. However, in the kibbutz educational system, as representing a more collectivistic culture, the fundamental assumption is almost dramatically different. There, education has always been seen as a community endeavor. Although the individuals' fullest development appears in most of the stated goals of education, 158

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

there is always a further goal for individual development, and that is community development (Dimmock & Walker, 1998; Rosner, 1993). To sum, the two subcultures outlined here differ significantly on objective dimensions of structure, communal life, policies governing resource allocation, power distribution, and participation in decision making. In each, these unique characteristics shape a distinctive cultural framework, patterns of meanings, values, assumptions, and expectations that form the unspoken, often unconscious subtexts of social life, and which, in turn, guide perceptions, cognitions, and behaviors (Garratt, 1998). Based on qualitative data, I show in the next section how these differences in sociocultural environment generate differences in women’s motives to use participative leadership (rationale). Also, I will show how and when women principals in the kibbutz sector employ participation in decision making (structure, degree of participation, and domain of participation) as compared with women principals in the urban sector. METHOD

Participants were 15 women principals (9 urban and 6 kibbutz principals). All the women were principals at elementary schools in the northern region of Israel; average age was 41 years (SD = 5.45), and principalship seniority was on average 7.5 years (SD = 4.6). Nine held a bachelor’s degree, four a master’s degree, and three a “professional” degree (equivalent to junior college diploma, with teaching credentials). No significant differences were found between the urban women principals and the kibbutz women principals in their demographic characteristics, which resembled those found in comparable studies on principals in Israel (e.g., Somech, 2002). A semi-structured face-to-face interview was held with each principal, lasting approximately 100 minutes. Open-ended questions were used, but the participants were encouraged to raise and discuss related topics as well. All interviews were conducted in Hebrew and transcribed verbatim. The interviewer made no audio recording, and participants were assured that they would remain anonymous. The interviews and the qualitative analysis followed Spradley’s (1979) approach, seeing how the world is organized from the participants’ point of view. The interview questions addressed the research questions by probing interviewees’ subjective perceptions, attitudes, conceptualizations, and modes for applying participative leadership in school. Further, the questions pertained to the essence of the four dimensions of participative leadership: rationale, structure, degree of participation, and domain of participation. Participants were not given key definitions; they were encouraged to use their own definitions of the key constructs and to describe their perceptions of and experiences with the interconnections among these dimensions. Data were analyzed in three steps. First, the participant’s responses were listed, ordered by interviewee within question. The second step involved an assessment of the diverse responses to each question. The analyzer asked: Did the participants express similar opinions? Did dominant themes emerge in their answers? Finally, if 159

SOMECH

a recurrent opinion emerged for several participants, a statement that vividly illustrated their point of view was extracted from the interviews. RESULTS

Rationale “What is the justification for participative leadership?” The motives for participative leadership can broadly be classified into two kinds (e.g., Koopman & Wierdsma, 1998). The first may be labeled “humanistic” or “democratic;” namely, people have the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives. They also have the ability, or at least the potential, to do so intelligently. The second major kind of rationale has been labeled “pragmatic” or based on “human relations.” It suggests that participative management is an instrumental way to achieve productivity, efficiency, or other valued organizational results. Overall, the present results consistently showed that the urban women principals tended to involve teachers mainly for pragmatic reasons, whereas those from the kibbutz sector argued that teachers had the right to participate in decisions that affected their lives. The kibbutz principals tended to call on teachers to participate out of a “democratic” rationale. For the urban women principals, participative management seemed to be an instrumental way to achieve productivity, efficiency, and teaching quality, or other valued organizational results; they completely disregarded the “humanistic” right to participate in decisions that affect their teachers’ lives. Specifically, the urban principals referred to three main pragmatic reasons for asking teachers to participate in the decision-making process: (1) A decision-oriented motive. This motive emphasized participative management as improving the quality of the decision. The urban women principals thought that the teachers’ participation would give them access to critical information close to the source of any problems of schooling, namely, the classroom. Increased access to and use of this information were believed to improve the quality of curricular and instructional decisions. Moreover, they stressed that because teachers had an opportunity to be involved in and to exert influence on decision-making processes, their participation promoted commitment to the decisions that were made and increased their willingness to carry them out in their work with students. When teachers participate in decision making, they exert more efforts to reach the best decision, and they feel obligated to implement it. (Sara) The feeling of responsibility created [as a result of participation] will make [the teachers] cooperative, committed to their decision… (Dina) (2) A teacher-oriented motive. Such a motive referred to improvement of teaching quality. It was asserted that teacher involvement in school governance could serve as a form of “job enlargement” to offset the traditional lack of career advancement opportunities and incentives for teachers. The urban women principals maintained that participation in decision making was essential for the teachers’ self-esteem and status. 160

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

Teachers who participate in decision making will be satisfied at work, because they feel they have an influence and their motivation increases. (Miriam) (3) A principal-oriented motive. This aimed at facilitating the principal’s work, by improving her work efficiency and by sharing responsibility for students. Sometimes, I prefer to share responsibility with my teachers…We will achieve the goal with the maximum efficiency and minimum damage. (Sara) In contrast to the urban principals, the results showed that the principals from the kibbutz sector tended to call on teachers to participate out of a “democratic” rationale. They held that teachers had the right to participate in decisions that affected their lives, and for them participation was a value in itself. Having a say in matters relating to one’s work and its context was deemed a right or an obligation. Therefore, participation was promoted on the basis of ethical arguments for “professionalizing” teaching and “democratizing” school workplaces: In general, in the special climate of our school, which still has a kibbutz atmosphere that emphasizes democratic values, I am expected to maintain a high level of staff participation in decision making. (Pnina) However, the obligation to invite teachers to participate was apparently not always the preferred way: [If] I go to the teachers’ plenum at my school and announce a decision, especially about an important matter; it will be met with a buzz of annoyance. Moreover, participation did not always lead to the most qualitative decision: The fact that the majority decides doesn’t mean that the majority is right. What is fair is that everyone was a partner in the decision. (Rachel) According to the kibbutz principals, the process of participation in decision making reflected basic social justice, which was translated to direct democracy by placing the highest authority concerning all school matters in the hands of each teacher. Therefore, for the urban principals, participation may be considered according its benefits and costs, whereas for those from the kibbutz, participation is likely to be a must, regardless of its benefits or costs. Degree of Participation Typically, degree of participation has been conceptualized in terms of a continuum (Vroom & Yetton, 1973): (1) Autocratic decision-making: No advance information on a decision is given to the subordinate; the superior makes the decision on his or her own. (2) Information sharing: The superior obtains the necessary information from the subordinate, and then makes the decision on his or her own. (3) Consultative decision-making: The superior shares the problem with the subordinate, obtaining the latter's ideas and suggestions. Then the superior makes a 161

SOMECH

decision, which may or may not reflect the subordinate’s influence. (4) Democratic decision-making: The superior shares the problem with the subordinate, and together they analyze the problem and arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. The present results suggested that the urban women principals tended to involve teachers mainly using consultative methods of participation. They commonly shared problems with teachers, heard their suggestions, but made the final decision on their own. The more collectivistic sample – the kibbutz principals – exemplified a democratic pattern of decision making, by sharing the problem with their teachers, and together reaching an acceptable solution. Comments from the urban principals included the following: Decision making in the school takes place … sometimes in consultation with the deputy and/or subject coordinator and a relevant teacher … I, the principal, am the final decision maker. (Nurit) Decision making at school sometimes includes participation of the subject coordinators, sometimes of all the teachers, and sometimes the deputy and/or a relevant coordinator and teacher are consulted regarding a certain decision, but the final say is mine. (Ruth) The urban principals emphasized that they were not obligated to accept any suggested decision, and their final decision may or may not reflect their teachers’ influence: The active partners in the decision-making process are the principal and the deputy … I am the final decision maker. If a decision is made and I don’t like it, I have the right to veto it. (Miriam) Although the present results showed that the traditional mechanism of control has been replaced by more shared professional work environments, the urban women principals would not hesitate, on specific occasions, to use more autocratic methods of decision making: Sometimes I have to decide solely by myself. There are very sensitive cases, and I really wish these decisions were not up to me. In such situations, I am responsible… For example, there are cases… in which students complain to me about parental violence in their homes. (Anat) Sometimes, the urban principals might utilize participation as a manipulative tool to reach the “right” decision: Sometimes, I let my staff experience their wrong decision by themselves; then the staff discusses it again, and finally they reach my preferred decision. (Nurit) For the kibbutz principals, decisions were taken in a more democratic way. Principals shared the problem with their teachers, analyzed it together, and reached a mutually acceptable solution. Democracy meant that decisions were determined

162

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

by the majority, which may or may not be in congruence with the principal’s opinion. In some circumstances, they may contradict her viewpoint: In most decisions, there is total democratic participation at the staff plenum level… When an idea is raised, a team is appointed to gather information from the teachers as well. This is followed by numerous discussions with the pedagogical secretariat, which must give its approval before the issue is presented to the plenum. After a long series of discussions, the subject is brought before the teachers’ plenum, where the decision is made by a majority vote. (Ifat) Moreover, in an environment of equality and low power distance, teachers had the authority to reach decisions on their own. Their only obligation was to apprise the principal of them: Some decisions are taken without the principal’s participation, and I am only notified after the fact…. Especially decisions at the grade-level or homeroom teachers – it depends whom the decision involves and who will implement it. As principal, I must at least be notified of any decision. (Pnina) The kibbutz principals apparently perceived their power in school as based on a relationship of peers rather than one of superior and subordinates. However, for the principals in the urban sector, full participation would demand a diametrical change of perspective. Although they tended to consult with their teachers before making the final decision, they preferred to make it alone. Structure Principals can establish diverse participative leadership structures, from formal to informal (e.g., Blase, 1993; Conley et al., 1988; Strauss, 1996; Taylor & Bogotch, 1994). Formally structured participative leadership systems have explicit rules and procedures concerning who participates, how participation operates, and so on. Conversely, participative leadership may be informally structured, involving very few explicit rules concerning who participates, what decisions are open to participation, or how participation is to operate. According the present results, the majority of the urban women principals did not establish clear procedures in their school as to who may participate in the decisionmaking process, what decisions were open to participation, and how participation should operate. The principals from the kibbutz sector tended to use a systematic formal procedure for participation. In the urban sector, the principals confined teachers’ participation to informal channels. The principal decided ad hoc who was/were the most relevant teacher/teachers to share in a specific decision, what was the appropriate framework, and to what extent of involvement. This meant that the manner of managing the process was somewhat vague and could change under diverse circumstances and contexts:

163

SOMECH

The process in our school may include teacher participation, but in an unorganized, very informal way, that is not compulsory at all…To date, no such process [participation in decision making] has been implemented…because theoretically, it sounds efficient and effective, but in practice…it is awkward. In addition, the teachers and employees have not demanded it. (Lili) The decision-making process depends on the type of decision… Usually, when an idea is brought to me as the school principal, I invite the relevant people involved in this idea…It depends on the type of idea. We sound out the willingness in the school and feasibility…what means are available to us – we check whether it is possible and then advance. Usually the decision is participative, but it is the principal who bears the responsibility. Therefore, it is important that the school principal…draws the maximum information regarding the issue from the teacher and others. (Dina) Although some of the urban principals tried to establish formal structures for the process of participation, they still emphasized that, overall, the procedures were more tentative than systematic and organized: The school principal meets with the teaching staff and employees regularly. A question is raised, suggestions are thrown out, there is a discussion, and the decision is accepted if the majority of teachers nod in agreement…. However, I, the principal, have the final decision. (Zehava) For the women principals of the kibbutz, participation was essentially a formal and systematic process. One such principal described the decision-making process for setting up a learning center at the school: (1) One teacher who encountered difficult problems teaching a heterogeneous class raises the idea. (2) A discussion is held on the idea with other teachers who are closely involved with the issue. (3) The idea is discussed with the management team. (4) When preliminary data have been collected, the idea is discussed with the pedagogical secretariat. (5) The pedagogical secretariat gives the go-ahead to a select team to continue examining the proposal and submit a full plan to the pedagogical within a certain time. (6) The select team collects data and presents it to the pedagogical secretariat. (7) The secretariat asks many questions…and requests reconsideration of the idea. (8) Another discussion is held with the management team and the learning center staff. (9) A discussion is held with the pedagogical secretariat and the special education staff, and a decision is made to continue promoting the process within the school. (10) The proposal, now very structured, is brought before the full teachers’ plenum and the decision is made. (Sharon) Again, their collectivistic values directed their commitment to full and direct participation:

164

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

There are tensions in any situation, but in the culture of our school, which is really participative in every sense, it is right for the staff and me to safeguard this approach, which requires that all teachers participate in decisions, and after that also take responsibility for their implementation and outcomes. (Naomi) Often I think to myself, “What do I need this headache for? I could decide alone or with the pedagogical secretariat, which is much smaller.” But afterwards I remember that if the staff didn’t participate, the anger and frustration would be greater. (Rachel) To conclude, the present pattern of results demonstrated congruence between cultural values and the structure of participation. Specifically, the systematic and formal structures for participation in the kibbutz supported its collectivistic values of collaboration, harmony, and consensus, whereas in the urban sector, in keeping with the individualistic culture that emphasized values like self-reliance and autonomy, no systematic structures and procedures for participation in decision making had been developed. Decision Domain The educational literature (e.g., Duke & Gansneder, 1990; Somech, 2002) has identified two main domains of participation in school: the technical core, dealing with students and instruction (e.g., instructional policies, classroom discipline policies, resolving learning problems); and managerial issues, dealing with school operations and administration (e.g., setting school goals, hiring staff, allocating budget, evaluating teachers). From the present results, principals in the urban sector tended to involve teachers more in the technical than in the managerial domain. Strategic decisions typically were made outside the classrooms by administrators, and technical decisions were those made within classrooms by teachers. A different pattern emerged among the kibbutz principals, who tended to involve teachers closely in all the school’s decisions, regardless of their domain. Accordingly, for the urban women principals, the degree of participation varied across different content domains: There are areas in which only some teachers or only some of the subject coordinators participate, or only the management … and the pedagogical committee are involved, according to the issue and need. (Anat) In pedagogical matters that affect the teachers, the issue is presented to the plenum… The active partners in the decision-making process are the management team… The secretary participates in some logistical financial decisions. (Ada) In the pedagogical process, I tend strongly towards staff participation, in the organizational process such as the schedule. They [the teachers] present me with their needs. (Nurit) 165

SOMECH

It seemed that the urban women principals were unwilling to have teachers participate in school-wide decision-making. They saw themselves, rather than the teachers, as being under a moral imperative to act in the best interests of the school and the children, and on this they founded their claim to decision-making authority in the school. For the women principals in the kibbutz, participation in decision making was a part of school policy, and, therefore, participation should take place regardless of the decision domain: In most decisions, there is total democratic participation at the staff plenum level. (Yael) However, the kibbutz principals encountered some ambivalent expectations from their teachers, who in recent times evinced smaller interest in school decisions: Once teachers were concerned about what they would teach - the decision on subject matter was significant for them and it was unthinkable that they wouldn’t participate in this decision. Today the teachers are less concerned about school subjects… (Sharon) In sum, the results regarding the domain of participation revealed that while the urban women principals tended to invite teachers to participate mainly in the technical domain, the kibbutz women principals tended to involve their teachers in most of the school's domains (technical as well as managerial). Participation was a mega-value in the collectivistic culture, so people had the right to participate in decisions that affected their lives, regardless of content or context. By contrast, in the urban sector, although participation was not a core value in the individualistic culture, participation in the technical domain was normative. Teachers, as professionals, work normatively to improve their classroom performance; thus, they expect to be called on to participate in issues concerning the class (Blase, 1993). Moreover, teachers may even consider an invitation for them to participate in managerial decision making as contrary to equity, in cases where they perceive the decision area as within the principal's domain, not theirs (Somech, 2002). Finally, the results also demonstrated that all principals (urban and kibbutz) believed that ethical decisions, as well as decisions concerning teachers’ personal and professional issues, ought to be handled autocratically, by the principal, without any involvement of their teachers: If the decisions concern values or issues related to teachers’ professional problems, I don’t solicit any participation… (Lili, urban principal) When it comes to decisions that directly affect their wages or work conditions…they demand to be involved in the decision-making process. What is absurd is that regarding these issues…I feel that in order to be fair to everyone, I sometimes need to make such decisions myself. (Pnina, kibbutz principal) 166

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

The personal requests are numerous and in this area, because of respect for privacy of the other party, I often have to make the decision myself, alone, without consultation. (Ifat, kibbutz principal) SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The woman’s “voice” reflects more collaborative styles of working to create an environment of open communication among all employees for the purpose of improved learning and performance (Hurty, 1995; Senge, 1993). However, most research takes for granted a set of shared assumptions about the nature of participative leadership. The primary purpose of the present chapter was to enrich our understanding of the construct’s underlying structure from a woman principal’s perspective within a cultural context. If leadership is an inherently social phenomenon, it is constructed and reconstructed in a specific cultural context. Women managers from different cultures are likely to give different interpretations and responses to the same organizational issue, and will have distinct cognitive perceptions of and attitudes toward organizational practices, motivational techniques, and leadership styles (Elron, 1997; Erez, 1994; Garratt, 1998; Hui, 1990). From this perspective, exploring participative leadership in the context of gender and culture has unique theoretical and practical implications. This study should serve to encourage educational administration researchers to focus more attention on a comparative approach that has the potential to challenge the value of theory and practice from a position of diverse multicultural perspectives. A comparative approach can assist in the development of theories and the seeking of generalizations either by generating statements about education that have validity for different cultures, or, alternatively, through crafting statements that recognize the distinctiveness of different contexts (Bajunid, 1996; Dimmock & Walker, 1998; Hallinger & Leithwood, 1996). The qualitative data presented here yielded abundant information showing how the more abstract elements of participative leadership are enacted in real life. I believe that the examples of leader behavior ensuing from the qualitative analysis demonstrate that it is important to elucidate the culture-specific enactment of participative leadership in different cultures. Therefore, the qualitative approach, which tries to see how the world is organized and conceptualized from the participants’ point of view, may well serve as a key tool in cross-cultural studies. Overall, the results of the present study demonstrate that participation occurs in all cultures and that any culture has to work at fostering and sustaining participative management (Chen et al., 1998). Specifically, this chapter introduced how women principals from a more individualistic subculture (urban sector) defined, perceived, and practiced participative leadership, as compared with more collectivistic women principals (kibbutz sector). First, the present results demonstrated that the nature and the quality of participative leadership are generated in a context. The results indicated consistent congruence between the women principals’ cultural background and their reasoning of why they should ask teachers to participate in the decision-making process, and how to translate 167

SOMECH

participation into organizational practices and procedures. Although participation in decision making is the main instrument in the kibbutz movement, because it is in congruence with the ideology of collective values, it may conflict with the individualistic ideology of the urban setting, which is guided by the values of equity rather than equality (Erez, 1994). Accordingly, the main motive that inspired the collectivistic women principals to engage in participative leadership was the democratic approach, whereas the individualistic principals were ambivalent about participation. They recognized its benefits but they also were well aware of its limits. Findings such as these suggest that culture does not only cause individuals to be more or less participative, but may also affect the selection of structures and processes of intervention mechanisms aimed at increasing participation (Chen et al., 1998). Individualists and collectivists follow different rationalities: the individual and the collective. An individualist rationality dictates doing what is in one's own best interests; therefore, willingness to participate is determined by the extent to which such actions are in some way instrumental in obtaining personal goals. A collectivist rationality, in contrast, regards the pursuit of group goals and values. Individuals' actions are evaluated in terms of their instrumentality to the fulfillment of the needs and preferences of the collectivity (Oyserman, Coon, Kemmelmeier, 2002; Wagner, 1995). Accordingly, in a culture in which the normative values are individualistic, participation mechanisms that appeal to and satisfy individual rationality and individuality may be more effective; in a culture in which the normative values are collectivistic, participation mechanisms that appeal to and satisfy collective rationality and sociality may be more effective (Kemmelmeier et al., 2003). Second, the present findings highlight the congruence of all the principals’ (individualistic and collective) strategies and procedures with their teachers’ norms and values. In brief, all participation patterns used by the principals are considered normative in each subculture (Blase, 1993; Bond & Smith, 1996). The principals appeared to be attentive to their teachers’ preferences and tendencies regarding to how to manage the participation process, to what extent, and in which domains. This normative style of leadership may cause them to maintain the status quo, and inhibit them from utilizing a wider repertoire (Levin, 1993). Third, the present results can be interpreted from a perspective of power. In the collectivistic culture, which emphasizes the value of equity, participation might serve as a mechanism to restrict the domains in which the principal has held unilateral power (Dunlap, 1995; Weiss & Cambone, 1994). Yet, for individualistic principals, although the invitation to participate may serve as a tool to enhance teachers’ sense of empowerment, it might also serve as an act of power. For these principals, a participative strategy might function as a manipulative tactic to reduce teachers’ potential resistance to certain decisions and to foster their commitment to implementing them (Hargreaves, 1993). Finally, what are the practical implications of this study? An overall implication is that cultural characteristics should be taken into consideration in the execution of managerial techniques. The motivation potential of various managerial techniques 168

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS

is evaluated by cultural norms and standards. Criteria and standards of evaluation in individualistic cultures are different from those in collectivistic cultures. Knowing what behaviors are appropriate will help to elucidate the cultural assumptions behind behaviors and to focus on the features of situations that are culturally mandated to guide behavior (Singelis, 1994). Specifically, discovering culturally contingent participative management can reduce bias and misunderstanding and can stimulate efforts to learn and adapt to different cultures. With growing internationalization of policy, the significance of culture in its adaptation and implementation in diverse school contexts acquires added importance. The identification of similarities and differences between systems can help clarify problems of reform and change by generating informed cross-cultural fertilization of ideas and experiences (Poppleton, 1992; Rodwell, 1996). Moreover, although unilateral adaptation often fails on people whose values differ from the prevailing culture or on people who are in minority positions, various degrees of mutual adaptation and synergy may occur, especially in multicultural groups (Cox, 1993). New types of participative management mechanisms may emerge, coinciding with the advent of a "third culture" (Graen & Wakabayashi, 1990). For example, a multidimensional team of individualists and collectivists may develop a third culture, in which a dual emphasis and balance are placed on both the individual and the collective rationality and on individuality and sociality alike. Such a culture may give rise to a set of mechanisms through compromise, balance, or synergy between what was originally individualist and collectivist (Chen et al., 1998). REFERENCES Bajunid, I. A. (1996). Preliminary explorations of indigenous perspectives of educational management: The evolving Malaysian experience. Journal of Educational Administration, 34, 50-73. Betters-Reed, B. L., & Moore, L. L. (1995). Shifting the management development paradigm for women. Journal of Management Development, 14, 24-38. Blase, J. (1993). The micro politics of effective school-based leadership: Teachers’ perspectives. Educational Administration Quarterly, 29, 142-163. Bond, M. H., & Smith, P. (1996). Cross-cultural social and organizational psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 205-235. Brouillette, L. (1997). Who defines “democratic leadership”? Three high school principals respond to site-based reforms. Journal of School Leadership, 7, 569-591. Chen, C. C., Chen, X., & Meindl, J. R. (1998). How can cooperation be fostered? The cultural effects of individualism-collectivism. Academy of Management Review, 23, 285-304. Conley, S. C., Schmidle, T., & Shedd, J. B. (1988). Teacher participation in the management of school systems. Teachers College Record, 90, 259-280. Cox, T. H. (1993). Cultural diversity in organizations. San Francisco: Berett-Koehler. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (1998). Comparative educational administration: Development a crosscultural conceptual framework. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34, 558-595. Don, Y. (1995). Altruism and cooperative survival: Is altruism essential for the survival of the kibbutz? Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms, 5, 184-204. Duke, D. L., & Gansneder, B. (1990). Teacher empowerment: The view from the classroom. Educational Policy, 4, 145-160.

169

SOMECH Dunlap, D. C. (1995). Women leading: An agenda for a new century. In D. M., Schmuck, & P. A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 423-436). New York, State University of New York Press. Dunlap, D. C., & Goldman, P. (1991). Rethinking power in schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 27, 5-29. Earley, P. C. (1993). East meets West meets Mideast: Further explorations of collectivistic and individualistic work groups. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 319-348. Elron, E. (1997). Top management teams within multinational corporations: Effects of cultural heterogeneity. Leadership Quarterly, 8, 393-412. Erez, M. (1994). Toward a model of cross-cultural industrial and organizational psychology. In H. C. Triandis, M. D. Dunette, & L. M. Houg (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., vol. 4, pp. 559-607). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychology Press. Erez, M., & Somech, A. (1996). Group productivity loss - The rule or the exception: The effects of culture and group based motivation. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 1513-1537. Fairhurst, G. T. (1993). The leader-member exchange patterns of women leaders in industry: A discourse analysis. Communication Monographs, 60, 321-351. Fennell, H. A. (1997, April). A passion for excellence: Feminine facets of leadership. A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the AERA, Chicago. Garratt, S. (1998). Women managing for the millennium. London: Harper Collins. Graen, G. B., & Wakabayashi, M. (1990). Cross-cultural leadership making: Bridging American and Japanese diversity for team advantage. In H. C. Triandis (Ed.). Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (vol. 4, pp. 415-445). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychology Press. Hallinger, P., & Leithwood, K. (1996). Culture and educational administration: A case of finding out what you don't know. Journal of Educational Administration, 34, 98-116. Hargreaves, A. (1993). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers' work and culture in the postmodern age. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Hofstede, G. (1980). Cultural consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hills: Sage. Hui, C. H. (1990). Work attitudes, leadership styles, and managerial behaviors in different cultures. In R. W. Brislin (Ed.), Applied cross-cultural psychology (pp. 170-189). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hurty, K. S. (1995). Women principals: Leading with power. In D. M., Schmuck, & P. A. Schmuck (Eds.), Women leading in education (pp. 380-406). New York: State University of New York Press. Kemmelmeier, M., Burnstein, E., Krumov, K., Genkova, P., Kanagawa, C., Hirshberg, M. S., Erb, H., Wieczorkowska, G., & Noels, K. (2003). Individualism, collectivism, and authoritarianism in seven countries. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 34, 304-322. Koopman, P. L., & Wierdsma, A. F. M. (1998). Participative management. In P. J. D. Doentu, H. Thierry, & C. J. de-Wolf (Eds.), Handbook of work and organizational psychology: Vol. 3. Personnel psychology (pp. 297-324). Hove, England: Psychology Press/ Erlbaum/ Taylor and Francis. Kurman, J. (2001). Is self-enhancement related to modesty or to individualism-collectivism? A test with four Israeli groups. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 225-237. Lam, S. S. K., Chen, X. P., & Schaubroeck, J. (2002) . Participative decision making and employee performance in different cultures: The moderating effects of allocentrism/idiocentrism and efficacy. Academy of Management Journal, 45, 905-915. Leviatan, U. (1984). The kibbutz as a situation for cross-cultural research. Organizations Studies, 5, 6775. Levin, B. (1993). School response to a changing environment. Journal of Educational Administration, 31, 4-20. Maddock, S. (1999). Challenging women: Gender, culture and organization. London: Sage. Murphy, J., & Beck, I. (1995). School-based management as school reform: Taking stock. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

170

WOMEN AS PARTICIPATIVE LEADERS O’Hair, M. J., & Reitzug, U. C. (1997). Restructuring schools for democracy: Principals’ perspective. Journal of School Leadership, 7, 266-286. Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3-72. Palgi, M. (1994). Attitudes toward suggested changes in the kibbutz as predicted by perceived economic and ideological crises. Journal of Rural Cooperation, 22, 114-130. Poppleton, P. (1992). The significance of being alike: The implications of similarities and differences in the work perceptions of teachers in an international five-country study. Comparative Education, 28, 215-223. Rodwell, S. (1996). Internationalization or indigenization of educational management? An exploration of issues of cross-cultural transfer with particular reference to management self-development in LCDs. Paper presented at the Eighth International Conference of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rosener, J. B. (1990). Ways women lead. Harvard Business Review, November-December, 119-125. Rosner, M. (1993) . Organizations between community and market: The case of the kibbutz. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 14, 369-397. Rosner, M., & Getz, S. (1996).The kibbutz in the era of changes. Haifa: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. [Hebrew]. Senge, P. M. (1993). Transforming the practice of management. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 4, 5-32. Shakeshaft, C. (1989). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-constructs. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580-591. Smylie, M. A., Lazarus, V., & Brownlee-Conyers, J. (1996). Instrumental outcomes of school-based participative decision making. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 18, 181-191. Somech, A. (2002). Explicating the complexity of participative management: An investigation of multiple dimensions. Educational Administration Quarterly, 38, 341-371. Spradley, J. P. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Strauss, G. (1996). Some selected problems associated with formal workers’ participation. In P. J. D. Koopman, & B. Wilpert (Eds.), Organizational decision making under different economic and political conditions (pp. 117-126). Amsterdam: North-Holland. Taylor, D. L., & Bogotch, J. E. (1994). School-level effects of teachers’ participation in decision making. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 16, 302-319. Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Vroom, V. H., & Yetton, P. W. (1973). Leadership and decision making, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Wagner III, J. (1995). Studies of individualism-collectivism: Effects on cooperation in groups. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 152-164. Weiss, C. H., & Cambone, J. (1994). Principals, shared decision making, and school reform. Educational Evaluation and Policy, 16, 287-301. White, P. A. (1992). Teacher empowerment under “ideal” school-site autonomy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 14, 69-82. Yukl, G., & Fu, P. P. (1999). Determinants of delegation and consultation by managers. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 219-232.

Anit Somech Faculty of Education Haifa University, Israel

171

Section III: Epilogue and Reflection

JANICE WALLACE

10. SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE Women Administrators in Canada and Israel

INTRODUCTION

During her investiture speech in September of 2005, Canada’s new governorgeneral, 1 Michaëlle Jean, suggested to Canadians that: The time of the "two solitudes" that for too long described the character of this country is past. The narrow notion of "every person for himself" does not belong in today’s world, which demands that we learn to see beyond our wounds, beyond our differences for the good of all. Her words are far from trite homilies for, as a Black woman who immigrated to Canada from Haiti as a child and began her life in Canada in poverty, she has experienced the many solitudes created by language, race, gender, and socioeconomic status that intersect in multiple ways to separate citizens from one another around the world. She continued: Most of all, I want our young people to be our standard-bearers. I want them to dip into the enormous treasure trove that is Canada. I am the mother of a little girl whose story opened my eyes to certain very harsh realities that we must not ignore. My daughter, Marie-Éden, has changed my life. She has taught me that while all children are born equal, they don’t all have the same opportunities to flourish. This is as true for children here as it is for children in the third world. The governor-general’s words express the hopeful dream of multiculturalism; all citizens, whether immigrant or native-born, no matter what their skin color, language, religion, cultural background, or gender will have equal access to social, economic, and political benefits available within a nation state. However, as she acknowledged, this dream is far from realized in Canada or in other parts of the world. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, living multiculturalism is far more complicated than describing our hope for its realization. It is the space between dreams and lived experience that educational administrators grapple with in their daily practice in schools. The complex issues of multiculturalism are lived “at the edge of our skin” (Boler, 1999) – that is, they are lived within the desires, beliefs, and values shaped by shifting historical and political locations within and between I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 175–191. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

WALLACE

an individual and the community. For example, Canada’s history, like Israel’s, demonstrates the effects of race, language, and religion in shaping access to social benefits such as schooling, economic opportunities, and networks of privilege (Ryan, 2003; Wallace, 2002; Ng, 2003). Furthermore, in an era of globalized capitalism, the multiple and intersecting solitudes of gender, language, culture, religion, and socioeconomic status are exacerbated by hegemonic discourses of competitive corporatism in a global marketplace (Wallace, 2005). What meaning, then, do these various discourses have in shaping the subject positions of women school administrators in multicultural contexts? NAMING MY POSITION

In this chapter, I propose to connect the research on cases from an Israeli multicultural context to my own work (Wallace, 1998, 2002, 2004) and the work of others (e.g., Reynolds & Young, 1998; Reynolds, 2002; Fennell, 1999) who have explored the challenges faced by women principals in Canada, where cultural history and socioeconomic opportunities, including opportunities to become school administrators, are organized around linguistic, religious, racial, and ethnic diversity, as well as gender, that are addressed in state initiated multicultural policy. Immediately, however, I am faced with an ontological and epistemological dilemma – my knowledge of the Canadian context is enlivened by the empirical evidence of lived experience, constant interaction with female principals in my academic teaching and research, and a familiar body of literature that is deeply embedded in western philosophical understandings. Conversely, my knowledge of the work of women principals in the multicultural context of Israel is limited to the case studies in this book, a literature search that is restricted by my limited language ability, and conversations with one of the co-editors of this book. Furthermore, I am keenly aware of my own position as a White, middle-class, English-speaking, Canadian academic who cannot pretend to understand fully the nuanced and complex history of a region of the world where relations across gender, religion, language, and ethnicity are often portrayed in non-nuanced and simplistic sound bites on the newscasts I watch each day. In other words, I am deeply embedded within the discourses that shape my location, thus limiting my view of the ways in which women administrators in Israel both embody the notion of multiculturalism and challenge its limits in their practice in the complex location of schools. Therefore, rather than providing a reading of the case studies in this book with any strong sense of “knowing,” I propose instead to attempt a reflexive poststructural reading of the discourses that are revealed: What do they disclose about the meanings produced from within the discourses that shape my subjectivities such as multiculturalism, patriarchy, and women’s “place” within educational bureaucracies? My analysis may be characterized as poststructural in that it rejects the dualisms and fixed standpoint of traditional structuralist social theory, and instead “acknowledges discourses and practices of struggle and resistance . . . recognizes the dynamic interplay of social forces, and . . . therefore can readily be deployed as 176

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

a theory of and for change” (Kenway, Willis, Blackmore, & Rennie, 1994, p. 188, italics added). Although poststructuralism without feminism has been described as nihilist and even reactionary in coming to an understanding of human phenomena, Grogan (1996) argues that a feminist consciousness of social inequality focuses the rich conceptual tools of poststructuralism in useful, even hopeful ways (Kenway et al., 1994). Post-structuralism converges with feminism on several points, which are significant themes in my consideration of the case studies in Chapters Six and Seven of this volume. First, feminism challenges the androcentric prejudices that have shaped educational policy and organizational practices by naming the positionality of the observer (researcher) / actor (educator) on social phenomena. In other words, the school principal in each case study is attached to ideological positions within an historical and political context. A feminist poststructuralism names the oppositions between and among gendered social actors. Second, although not all feminists would be comfortable with a non-foundationalist position, Hekman (1990) points out that binary oppositions that privilege those characteristics associated with social constructions of masculinity have maintained hierarchical arrangements of power based on gender. Yet, it would be problematic to replace one privileged “truth” with another. Instead, a feminist poststructuralism is mindful of the multiple positions of women and men in the discursive webs of educational organizations. Third, Blackmore (1999) argues that humanist principles based on a unified individual subject have served to privilege males as actors in the public arena of social action, particularly as neo-liberal radical individualism gains ascendancy in public policy. A feminist poststructuralism attends to the embodiment of discursive positions within shifting arenas of social action in the lived experience of social actors. Recognizing that poststructuralism is a shifting signifier, in this paper I am taking poststructuralism to mean: …the way in which meaning is struggled over and produced, the way it circulates amongst us, the impact it has on human subjects, and finally the connections between meaning and power. For poststructuralists, meaning is not fixed in language, in other cultural symbols or in consistent power relationships. It shifts as different linguistic, institutional, cultural and social factors come together in various ways. Meaning is influenced by and influences shifting patterns of power. And finally it constitutes human subjectivity which is again regarded as shifting, many-faceted and contradictory (Kenway et al., 1994, p.189). THE MEANING OF MULTICULTURALISM

The first struggle for meaning to which I will turn is a concept central to this book: What is the meaning of multiculturalism? As the chapters in this book amply demonstrate, multiculturalism is a word that is taken up and experienced differently in various contexts as positions of power shift and change. My sense of self as a Canadian is inextricably interwoven with discourses of multiculturalism 177

WALLACE

that permeate Canada’s history, policy, and public rhetoric. Canada’s history is more complex than the simple view of multiculturalism in which multiple cultures exist together within state borders, for its history reveals the colonizing impulse of its two “founding” peoples – the English and the French 2 – who often exploited the aboriginal nations in order to gain access to Canada’s natural resources (Ng, 2003). Subsequent waves of immigration have continued to populate Canada, bringing with them diverse cultures, languages, religions, and ethnicities. Multiculturalism as a desirable social good infuses the language of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988 and follows a pattern of public policy 3 that enabled Canada to nonviolently transform itself “from a predominantly white society into one of the most spectacularly diverse countries in the world” (Dyer, 2001). In a nation that is perceived to have an identity crisis in the shadow of its closest neighbor, the United States, Canada often points to its peaceful history of cultural co-existence, 4 exemplified by multiculturalism, as its defining characteristic. I confess that I like this picture of Canada and, by extension, myself, but it is a location in which it is all too easy to view more troubled relations between diverse populations struggling to co-exist within shared geographic boundaries, such as Israel and Palestine, with self-congratulatory narcissism. However, even if Canada’s “ethic” of multiculturalism – to quote the Minister of State for Multiculturalism – is laudable, it is not an entirely unproblematic concept. 5 Proponents argue that multicultural policies provide necessary and progressive protection for minority rights in a diverse society. Critics from the left, however, have charged that the Canadian Multiculturalism Act has more to do with political opportunism than good intentions in the face of increasing ethnic diversity (Gwyn, 1995), while critics from the right charge that it balkanizes Canadian society by destabilizing the “common bonds of nationhood” (May, 1999, citing Schlesinger, 1992). These same positions are reflected in debates around educational policies and practices in Canada “whereby divergent social interests express ‘conflicting visions of the role that school plays in either reproducing or transforming ethnic/religious/racial inequalities’” (Wotherspoon, 2004, p. 216, citing McAndrew, 1995, p. 165). In fact, the somewhat unusual arrangement of Canada’s provinces having sole jurisdiction over education policy 6 was a compromise at Confederation in 1867 to mollify the divergent language and religious interests of Upper Canada (subsequently Ontario) and Lower Canada (subsequently Quebec). Since then, the history of education policy in each province bears the traces of navigating a careful course between the Scylla of reproducing the dominant ethnic/religious/racial – as well as economic – social order and the Charybdis of transforming it (see Axelrod, 1997; Titley, 1990). For example, in one of Canada’s largest provinces, Ontario’s education policy has been a series of policy compromises around funding accommodation of religious difference that called for matching funding for a Catholic system of education up to the end of Grade 10 and then to the end of secondary schooling. Currently, there is considerable pressure for full funding to be extended for schooling other religious minorities as well, including Jewish and Muslim students. 178

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

Therefore, as I read that education in Israel is segregated by nationality and degree of adherence to religious practices in the introduction to this book, I am not entirely unfamiliar with these divisions. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter), for example, strongly defends minority rights against discrimination based on race, gender, and class, and related criteria such as language and religion, but it does so as discrete categories of exclusion. Like the Charter’s provisions, education policy was introduced in most Canadian provinces between the mid1970s and the mid-1990s that sought to eliminate sexism and racism in pedagogical practices, and sexism in employment practices, but as separate categories of discrimination and exclusion. A kind of hierarchy of consciousness emerged around the four identified categories: sex, race, aboriginal, and disabled. For example, although the federal Employment Equity Act of 1986 included race as one of four categories of protection against discriminatory employment practices, 7 most education policies gave little emphasis to racist employment practices other than general rights protected by the Charter. Ng (2003) argues, however, that Canadian education policy and practice is not well served by treating categories of difference as distinct from one another but is better understood by acknowledging the interlocking relations between race, gender, and class along with their attendant differences in language and religion. In the Canadian context, most scholarship that explores the intersection of gender and culture does so from the perspective of working within diversity. Many of the cases in this volume, however, explore the effects of gender from within a homogeneous cultural context. In doing so, new facets of the intersections between race, class, and gender are revealed in the particular discourses that shape the work of women principals. For example, I was particularly interested in the chapter by AburabiaQueder for what it revealed about women administrators working within a very strong form of patriarchy and the chapter by Karnieli and the insights her case study provides in thinking about another key western feminist analytic location: the public/private split within industrial capitalism. In the next section of this chapter, I will explore the ways in which these interlocking discourses shift and transform meanings within the particular cultural arrangements revealed in the case studies in Chapters Six and Seven of this book and my own perceptions of relations of power in multicultural school settings. In reflecting on the case studies described by Aburabia-Queder and Karnieli, I will draw on some representative cases from my own research with women administrators in the Canadian context. The stories of Judith and Lois are drawn from a history project in which my research was predominantly concerned with women administrators. Both of these women became school administrators in the 1970s. Rose’s story, the third case, is drawn from a study of contemporary school administrators who have felt the effects of globalization and neo-liberal policies most directly (Wallace, 2005). Although each research project had different goals and took place in three different provinces in Canada, 8 both looked at the experience of women school administrators through their own narratives and were informed by critical feminist analysis (Lather, 1991). In thinking about each set of interviews and reconsidering them in light of what is revealed in Aburabia179

WALLACE

Queder’s and Karnieli’s chapters, the confluences and convergences of gender, race, class, and religion 9 are revealed in “the concepts and language available to” (Weiler, 1997, p. 636) each woman in the context of her own experience. WOMEN RESISTING PATRIARCHY

“They felt I raped a role that was not supposed to be mine” is the intriguing quote that Aburabia-Queder uses as the title for Chapter Seven. The chapter describes the struggle of Amira, the first female principal of a Bedouin school, to move outside of the strictly enforced roles 10 for women in a traditional patriarchal society. The title is thought-provoking because it signals the violation of traditional masculinity by women who enter the public sphere of activity. Rape is a violent and intrusive physical violation of the body, the psyche, and the law – whether religious or secular. However, some have argued that contemporary religious and secular law is still rooted in the sexual contract, 11 which is foundational to patriarchal discourses – i.e., male entitlement to the exclusive availability of women for procreation and the passing on of material and property wealth from one generation to the next. These arrangements of power, characterized as the patriarchal bargain (Kandiyoti, 1998), have been negotiated for centuries between men and women based on the premise that women would exchange sexual and legal autonomy for the economic protection of patriarchy – i.e., men would occupy the public world of political and economic intercourse in order to provide for women who, in exchange, would provide men with sexual exclusivity (in order to ensure the purity of the patriarchal lineage) and caregiving in the private world of the home. In Amira’s community, the terms of the patriarchal bargain are drawn by firmly inscribed gender roles – inscribed more deeply by religious beliefs and practices – that appear on the surface to be very different from those of Canadian society. Arguably, however, in industrial and post-industrial liberal democracies, such as Canada, the terms have simply been re-negotiated within the historical, social, and political conditions of bureaucratic organizations. Thus, irrespective of the psychic torture inflicted, from a patriarchal perspective, those who engage in the physical act of rape contravene the patriarchal contract by violating the private sexual entitlements of men through the unwanted sexual invasion of a woman. Clearly this was not the act in which Amira was engaged, but from a fraternal-patriarchal perspective, which I explore below, Amira was “raping a position that was not hers” because she too was intruding on the sexual entitlements of men by simply invading the public domains of privilege that had been the exclusive domain of men. As Blount (2000) has pointed out, women who transgress boundaries of sexually appropriate behavior within defined gender roles occupy an uncomfortable social location that is invasive of gendered social norms. Okin’s (1992) explication of what she called fraternal-patriarchy is helpful in not only understanding the degree of intrusion that Amira represents to the strict bifurcation of the public and private domains of activity within patriarchy but also the ways in which these same discourses are reinserted in industrialized democracies. She argued that within the canon of western political thought, as 180

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

exemplified by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill, the basic unit of discussion by each political philosopher was “the [patriarchal] family, and not the adult human individual" (Okin, 1992, p. 282). In early liberal political thought, the “universal man,” the male head of a family, embodied the family unit. He was perceived to act and speak on behalf of the family and represented each family member’s subordinated interests in the wider society. That is, the rule of the fathers prevailed in both public and private spheres of human activity – but it was a patriarchy that assumed what Pateman (1988) called a hidden sexual contract. Cockburn (1991), citing Pateman, suggested that this sexual contract had always been embedded in patriarchy because the authority of the father over his sons and the rights to which those sons were entitled based on his procreative power were “based fundamentally on the right of this father over a woman, without whom there could . . . have been no sons. The foundation stone of classical and feudal patriarchy, therefore, ignored by liberal theorists, was conjugal right” (p. 20, italics in the original). Thus, although the end of feudal rule and the emergence of the new relations between owners and workers in an industrialized nation-state was envisioned by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and other liberal political theorists as an anti- or post-patriarchal social contract (Cockburn, 1991), Pateman argues that the social contract merely replaced traditional patriarchal arrangements and reaffirmed patriarchy in the emerging social forms of industrialized nation-states. Cockburn (1991), commenting on Pateman’s argument, explains, “The social contract of western capitalist ‘democracies,’ then, is by no means incompatible with patriarchy. Indeed it is the means through which the male dominance system has adapted to an otherwise much-changed world. Pateman calls it ‘fraternal patriarchy’” (p. 21). Fraternal-patriarchal social structures had the effect of naturalizing distinct sex roles that separated women into the private realm and men into the public realm of human activity. This division was then used “throughout history and into the present to justify keeping the female sex in a position of political, social, and economic inequality” (Cockburn, 1991, p. 297). Fraternal-patriarchal relations between males and females in educational organizations of Ontario, for example, led to economic inequality and career inequities through the imposition of the marriage bar – i.e., women had to give up their teaching position once married from the 1920s to the early 1950s (Reynolds, 1987) – as well as the expectation, well into the 1970s, that women teachers would retire when their pregnancy became visible. Like Amira, women educators in Canada found ways to resist the role expectations imposed by gender norms within fraternal-patriarchal discourses, but the vestigial traces of patriarchal discourses remained. In an historical project in which I interviewed over twenty women who became school administrators in Ontario between 1970 and 2000, of those who were married, most referenced the ways in which their husbands supported their work but it was often couched in language that suggested they were vulnerable to the withdrawal of male permission as well. Some – particularly those whose self-presentation conformed most closely to role norms for females – also referenced the support of males in positions of power in educational bureaucracies (see Wallace, 2004 for further discussion). Lois, 12 for 181

WALLACE

example, experienced a lengthy journey to the principalship after 33 years as a teacher, several years as a curriculum consultant, and temporary stints in school administration. She also provided details of her daily routine as a principal, which included finishing her day by ensuring that the casserole for the next night’s meal was ready, lunches were made, and laundry and other tasks were done for her husband and four children. Yet she claimed that nothing had ever stopped her from achieving her career goals. In Lois’s case, unlike Amira for whom the price for contravening patriarchal norms was explicit and potentially violent, the muted discourses of patriarchy were entrenched in conjugal arrangements and hierarchical norms and were, therefore, less visible and more difficult to name and resist. During the interview, Lois made several references to the ways in which males opened career possibilities for her and her husband made room for her career but ignored the obvious inference that they were also in a position to block her career goals if they chose to do so. Despite her protestations, then, the power remained firmly in the hands of her marriage partner and her male peers to make room for or close ranks against her. Judith, on the other hand, who was a committed feminist and school principal during the same period as Lois, had become aware of the insidious nature of fraternal-patriarchy and commented: Even in our best years, there was never any doubt that the power was in the hands of the key men. Never. So I think that never changed. I also saw very clearly that whenever larger numbers of women became principals – and I was of course witness to the discussion around the table that dealt with this – it was quite common for men to say at the table and on appointments, you know, “We don’t want a woman in that school. She can’t handle that.” There were very few women who were ever seen as strong enough to handle a tough school. So I don’t think there were any advantages [to being a woman]. There were never any advantages for women to move up quicker, ever. What is of interest to me as I examine the effects of fraternal-patriarchal discourses are the ways in which these three women – Amira, Judith, and Lois – constitute their subject position within dominant discourses that they resisted either consciously or unconsciously. Both Amira and Judith were conscious of the power of patriarchy to keep them from doing work that they saw as important to their community and to which they were passionately committed, and both discovered the power of anger to resistance, while always aware of the vulnerability of their position. The anger Amira felt in being confined to a role of silence and conformity became an energizing force that propelled her beyond silence to apply for and accept a job from which she could not be dissuaded by “threats or phone calls, or a sheikh.” Judith, too, used her anger at the dominant patriarchal discourses that attempted to shut her out of school administration, to enable her to continue resisting despite 13 attempts to be recommended by a practicing principal 13 for the required accreditation program to become a principal. She was denied 12 times

182

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

and, when she could no longer be ignored, finally was admitted to the course and became a principal and then a superintendent of schools. In the course of her career, Judith fought hard against corporal punishment and worked to develop progressive pedagogical reforms but was always aware, to use her words, that “the flirty stuff” could interfere with her ability to have educational reforms, about which she cared deeply, taken seriously. Lois represented her “self” within traditional gender norms and used them, strategically or otherwise, to get on with the work that she saw as important in ensuring equitable educational opportunities for students. Amira stood her ground and would not be dissuaded from her administrative work despite formidable odds. In each case, although the meaning of patriarchy shifted across cultural traditions, beliefs, and values, as well as temporal and geographic locations, Amira, Lois, and Judith embodied a violation of the sexual contract within fraternal-patriarchal relations of power in the public sphere. Therefore, each woman had to negotiate the borderlands between public and private carefully in order to get on with the work that she saw as important. EXPLORING THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DIVIDE

Much of the feminist scholarship on women in educational leadership has taken as its starting point the absence of women in educational administration and has pointed to the divide between the public and private domain of social, political, and economic activity as an explanation for women’s absence. For example, feminist academics have argued that, as the influence of religion dwindled and a faith in science increased, the dichotomy deepened between the instrumental/rational/objective/value-free public sphere of men and the nurturing/affective/subjective/moral/private sphere of women, the boundaries between the public and private having been deeply inscribed by gender (Blackmore, 1989; Rieger, 1993). As a result, as Amira, Lois, and Judith discovered, crossing those boundaries deeply troubles the gender order upon which most educational organizations are premised. Karneieli’s case study in this volume, however, seems to stand this observation on its head, for, as she explains, women are not only over-represented in teaching but also in school administration in ultra-orthodox communities. In fact, unlike most capitalist industrialized nations, the ultra-orthodox community “places the main responsibility for earning a living on its women” (Friedman, 1988; Shai, 2000, cited in Karnieli, this volume). Oplatka further observes in this volume that the number of women in administrative positions generally in Israel is much higher than it has been in the last half of the twentieth century in Canada’s schools. In attempting to understand the deeply gendered division of labor in educational organizations, Benn (1989) points out that unlike the deep bifurcation between the public and the private in most bureaucracies, schooling represented a more ambivalent location between the public and the private because of its connection to the care and nurture of children. However, this ambivalence between the public

183

WALLACE

and private simply deepened the gendered division of labor in educational organizations because: Historically there have always been two distinct teaching functions: the first an extension of mothering, and reserved for women; the second an extension of power and authority, reserved for men, who have guarded it well. This division – while no longer explicit – is still implicit throughout the education system (p. xix). As a result, in Canada’s educational jurisdictions, women have been historically over-represented in those areas of education most closely allied with the activities of mothering (although the process of becoming a mother was perceived to be troublesome) and under-represented in positions of authority, such as school principal, in educational bureaucracies. This gendered pattern was demonstrated in the words of the Superintendent of Education in Upper Canada who wrote in the nineteenth century (Prentice, 1977, p. 61): "Both by the law of nature and revelation, [there was] a position of subordination and of dependence" assigned to women, and that thus there ought to be "situations in educational establishments better adapted to the one than the other." Accordingly, it was generally admitted that the infant and primary departments were "best fitted for the female," whereas "the head masterships, and the more advanced sections" ought to be reserved for the male teachers in schools. In other words, a woman’s place was one of deference to male authority and its expression in the public domain of industrial capitalism. The result was an underrepresentation of women in positions of authority in Canada’s schools that still persists. Is the case of Deborah so different, then, despite the fact that she was encouraged to take a public role outside the home and that so many women are school administrators in Israel? From the perspective of many women in Canada, who did the difficult theoretical, personal, and political work that opened up new pathways for other women to follow, the opportunities available to Deborah to become a school administrator are enviable. However, on closer examination, her story is not dissimilar to the stories that Judith, Lois, and others told. For example, Deborah worked outside the home in deference to the established gender order. That is, in her community, men participate in the spiritual domain – a higher status activity – and women enable male activity by participating in lower status activity in the economic domain, but their responsibilities for care and nurture in the home remain the same as those in Canadian culture. In this ultra-orthodox Jewish community, the faith in science that bifurcated gender roles in the public and private realm in western industrialized states is mirrored by faith in the beliefs of ultra-orthodox religion that inscribe gender norms somewhat differently in terms of women’s participation in the public domain but maintain differentiated gender roles around status and authority. Despite the deeply entrenched gender roles in Deborah’s community, however, the meaning of the public/private divide seems to be less of a struggle for her than it is for many of the women I interviewed in Canada. Judith, for example, felt 184

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

compelled to subsume her private responsibilities to the masculinist norms of her administrative work. In reflecting on her days as a principal, she observed: I think the fact that you have children, that you have family responsibilities, I think that that’s always a bit of a challenge. I think that what most women do in my observation is that we go overboard. We try never to compromise, you know, and have anyone say, “Oh well, she slipped off early or she stayed home because her kid was sick or whatever.” And I think I went overboard the other way. You know, when I was pregnant, making sure I worked every duty I was supposed to work and so on. But I think that’s always a difficulty. She observed, however, that younger women, who were taking on the role of principal when she retired, seemed less fearful of being judged incompetent if they took necessary time for their family’s needs. However, the masculinist standard has far from disappeared. For example, three young women in a graduate class I taught at another university on women and educational leadership all expressed great anguish over what they perceived to be competing desires to become administrators, have children, and maintain a sense of personal well-being. The female role-models they had observed were all achieving the first two at the expense of the third and this was a compromise they were unprepared to make. Rose, a female principal of a secondary school in the Canadian prairie province of Alberta, stated: I think my coping strategy, probably, is that I just work until the job gets done. So if I take the time to deal with those things that just come up during the day, then I take the time at night to do all the other stuff that I was planning to get done. So I just extend my day and that’s what works for me. I made some decisions really early on in my career that if I was going to be an administrator and work in schools, for me to be effective, then, I needed to have priorities. So I’ve made a conscious decision not to have children… because I knew that I couldn’t do that and still be effective in my work. Although not a representative sample, it is interesting that only two women of sixteen interviewed for the contemporary principal’s study had taken on administrative responsibilities while they had young children at home. Of course, it is not impossible to take on the increasingly demanding role of administration if one has young children – certainly many women manage the balance very successfully – but, even though the division of labor in the private sphere is shifting, until it becomes more equitable, doing so is often a demanding double shift (see Acker & Armenti, 2004 for a discussion of a similar phenomenon in academia). As I reflected on Judith and Lois’s description of balancing public and private responsibilities, on contemporary women principals in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, and on the anxieties that some of my graduate students expressed about achieving a balance between their public and private responsibilities, I found myself envying the clarity with which Deborah assumed her role in each realm. What some might perceive to be the limits of her religious beliefs, somewhat 185

WALLACE

ironically seemed to remove any ambivalence she might have felt about her work in both the private and public life. She seemed to have no sense of “invading” male territory or usurping a role that was not hers. Instead, she was able to accept the challenges of the principalship with determination and the joy of providing a workshop for her “diamonds” – young ultra-orthodox Jewish women – that would prepare them to provide economic support for their families and a moral example for their communities. What is the meaning, then, of the public/private divide that continues to be a core struggle for many women in Canada? Sadly, despite several decades of feminist analysis and struggle, the challenge of finding balance between the roles that women play at work and home continues to plague many women school administrators because, while they are increasingly taking on responsibilities in the public domain, there has not been as rapid a shift in balancing responsibility in the private domain either within personal or institutional relations. Therefore, as my graduate students were all too aware, “something has to give” because work in neither domain has been reconfigured across gender. For example, Canada still has no policy for access to quality preschool programs or supports for working mothers. This has serious implications for working class and many middle class families and renders the pursuit of a career very difficult for many women. In addition, even those men who are willing to contribute more time and attention to family responsibilities are themselves often caught by norms premised on work lives into which private responsibilities do not intrude. Although the struggles of women principals in Canada to balance their public and private roles seem to be less of an issue for women in Deborah’s ultraorthodox community, Karnieli observes that there is also an erasure of women’s individuality and an expectation of conformity to role norms for women as “helpmeets” of the religious work of men, which is perceived to be of greater importance. For most Canadian women, this would be too steep a price to pay for the balance afforded to Deborah in both realms of her life. Thus, both Deborah and participants I have interviewed in Canadian studies of women principals seem caught by the dominant discourses of patriarchy in the public and private realm of their lives. Yet, clearly, that is not the end of the story; Deborah finds great joy in her work and uses the position she holds to open spaces for the voices of women and pursue her passionate commitment to her religious beliefs. The principals I interviewed in the contemporary project also revealed that, although they were experiencing increased demands in their work that made balancing the competing interests of two “greedy organizations” (Currie, Harris, & Thiele, 2000) – family and school – difficult, they were willing to take on the challenge because of their sense of self-efficacy in "making things happen" – good things for their students. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

There are many more phenomena that the case studies in this volume reveal that I might have explored – the ways in which women of various cultures “do” the work of school administration or the meaning of culture and diversity in their particular 186

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

context – but I have chosen instead, in this chapter, to explore key concepts that have been used to “explain” women’s exclusion from positions of authority in school organizations. However, if the belief still exists that a master narrative can be found that will locate the source of women administrators’ oppression within patriarchy, the cases considered in this chapter trouble such a hope. For one thing, the singular category of “woman principal” has been problematized by the various relations of power and negotiations around gender demonstrated in this volume. Instead, it seemed to me to be more helpful to consider how the subject positions that are available to women administrators in multicultural settings are organized around the shifting discourses of race, language, culture, religion, socioeconomic status, 14 and other statuses that shape the category of “woman” and the work that they do in multiple ways (see Dillabough, 2001; Paechter, 2001). In the slightly reworked words of Acker and Armenti (2004): “The subject is seen as in flux and any coherent and generalizable experiences of ‘women’ in [school administration] are too elusive to be captured and categorized" (p. 6). My own position in writing this chapter has been as “learner” rather than “knower,” recognizing that my knowledge of each case from this volume that I have considered is partial and interpreted through the lens of my own culturally laden experience. In taking this position, I have learned that core concepts in feminist analysis of women in school administration in most western texts are contextually bound and are enacted through the bodies, emotions, and actions of women whose subjectivity is organized by particular understandings of patriarchy and the organization of labor within the public/private domains of human activity. The discursive location of Amira and Deborah de-center my understandings of these core categories of analysis and open up other possibilities. Amira’s dignified anger in response to the silencing she experienced within a highly patriarchal system, for example, reveals the power of emotion, when used strategically, to resist male domination and open up opportunities to lead in schools – and elsewhere. The openness of Deborah’s community to her engagement in both private and public roles in her community provides an opening for considering what it might be like to participate fully in the public sphere without the exhausting guilt and compulsion to over-compensate for “neglecting” private responsibilities that so many working women in the West report. Greenfield wrote that “we live in separate realities but we live with each other” (Greenfield & Ribbins, 1993, p. 88). I cannot speak beyond the words that Judith, Lois, and Rose shared with me but I strongly suspect that, like me, they might feel separate from Deborah and Amira and yet, as I have discovered in writing this chapter, we also live with each other. We share a belief in the power of education to transform, the vulnerability of our hopes and dreams to the demands of patriarchy, and the shattering exhaustion of balancing private and public responsibilities. However our separate realities inscribe themselves on the complex cultural and historical topographies of our bodies and geographies, the women administrators whose lived experience is examined in this chapter carry on in a multicultural world, “which demands that we learn to see beyond our wounds, beyond our differences for the good of all” (Jean, 2005). 187

WALLACE

REFERENCES Acker, S., & Armenti, C. (2004). Sleepless in academia. Gender and Education, 16(1), 3-24. Armstrong, P., & Armstrong, H. (1990). Theorizing women’s work. Toronto: Garamond Press. Axelrod, P. (1997). The promise of schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Benn, C. (1989). Preface. In H. De Lyon, & F. Widdowson Migniuolo (Eds.), Women teachers: Issues and experiences (pp. xviii – xxvi). Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Blackmore, J. (1989). Educational leadership: A feminist critique and reconstruction. In J. Smyth (Ed.), Critical perspectives on educational leadership (pp. 93-130). London: Falmer Press. Blackmore, J. (1999). Troubling women: Feminism, leadership, and educational change. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Blackmore, J. (2002). Troubling women: The upsides and downsides of leadership and the new managerialism. In C. Reynolds (Ed.), Women and school leadership: International perspectives (pp. 49-70). Albany: State University of New York Press. Blount, J. (2000). Spinsters, bachelors, and other gender transgressors in school employment. Review of Educational Research, Spring, 83-101. Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Cockburn, C. (1991). In the way of women: Men’s resistance to sex equality in organizations. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Currie, J., Harris, P., & Thiele, B. (2000). Sacrifices in greedy universities: Are they gendered? Gender and Education, 12(3), 269-291. Dillabough, J. A. (2001). Gender theory and research in education: Modernist traditions and emerging contemporary themes. In B. Francis, & C. Skelton (Eds.), Investigating gender: Contemporary perspectives in education (pp. 11-26). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Dyer, C. (2001). Nomads and education for all: Education for development or domestication? Comparative Education, 37(3), 315-327. Fennell, H. A. (1999). Feminine faces of leadership: Beyond structural-functionalism. Journal of School Leadership, 9(3), 254-85. Friedman, M. (1988). The ultra-orthodox woman. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. [Hebrew]. Greenfield, T., & Ribbins, P. (1993). Greenfield on educational administration: Towards a humane science. London: Routledge. Grogan, M. (1996). Voices of women aspiring to the superintendency. New York: State University of New York Press. Gwyn, R. (1995). Nationalism without walls: The unbearable lightness of being Canadian. Toronto: McLelland & Stewart. Hallett, J. (1984). Fathers and daughters in Roman society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hekman, S. (1990). Gender and knowledge: Elements of postmodern feminism. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Jean, M. (2005). Installation speech: The Right Honorable Michaëlle Jean Governor General of Canada on the occasion of her installation. Retrieved October 29, 2005, from http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4574 Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2, 274-290. Kenway, J., Willis, S., Blackmore, J., & Rennie, L. (1994). Making “hope practical” rather than “despair convincing:” Feminist poststructuralism, gender reform, and educational change. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15(2), 187-210. May, S. (1999). Critical multiculturalism and cultural difference: Avoiding essentialism. In S. May (Ed.), Critical multiculturalism: Rethinking multicultural and antiracist education (pp. 11-41). London: Falmer. McAndrew, M. (1995). Ethnicity, multiculturalism, and multicultural education in Canada. In R. Ghosh, & D. Ray (Eds.), Social change and education in Canada (3rd ed.). Toronto: Harcourt Brace.

188

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE Ng, R. (2003). Toward an integrative approach to equity in education. In P. Trifonas (Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change (pp. 206-219). New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Okin, S. (1992). Women in western political thought (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Paechter, C. (2001) Using poststructuralist ideas in gender theory and research. In B. Francis, & C. Skelton (Eds.), Investigating gender: Contemporary perspectives in education (pp. 41-51). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Oxford: Polity Press. Prentice, A. (1977). The feminization of teaching. In S. M. Trofimenkoff, & A. Prentice (Eds.), The neglected majority: Essays in Canadian women’s history (Vol. 1, pp. 49-65). Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Rees, R. (1990). Women and men in education: A national survey of gender distribution in school systems. Toronto: Canadian Education Association. Reynolds, C. (1987). Limited liberation: A policy on married women teachers. In P. A. Schmuck (Ed.), Women educators: Employees of schools in western countries (pp. 215-222). Albany: State University of New York Press. Reynolds, C. (2002). Changing gender scripts and moral dilemmas for women and men in education, 1940-1970. In C. Reynolds (Ed.), Women and school leadership: International perspectives (pp. 2948). Albany: State University of New York Press. Reynolds, C., & Young, B. (1995). Women and leadership in Canadian education. Calgary: Detselig. Rieger, K. (1993). The gender dynamics of organizations. In J. Blackmore, & J. Kenway (Eds.), Gender matters in educational administration policy: A feminist introduction (pp. 17-26). London: Falmer Press. Ryan, J. (2003). Educational administrators’ perceptions of racism in diverse school contexts. Race Ethnicity and Education, 6(2), 145-164. Schlesinger, A. (1992). The disuniting of America: Reflections on a multicultural society. New York: W. W. Norton. Shai, D. (2002). Working women/cloistered men: A family development approach to marriage arrangements among ultra-orthodox Jews. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 33, 97-115. Titley, B. (1990). Canadian education: Historical themes and contemporary issues. Calgary: Detselig. Wallace, J. (1998). Discovering a meeting place for gendered values in educational organizations. Journal of Educational Administration and Foundations, 13(1), 9-29. Wallace, J. (2002). An equitable organization: Imagining what is "not yet." Educational Management Administration Leadership, 30(1), 83-100. Wallace, J. (2004). Learning to lead: Women administrators in twentieth century Ontario. Oral History Forum/d'histoire orale, 24, 87-106. Wallace, J. (2005). Running the race: The work of principals in restructured educational systems. In H. Armstrong (Ed.), Examining the practice of school administration in Canada. Calgary: Detselig. Weiler, K. (1997). Reflections on writing a history of women teachers. Harvard Educational Review, Winter, 635-657. Wotherspoon, T. (2004). The sociology of education in Canada (2nd ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Janice Wallace Department of Educational Policy Studies University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

189

WALLACE

NOTES 1

The position of governor-general is a largely ceremonial role in which a citizen of Canada is chosen by the prime-minister to act as the Queen’s representative. The governor-general performs duties such as reading the speech from the throne, which lays out the government’s agenda for parliament; acts as an official and necessary signatory for new laws; and in rare circumstances mediates when the ruling party is unable to govern. For example, in a very close vote that had the potential to bring down the short-lived minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin (June 2004-January 2006), Adrienne Clarkson, the governor-general at the time, was on call in case she was required to provide guidance if there had been a tie vote. The governor-general also acts on behalf of Canada’s national and international interests in various ways such as visiting other countries to promote Canada’s arts and culture.

2

The notion of founding nations is problematic in that Canada was already populated by its aboriginal nations who already had their own social, economic, and political relations when “discovered” by French and English explorers.

3

See http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/multi/reports/ann2002-2003/01_e.cfm for further discussion of the progression of human rights policy in Canada with a particular focus on multiculturalism.

4

Relative to other nations, this may be true; however, our history also reveals some ugly stains on our peaceful image: colonizing relations with aboriginal nations, internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War, and the head tax on Chinese laborers that began in the early part of the 1900s and lasted for over 60 years.

5

Canada’s First Nations have a particular relationship with the state that is different historically, politically, and ethically than Canada’s relationship with the many cultures who have immigrated to Canada. The scope of those differences is impossible to do justice to in this chapter but needs to be acknowledged.

6

Each province in Canada has jurisdiction over education policies and practices, with the exception of aboriginal education, which remains the responsibility of the federal government. There is no Canada-wide body of policymakers for education, although there are some national bodies of some influence.

7

The four categories addressed in the Employment Equity Act were: 1) visible minority; 2) gender; 3) aboriginal; and 4) disabled. The Act was meant to establish a kind of moral position in relation to these categories but was only applicable to federal agencies and employers.

8

Statistics have revealed a remarkably similar pattern of exclusion of women in administration positions in all ten provinces in Canada (Rees 1990).

9

In the Canadian cases, it is not the presence of religion that is considered in my analysis in comparison to Arnieli’s case, but rather the influence of what one might call a scientific ideology replacing religious faith that is of interest.

190

SEEING BEYOND DIFFERENCE

10

While recognizing that the notion of “roles” is problematic in feminist analysis, it continues to be a useful conceptual tool for thinking about the possibilities for women with which they struggle in shaping their lives and careers. For further discussion, see Armstrong and Armstrong (1990) and Blackmore (2002).

11

The history of the sexual contract is rooted in Roman law, which is a product of Roman history. The persistence of these roots is still evident in eleven South American countries that continue to allow rapists to avoid punishment if they agree to marry their victim – a provision that is virtually unchanged from Roman law (Hallett, 1984). Although most rape laws are less draconian, victims of rape are still revictimized in court proceedings that are implicitly informed by the presumptions about relations between men and women in the sexual contract described by Pateman.

12

Lois, Judith, and Rose are pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality.

13

Until the mid-1980s, participants in the required accreditation program for principals in Ontario had to be recommended by a practicing principal. In addition, the programs were generally offered in the summer when many female educators had sole responsibility for their children during the summer vacation. Although these practices were seen to be efficient and equal, they proved to be disproportionately onerous for many women who aspired to become principals.

14

In the particular cases considered for this chapter, the discourses of culture and religion are foregrounded because of their prominence in the text considered, but all of the other statuses are acknowledged as present.

191

RACHEL HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & IZHAR OPLATKA

11. EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY An Alternative Look at Female Leadership

INTRODUCTION

The stories of women principals in Israel are the main context of the various chapters of this book. Two sociological overviews are presented. The first, by Audrey Addi-Raccah, describes the feminization of principalship in Israel in general. The second, by Nabil Khattab and Jamil Ibrahim, depicts the feminization of principalship in the Arab-Palestinian sector within Israel. These two chapters afford a critical perspective on the socio-political Israeli educational context. The uniqueness of this book lies in the way its writers and readers alike can peruse both the micro- and macro-levels employed by women principals, their schools, and the society in which they live. The chapters herein challenge thinking about the specific principals and the dialectic context they experience. A prime example is the chapter here by Anit Somech, showing that principals in kibbutz schools, who use a highly participatory management style based on socialistcollective ideology, need to function within a context where Israeli society in general and kibbutz society in particular are becoming more individualistic and competitive cultures. Another vivid chapter in this book with which the reader can connect, by Devorah Eden and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, portrays the principal who heads the first truly multicultural school for children of foreign workers, many of them children of illegal workers, despite the structured injustice and lack of state policies to provide education to these children. This volume tells of real women principals, and enables their voices to be heard and documented. Thus, each of the chapters generates so many questions that the reader is stimulated to continue to explore the personal stories within more than one context. Israeli society at large comprises one context; the specific culture being described is a second context; the applications of the contexts described to the international reader is a third context; the comparisons that readers keep in mind while perusing the book is the fourth context; and, lastly, the theoretical and research chapters comprise the fifth context. We do hope our readers will be actively engaged in reading and thinking about the book on various levels, openly and flexibly. As editors, we could choose many issues for the summary chapter; thus, the three general challenges selected to form this epilogue serve only as examples. The first I.Oplatka, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz (eds.), Women principals in a multicultural society: New insights into feminist educational leadership, 193–204. © 2006 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

challenge can be posed as a question: What can be learned from this book and its collective experiences of theories and research in the field of women’s leadership in schools? We will first relate to this challenge briefly by noting the four spheres of women’s professional development, and then return to this question in more detail later. The second question asks: What are the next challenges that lie ahead for women (and men) principals, which will increase the potential to bring equality and social justice to all children and all their families in a multicultural society? The place of feminism and multiculturalism in the Israeli context will be reviewed, and it is suggested that principals committed to these ideologies are setting precedence for one important future direction vis-à-vis schools in Israel and in other countries. Their roles in such contexts will sum up this section. The third challenge is to develop guidelines as to how to progress toward achieving the goals of leadership that meet high standards of morality and social justice in schools. This challenge is addressed in almost each of the chapters in the book. This important challenge will be addressed in the last part of this epilogue. WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM THE BOOK? THE FOUR SPHERES OF WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

We did find some similarities in the processes and dynamics of the three cultures – Israel, Canada, and England – presented in the book. Within each context, women are entering leadership positions, mainly via progression from teaching, to various middle roles in school, then to vice principalship, and gradually some become school principals (Fuchs & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1996; Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shapira, 2005; Oplatka et al., 2001). This universal trend should be considered a significant societal change that has taken place only in the last few decades in many cultures. School principalship is much more accessible for white women of the majority, who are usually of a higher socioeconomic class. It is much harder for women of any minority, be it a religious, national, racial, political, or immigrant minority group, to fulfill her drive to become principal, as shown by Aburabia-Queder and by Karnieli in their chapters in this volume. It is also easier to enter the principalship role in small and medium-sized elementary schools than it is in large and comprehensive high schools (Oplatka & Hertz-Lazarowitz, this volume). Most women school principals presented in this volume have developed feminine visions of how to lead their schools by taking metaphors and strategies from their world of family, motherhood, and womanhood. The women principals portray many creative leadership styles, such as “the diamond factory” (Karnieli, this volume), where an ultra-religious principal is determined to give her female students an education that will open doors for them to future advanced studies. At the same time, she educates them to live by their values and to become wives and mothers of large families. Women principals from the non-observant Jewish sector expressed both masculine (i.e.,. autocratic, centralist, formal) and feminine (democratic, collaborative, non-formal) leadership styles, chiefly due to the values of autonomy

194

EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

and discretion dominating in their culture (Oplatka, this volume). A number of women principals in the kibbutz and the city are implementing cooperative and participative decision making in their schools. All of the women speak openly about their motives to do so, which differ in the two contexts (Anit Somech, this volume). In this epilogue a developmental model is constructed to make the case that women principals seem to undergo four spheres (cycles) of professional development. Many women principals take upon themselves the demanding role of principalship because they do want to make a difference in their schools, for the children, the teachers, and the families. However, as the reader will observe, women principals are not all the same. Their leadership styles are affected by many cultural and organizational variables, as suggested by Dimmock and Walker (this volume). Nevertheless, based on our work with principals in training and on site, and based on our research, we learned that personal variables such as level of self and social awareness, drive to create a vision, knowledge expansion, commitment, and self-reflection all constitute powerful tools that empower principals. Those are the characteristics that make them grow above and beyond the constraints of their culture and society (Kurland, 2001; Kurland, Ruvio, & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2004; Shapira & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2004). In a first reading of the chapters in the book, one may discern that mainly women within minority groups, such as in religious Jewish contexts, do not yet have the legitimacy to practice a more feminine leadership style because they fully accept and identify with the lifestyle values mediated by male religious leaders. However, despite this general statement, more women in religious communities are calling for a new reading of their roles in Judaism and in Islam (Gilat 2006; Gilat & HertzLazarowitz, 2004; Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2002). Many women in the Arab communities in Israel have recently begun questioning traditional values and paving moderate passageways toward the creation of a less traditional women’s role. They are doing so, in part, by fighting for their right to become school principals, because they feel they deserve this role as they surpass their male partners (Addi-Raccah, this volume). Many Arab women know that by applying for the position of school principal, and obtaining it, they confront an opportunity to positively affect the status of women in their society. Thus, women are taking this path despite the many hardships they encounter (Aburabia-Queder, this volume; Gilat & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2004; Shapira 1999; Shapira & HertzLazarowitz, 2004). In the next section, we wish to argue that feminist leadership styles grow from personal and group awareness, consciousness, and the desire to create a system where social justice and equality are shared by all members and all groups in the society. To date, the literature shows (see Chapter One of this volume) that female principals have made remarkable progress in three necessary but insufficient spheres of their professional lives, and they are looking for visions and practices that will raise them to the fourth sphere.

195

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

Entering the principalship. In the first sphere of their professional development, women do enter school leadership positions in growing numbers. They do so slowly but steadily within minority and traditional cultures. In Israel, women principals of the Jewish secular majority have set a precedent that has encouraged Arab women and Jewish religious women to enter principals’ positions. This modeling takes place through many channels of learning, mainly graduate studies in Israeli universities and teachers’ colleges that bring Jewish and Arab students (usually already teachers) to the same school leadership programs. Developing a feminist leadership style. In the second sphere of their professional development, it is evident from reading much of the current literature that women have developed a leadership style that expands the scope and depth of leadership. Thanks to many researchers - women and men - a feminist leadership style has gained much acknowledgement in leadership theory and research in education and in other fields of management. Women principals have proven to be effective leaders in bringing their students to high academic outcomes, and in creating a positive work culture in the school. Developing leadership within the constraints of a given culture. In the third sphere of their professional development, these chapters indicate that for the newcomers to school leadership, namely, Arab women in general and more so Arab women of distinct minorities such as Bedouin and Druze, the road to becoming a principal is more difficult. Many of these women apply for leadership roles because they want to make a change. They come with strong feelings of oppression and resistance from the patriarchal society. Yet, they know they need to find ways to create a leadership that respects (at least in the first stages of their new role) traditional dominant male values. This is harder for ultra-orthodox women who come to leadership roles with a strong identification with the values and practices of their society. We find that these two unique groups can contribute to our understanding of how to bring about a moderate and cumulative change in societies that are highly traditional and fundamental. More and greater variations of case studies for women principals are needed to further knowledge and prevent over-generalization or stereotyping of women in these societies. Creating feminist-multicultural pedagogical leadership in the school. In the fourth sphere of women’s professional development, principals lead their teachers to develop schools that have a commitment to feminist and multicultural pedagogies. The women principals want to embark on a process that creates schools that implement moral principals of equality and social justice within these pedagogies; they share the belief that, through this type of leadership, schools can make a difference. Some principals presented in these chapters are pathfinders in this direction. All of these chapters from beginning to end relate to an important aspect of feminist pedagogy, namely, the preoccupation with the legitimization of feminine 196

EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

qualities. Efforts are made to present feminine traits as having a unique social value that enriches masculine traits, which for centuries have been the center of human culture. Gilligan (1982) suggested several different outlines of moral perceptions that indicate the existence of some different developmental models. She emphasized thoughtfulness and emotion as the shaping factors in a woman’s development, and she cautioned that these developmental models cannot be ranked as low/feminine versus high/masculine, as Freud, Piaget, and Kohlberg attempted to do in their classic essays. We consider that women's focus on the fourth sphere of their development comprise the heart of women’s leadership in schools. The salient lessons learned from the various Israeli case studies (see the chapters by Karnieli and by AburabiaQueder, this volume) demonstrate that some principals remain in their second and third sphere of professional development, where they confront the challenge to develop leadership styles within the constraints of their own cultures. However, it is encouraging that some principals, mainly Jewish women who are veteran principals (see the chapters by Somech, by Oplatka, and by Eden and KalekinFishman), have achieved the goals they set for themselves in the first three spheres, and they are working at various levels in what may be viewed as the fourth sphere. Similar developments are taking place in Israel (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2001), as well as in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. THE DESIRE TO CREATE SCHOOLS THAT INCORPORATE FEMINIST AND MULTICULTURAL PEDAGOGIES

From our work and study in Israeli schools, we have learned that increasing numbers of women principals, after establishing themselves as effective and caring administrators, are “going to the depth,” and they are altering the “mass of changes” that take place in schools (Fullan, 1998; Oplatka, 2003) to search for a new focus on “great pedagogies” (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1999; Hertz-Lazarowitz & Zelniker, 1995). Often, as described in several chapters in this volume, these principals also begin with a moderate feminist pedagogical vision and then integrate into this feminist pedagogy a multicultural pedagogy. Together, the two pedagogies meet their moral thinking and personal experiences related to bringing justice and equality to the schools and the communities to which they belong. Many variations exist in the level of awareness, knowledge, and commitment of the principals to those pedagogies, but the direction is easily recognizable (Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2001). In the next section, we present the place and status of feminist and multicultural pedagogies in Israeli society and within its educational system, inspired by Wallace’s chapter. We expect that this section affords a broader understanding of future possible directions for some Israelis schools. It may also serve to facilitate a feminist and a multicultural dialogue among contributors to this book and the book’s readers.

197

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

FEMINIST PEDAGOGY: FROM AWARENESS TO IMPLEMENTATION

Feminist pedagogy in the western educational world has developed along with the feminist movement. During the 1970s, Carol Gilligan began writing her book In a Different Voice (Gilligan, 1982). “Voice” became one of the leading concepts in all the new pedagogies. It expressed the struggle and yearning of many groups to be heard and stop the silencing forced upon them by the majorities in various societies. In essence, feminism has included a critical analysis of the interrelations among gender, race, and class (Fine, 2004; Hooks, 1981). At the same time that members of the feminist movement felt the need to give expression to women’s voices in psychology, society, literature, and art, they also began to criticize the educational system, mainly attacking two of its interconnected aspects: its oppressive in general, and the oppression of women by men in particular. Adrienne Rich (1977) addressed American women students, claiming that they cannot allow themselves to be passive in their education. In her opinion, the difference between “receiving” and “demanding” education is the same as the difference between acting and being acted upon. From a woman’s perspective, this has significance the equivalent of the difference between life and death (Rich, 1977). Today, feminism and feminist pedagogy are no longer the “silenced voice.” In psychology, moral thinking and motivation to achieve have been re-studied with references to feminine aspects. Narrative qualitative methods of research were developed to give a voice to women and minorities (Josselson, Lieblich & McAdams, 2002). Today, the scientific significance of female inclusion and the narrative and reflective methodologies are part of “objective” scientific study (Harding, 1991). The formation of an academic community and an activist practice focusing on gender, race, and class issues has given girls and women who suffer from oppression within the educational systems a voice, salience, and empowerment that they never had before (Fine, 1996; Green, 1993; Noddings, 1988; Wallace, this volume). Linda Stone (1994) argued that from a structural point of view, all educational institutions - beginning with primary schools and all the way up to universities are still patriarchal in nature. Men control these systems through their domination of the national political system. They control the ways by which the acquisition and transmission of knowledge (culture) are organized and transmitted. Thus, schools can serve as the main politically oppressive factor for conveying and perpetuating stereotyped images that prevent women, minorities, and people of color from getting ahead. Stone (1994) suggested that feminist pedagogy should be defined as both a theoretical and an applied endeavor, with its roots set in the political position that opposes patriarchal discrimination and injustice towards women, and its continuation as a struggle against the specific discrimination of women from minority groups. In the present volume, several chapters elucidate critical new definitions based on feminist pedagogy as well as the struggle against discrimination of women and minority groups. 198

EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ON WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP

We hope that this book will pave the way for future studies of the lives and careers of women principals in minorities that weave a social mosaic of multicultural society. These chapters provide insight into the need to re-explore the meaning of common terms used in the research on women principals in western countries, such as oppression, inequality, silence, contradictions, patience, listening, innovation, and the like in minority and ethnic groups comprising the modern multicultural nation. For example, “collaboration” likely holds a different meaning for women principals in various micro-cultures in the same country and even in the same urban educational system. Therefore, researchers should acknowledge cultural and subjective interpretations of common concepts prior to any study on women principals in “traditional” societies within the modern state. Comparative studies between women principals in diverse social groups, like Somach’s work in this volume, seem to be warranted. Evidence concerning the career lives and development of women principals in minorities is relatively thin. Hence, there is a need for further research on women principals in these social groups in a variety of multicultural societies, especially in areas of principal succession or leadership perspectives. Understanding the ways women cope with societal barriers and the “glass ceiling,” as well as the strategies they use to reach principalship in their traditional subcultures, will foster the development of specific programs for advancing women teachers to managerial positions in these kinds of religious and ethnic minorities. In this sense, additional examinations of theories and models of female leadership originating in developed countries are needed. Future research should focus on the influence of culture on the construction of “feminine” leadership styles, examine the common leadership styles adopted by women principals in religious and ethnic minorities, and challenge the western-based dichotomy of masculinity versus femininity in leadership. Major concepts like leadership success will receive new meanings in evaluation studies and measures when applied to a multicultural society. Additionally, consistent with the perspective of “comparative educational administration,” held by Dimmock and Walker in this volume, the major leadership models in the educational literature (e.g., Leithwood et al., 1999) deserve reexamination. In line with the works on women in minorities presented here, the relevance of major leadership conceptualizations, such as transformational leadership for women principals in these groups, is questioned, and further inquiry in this respect is needed. Such research should investigate the capability of women principals in minorities to incorporate the transformational leadership model into their schools, or the imperfections underlying this model in traditional societies. Research agencies should encourage comparative studies that focus on women principals from minorities in many multicultural societies worldwide, thereby providing abundant knowledge concerning these principals’ points of views, managerial ideologies, career experiences, and leadership. This kind of study, as Dimmock and Walker (1998) have maintained, is important in that it can clarify

199

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

problems and issues of women in principalship by generating informed crosscultural fertilization of ideas and experiences. Finally, large scale research on the career perceptions and subjective leadership constructions of women educators in minorities seems warranted following the reading of the case studies in this book. Quantitative studies that trace the beliefs, attitudes, values, and the like towards leadership among many women in minorities (and men also) could provide policy makers in education with much information about the distribution of these cultural scripts within a large group of women. WHAT POLICY MAKERS IN EDUCATION NEED TO CONSIDER

With the stories of women principals in a variety of micro-cultures in a multicultural society in mind, policy makers cannot assume that a consensus exists among women principals regarding the goals of schooling, leadership styles, career issues, and so forth. This results in a need for new conceptualizations of principalship in multicultural societies. Several implications for policy making arising from the case studies in this book are suggested here. First, policy makers in multicultural nations should refrain from devising a unified education policy that defines and constructs one idealized type of principalship and leadership style or looks at women’s career development in education without considering ethnic, social, and religious distinctions between them. A unified policy towards the principal’s role (as is constructed in the model of school-based management, for instance) might contrast with some cultural and social values of minorities and consequently may hinder women principals in these groups from following these policy directives. For example, a policy that dictates mandatory substantial experience in middle management in school prior to applying for principalship would seem to stunt the career advancement of many women in minorities due to the many barriers to promotion that they must face within their subculture. (Nabil and Ibrahim’s analysis in this volume illustrates this obstacle in the Arab sector.) Second, as a corollary of the first implication, any education policy in a multicultural society that defines the principal’s role in terms of tasks, responsibilities, leadership style, and the like ought to take into consideration the wide variety of cultural scripts that may be related to this definition. Thus, this book's stories of Israeli women principals call into question the implementation of large-scale reforms introduced in many western countries throughout the 1990s in minority groups. For example, many of these reforms redefined the principal’s role to include budgeting, marketing, administration, and teacher collaboration (Fullan, 2000; Oplatka, 2002). However, as seen from the stories of the Arab, Bedouin, and ultra-orthodox women principals, the implementation of collaborative and participative leadership in traditional micro-cultures stands in contrast with their traditional values defining leadership in terms of autocracy and centralization. We doubt if issues of marketing and budgeting coincide with the social construction of education and principalship in many ethnic and religious minorities. This remains to be probed by further inquiry.

200

EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

Third, women teachers from minorities appear to need substantial guidance and support from people outside their social group in order to reach principalship (Hertz-Lazarowitz & Shapira, 2005). Thus, a policy oriented toward enhancing the number of women principals in minorities should include the training of professional staff in the cultural scripts and dictations of traditional societies so as to be able to guide and direct the women from these societies. Otherwise, many of the “recommendations” for women from minorities in terms of career planning, strategies to handle external barriers to promotion, and so forth are likely to be irrelevant for women teachers in minorities aspiring to principalship from these social groups. Fourth, education districts should acquaint their supervisors and professional staff with the influence of culture on women’s aspirations and ability to advance in their career. In doing so, programs aimed at encouraging women from minorities to apply for principalship will not provide them with knowledge, strategies, and tools that contrast with their micro-culture, which would likely impede their advancement rather than promote it. For example, supervisors should be aware of the great influence of male family members on women’s career advancement in many Moslem and ethnic minorities, as is evident in this book and elsewhere. Finally, there is a danger in constructing an ideal female leader whose leadership perspectives lack authoritative or assertive styles. In traditional societies, as seen in this book, the expression of democratic, facilitative leadership could be perceived as a sign of ineffectiveness and weakness on the female principal's part. Thus, a tendency to avoid the dichotomization of principalship in terms of masculinity versus femininity is preferable and leaves women principals with enough discretion to adopt their style based on culture, staff characteristics, and many other contextual variables. GUIDELINES FOR PRINCIPAL PREPARATION IN MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES

Based on Israeli case studies, principal training programs should undergo comprehensive evaluation to determine if these programs prepare women in minorities for the particular realities they will face on the job. This training must include strategies that will assist future and current women principals in minorities in effectively responding to the tension between state-level conceptualizations and definitions of educational leadership on the one hand and their own cultural scripts and expectations on the other. Leadership programs should consider establishing or enhancing the number of courses that address the potential conflicts between cultural values of the woman candidate and common role definitions of principalship. Successful principal preparations require awareness of multifaceted ways for leading a school and for defining roles. Nevertheless, the question remains unanswered as to whether principal preparation programs should be conducted separately for different minority groups, or whether programs should be unified yet include some reference to minority issues. Choosing the former option is a sign of tolerance and pluralism but contains 201

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

the danger of creating different groups of principals in the same nation. Choosing the latter option means lack of sufficient attention to the particular needs of women students from minorities in these programs. With no attempt to solve this question here, it is clear that principal preparation programs should include some courses or workshops for women principals from minorities. They should be taught about the dilemmas stemming from being a woman in principalship in traditional societies, and the personal and organizational strategies to handle these and related dilemmas. Persistence at career crossroads. Training should emphasize the career experiences of women pathfinders in minorities, on their succession toward principalship, and their persistence in the face of external and internal barriers. The importance of what Fuchs and Hertz-Lazarowitz (1996) termed a “spur” from the inside, i.e., that much depends upon the woman herself, should be highlighted. Given the many obstacles that these women from micro-cultures must handle on their way to their desired position, they need personal strength, determination, belief in themselves, and the like. Support networks. Preparation for principalship must underscore the importance of family support, that is, the difficulty in gaining social legitimacy in many traditional minorities without the backing of male family members. In many Moslem communities, the support of the father/husband is essential for any woman aspiring to principalship. We believe that any attempt to persuade women from these communities to ignore this influence may prevent women from advancing. Leadership styles. Principals in the making should be made aware of the need to adopt a “cultural” based leadership style, at least in the incipient stages of the woman principal’s career, but concurrently of the desirability for a “feminine” style in the arenas where women have social legitimacy to do so. The stories of all women principals from minorities have shown how important it was for their career success to follow the cultural scripts defining principal-teacher relationships. This is not to say, however, that women from minorities must not be exposed to other leadership types and styles. The mechanisms of their survival in “an anti-woman career culture” should be illuminated in principal preparation programs. Women in this respect should realize the need to negotiate and bridge their personal dispositions and managerial/educational perspectives with male-dominated values in their society. Preparedness in these and related subjects may assist many women from minorities in surviving their managerial positions in school and in fulfilling their aspirations and goals. Eductors in such training programs should carefully refrain from presenting women in accordance with a single, idealized, western-based model of principalship, which, in many cases, starkly contrasts with women's own cultural and social values.

202

EPILOGUE: FEMINIST PEDAGOGY

Nevertheless, the emphasis being given here to principal training programs for women from minorities does not imply a neglect of such programs for women from mainstream groups. The story of Amy, for example, who strived boldly for the benefit of her pupils, children of foreign workers (Eden & Kalekin-Fishman, this volume) suggests the importance of including training courses that favor the promotion of equality and justice in schools. Principal educators in these programs should discuss the potential means through which principals can encourage and empower teachers to craft the schools that our society needs in order to contribute to the equality of all children. Additionally, those who adhere to democratic values and to the belief in the important contribution of participative leadership to school success are recommended to incorporate courses directed at distinguishing participative leadership from pseudo forms of this kind of leadership. Somech’s distinction between urban and kibbutz women principals with respect to democratic decision making (this volume) illustrates the subtle difference between “pure” democratic leadership and manipulative methods of managing schools. REFERENCES Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (1998). Comparative educational administration: Developing a crosscultural conceptual framework. Educational Administration Quarterly, 34(4), 558-595. Fine, M. (1996). Habits of mind: Struggling over values in America’s classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fine, M. (2004). The power of the Brown v. board of education decision: Theorizing threat to sustainability. American Psychologist, 59(6), 502-510. Fuchs, I., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1996). Transition from teacher to principal: An Israeli women's perspective. Megamot, 37(3), 292-314. [Hebrew]. Fullan, M. (1998). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. New York: Teacher College Press. Fullan, M. (2000). The return of large-scale reforms. Journal of Educational Change, 1(1), 5-27. Gilat. A. (2006). Strategies for empowerment: Jewish and Muslim religious and secular women in the university. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Haifa University. [Hebrew]. Gilat, A., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R.(2004). Muslim and Jewish women’s empowerment in the context of their study at Haifa University. Gadish Journal of Adult Education, 9, 138-154. [Hebrew]. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Green, M. (1993). Diversity and inclusion: Toward a curriculum for human beings. Teachers College Record, 95(2), 211-221. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca: Indiana University Press. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (1999). Cooperative learning and group-investigation in Israel’s Jewish and Arabs schools: A community approach. Theory into Practice, 38(2), 105-113. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2001). Critical and innovative pedagogues in Israeli schools. Studies in Education, 5(1), 89-133. [Hebrew]. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2002, June). The husband is in the yeshiva and his wife is at the university: Changing pattern of the private/public sphere of the ultra-orthodox families in the USA. Paper presented at the International Conference on Jewish Education, Haifa, Israel. Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Shapira T. (2005). Muslim women's life stories: Building leadership. Anthropology of Education Quarterly, 36(2), 165-181.

203

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Zelniker, T. (1995). Cooperative learning in the Israel context: Historical, cultural and educational perspectives. International Journal of Educational Research, 23, 267-285. Hooks, B. (1981). Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston: South End Press. Josselson, R. A., Lieblich, A., & McAdams, D. P. (Eds.). (2002). Up close and personal: The teaching and learning of narrative research. Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Kurland, H. (2001). The elementary school as a learning organization. Unpublished master's thesis, Haifa University, Israel. [Hebrew]. Kurland, H., Ruvio, A., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2004). The elementary school as a learning organization. Studies in Educational Administration & Organization, 28, 7-33. [Hebrew]. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., & Steinback, R. (1999). Changing leadership for changing times. Buckingham: Open University Press. Noddings, N. (1988). An ethic of caring and its implication for instructional arrangements. In L. Stone (Ed.), The education feminism reader (pp. 171-183). New York: Routledge. Oplatka, I. (2002). The emergence of educational marketing: Lessons from the experiences of Israeli principals. Comparative Education Review, 46(2), 211-233. Oplatka, I. (2003). School change and self-renewal: Some reflections from life stories of women principals. Journal of Educational Change, 4(1), 25-43. Oplatka, I., Bargal, D., & Inbar, D. (2001). The process of self-renewal among women headteachers in mid-career. Journal of Educational Administration, 39(1), 77-94. Rich, A. (1977). Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. New York: Bantam Books. Stone, L. (1994). Introducing education feminism. In L. Stone (Ed.), The education feminism reader (pp. 1-13). New York: Routledge. Shapira, T. (1999). Arab women leading change in their school. Unpublished master's thesis, Haifa University. [Hebrew]. Shapira, T., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. (2002). Muslim women at the forefront of change in schools. Studies in Educational Administration and Organization, 26, 36-67. [Hebrew]. Shapira, T., & Hertz-Lazarowitz, (2004). The life story of three Muslim women in leadership positions. Gadish Journal of Adult Education, 9, 180-200. [Hebrew].

Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz Faculty of Education Haifa University, Israel Izhar Oplatka Department. of Education Ben Gurion University, Israel

204

BIO NOTES Sarab Aburabia-Queder received her PhD from the Department of Education at Ben Gurion University. Her major areas of interest are sociology, education, gender, and the Bedouin community. E-mail: [email protected] Audrey Addi-Raccah, PhD, is a lecturer at the School of Education, Tel Aviv University. Her main fields of interest are sociology of the teaching occupation and school administration. She has published several studies on gender inequality in school leadership positions. E-mail: [email protected] Clive Dimmock is Professor of Educational Leadership and Director of the Centre for Educational Leadership and Management (CELM) at the School of Education, University of Leicester, UK. His research interests include cross-cultural educational leadership and the leadership of multi-ethnic schools. E-mail: [email protected] Devorah Eden teaches educational administration at Western Galilee College in Acre, Israel. She holds a PhD degree in Educational Administration from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her fields of interest are policy of education, organizations, gender issues, and multicultural education. E-mail: [email protected] Rachel Hertz Lazarowitz is a professor of Social and Educational Psychology at the faculty of Education in the University of Haifa. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Her research areas are intergroup relations across gender and religion, and cooperative learning. She Published widely in English and Hebrew, in 2004 she edited with Zelniker, Stephan and White, Stephan a special issue on Arab-Jewish coexistence programs in the Journal of Social Issues. E-mail: [email protected] Jamil Ibrahim completed his master's degree in political sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is an activist within educational and social organizations in Israel and currently works in the area of developing and writing programs for civic education at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, PhD, is a sociologist and senior researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Haifa. Recently, her book on Ideology, Policy, and Practice: Education for Immigrants and Minorities in Israel Today was published by Kluwer (2004). She is also the editor of the International Sociology Review of Books. She holds a Dr. Rer. Soc. from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Mira Karnieli received her PhD from Haifa University's School of Education. She is an educational anthropologist and senior lecturer at Oranim Teachers College. 205

HERTZ-LAZAROWITZ & OPLATKA

Dr. Karnieli's main research area is Israeli society, with a special focus on the impact of multicultural environments and local communities on educational and learning successes. E-mail: [email protected] Nabil Khattab, PhD, previously held a Marie Currie Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research at the University of Manchester, England. Currently he is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol. His main areas of interest are: sociology of education, ethnicity, labor market, and social inequality. E-mail: [email protected] Izhar Oplatka is a senior lecturer in the division of educational administration and policy in the Department of Education, Ben Gurion University, Israel. His current areas of interest are the career development of schoolteachers and principals, gender in educational administration, and educational marketing. He has published many articles in leading journals in the field of educational administration and comparative education, such as Educational Administration Quarterly (2006), Journal of Educational Administration (2004), and Comparative Education Review (2002). His book From Burnout to Renewal: The Life Story of Women Principals in Israel (2002) was the first book published in Hebrew about the lives and careers of female principals. E-mail: [email protected] Anit Somech is the Head of Educational Administration at the University of Haifa. She received her PhD in organizational psychology from the Technion Israel Institution of Technology. Her current research interests include participative leadership, team work, and organizational citizenship behavior at the individual, team, and organizational levels. E-mail: [email protected] Allan Walker is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include principalship development and learning, cross-cultural educational leadership, and leadership values. Email: [email protected] Janice Wallace received her PhD from OISE/University of Toronto and is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. Her primary research focuses on equity issues in educational organizations, women in leadership, and the effects of globalization on the work of administrators in restructured education systems. Her publications from that project focused on women in educational administration. She is currently exploring the effects of gender on educational career choices with a focus on theories of masculinity. E-mail: wallacej @ualberta.ca

206