We knew then what we know now: the road to school leadership is paved with hurdles for women teachers, Kidson says. 

“The data was just so stark then,” the now senior lecturer at ACU tells EducationHQ. 

“We’ve known for a long time that there are supply challenges for principalship. They are a bit more acute, some of those barriers as the research has found, for women in schools.”

While men and women might get paid on par for the same roles, “what you don’t see is the same level of representation in senior leadership and management roles”, the expert flags.

Indeed, new research has found female educators face systemic discrimination, gender bias and hostility that’s actively hampering their progression into the upper ranks in schools.

Drawing on an analysis of 55 international peer-reviewed studies, Kidson, along with fellow ACU researchers, have now pin-pointed the factors that lie behind the significant underrepresentation of women leaders in Australian schools and education systems around the world.

Interestingly, they found hostility and scepticism cast from male colleagues had an impact on their career progression. 

“Women are often perceived as less competent than their male counterparts, with perceptions of being too emotional, unpredictable, weak and difficult to work with,” the report noted.

Kidson says men are often singled out to lead in schools. 

“If I take my own experience, and I’m not unusual – a lot of people go through this experience – you’re tumbling along, you’re doing your job, and then someone comes along and says, ‘hey, [Paul], I reckon you could put your hand up and do this role here’, and they start to proactively develop you as a leader.

“The report [found] that doesn’t happen that much for women, because those leaders who are doing that invariably are likely to be male. So, it’s a repeating conflict.

“…And similarly then for women, they are not feeling it is the environment where they can actively seek out those types of opportunities...” he adds. 

The discourse that surrounded former Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she took office is a stark example of the differential treatment women in positions of power receive, Kidson says.

A thriving ‘good old boys network’ was also hampering the career trajectory of women in schools, the research found. 

Mainly characterised by what can only be called professional back scratching, Kidson says this network exists across many sectors, but in education entry to the club is dependent on what school you went to, who you know – and your gender. 

“In essence, it’s any type of network, but we’re talking particularly about schools, and those that have been the leaders of schools, who generally prefer those who are like themselves.

“It’s the same in the corporate environment: people become directors on boards of publicly-listed companies and yes they’re capable, but they’ve got relationships with people…”

Kidson says if you look across who heads up the companies listed on the ASX 200, the same names and connections crop up time and time again. 

In education, it works largely the same way, he says. 

“So, that old boy network notion is that, ‘oh, I know someone could be really interested in this job because I’ve worked with them before’ or, ‘I know who they are, or they went to the right school’.”

Women are clearly excluded from this space, Kidson suggests. 

“It becomes a very closed environment that some women then go, ‘well, where do I get a look in to that? How am I even going to be given consideration, because I’ve not been part of that club?”

“Yes, you’ve got to be good, yes, you’ve got to be confident, yes, you’ve got to have credibility, but the relationships, and who you know adds another layer – and women don’t have access to those types of networks in quite the same way,” he concludes. 

Another finding highlighted in the report is that women leaders experience greater levels of burnout than men. 

Kidson says much of this comes down to a set of gender assumptions that we as a society are still having trouble casting aside. 

“For men in the senior leadership roles, there is very limited expectation, often explicitly or implicitly placed on them, about domestic duties or other responsibilities outside of their working life,” he begins. 

“Well, that’s not the case for women. They are predominantly still carrying a disproportionate amount of domestic or other duties, as well as their work duties.”

Hypothetically speaking, Kidson says a female principal with children and a partner, who also works full-time, might have to wade through a 55, 60 or even 65-hour week of work only to pick up the bulk of child rearing and domestic work on the home front. 

You only have to look at the discourse that surrounded former Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she took office to see the differential treatment women in positions of power receive, he notes. 

“The consistent language was ‘these are not questions that would be faced by a male prime minister’.” 

Kidson would like to see systemic change to better even the playing field for women educators. 

“We talk about the mentoring, the induction, the support, the professional learning along the way. I think [we need to get better at] the active identification and development of those capable people,” he says. 

And yet positive shifts are occurring in isolated pockets, Kidson flags. Some elite all-boys’ schools, once the domain of exclusively male headmastership, are breaking ’tradition’.   

“Right at the moment there is a stunning development at Cranbrook School, which has been the talk of some level of angst about its culture. They have this week announced Anne Johnston as the first female head of the school. That is a major change.

“For a long time, we’ve had men as heads of some of these girls’ schools. But a woman, as head of a boys’ school, that’s just been a bridge too far.”