School leaders’ gender strategies

Introduction: gender and educational leadership

Research repeatedly confirms that the experience of aspirant and current women school principals throughout the world is different to and less advantageous than men's (Bjork, 2000; Sobehart, 2008). Shakeshaft (1999) has outlined the history and phases of related research, suggesting an evolution, from early studies recording the under-representation of women in school leadership (Blount, 1998) to studies portraying the disadvantage experienced by women (Chase and Bell, 1990) to research which has sought to challenge and then transform educational leadership theory to be more inclusive of women's experience in the school workplace (Grogan, 2000). Grogan (1999) draws on this analysis and suggests that the majority of research fits within the paradigms of the early stages; that is, research tends to construct a ‘circle of lament’ (Goffman, 1986: 20) about the unequal position of women rather than theorising gender relations in schools or transforming androcentric approaches to leadership. Some of this body of work has been criticised for focusing on gender and ignoring other characteristics such as race or sexuality. The critique has impelled the growth of a literature on the experience of minority groups of women school leaders (Alston, 2005; Dillard, 1995; Lugg, 2003; Moorosi, 2010). Despite this extensive and rich body of work, limitations in what we know and understand persist. Intersectionality theory which insists that the experience of women must take note of the interplay of numerous identities and not just gender and ethnicity has had relatively little impact (Lumby, 2011; Walby et al., 2012). Additionally, the majority of theoretical work refers to Anglophone settings and is predicated on Western cultural perspectives (Chilisa and Ntseane, 2010; Fennell and Arnot, 2009; Mahmood, 2001).

This article aims to erode the current limitations in knowledge by advancing theories of gender relations in the school workplace. It considers women school leaders in South Africa and unravels their experience to theorise how they attempt to transform their subordinated position. It adopts a critical theory perspective to present and analyse interview data. It explores the dialectic of progress and its antithesis in the principals’ experience. It is argued that the various means women principals use to address the disadvantage of discrimination may themselves further embed structural disadvantage; that principals are caught in a discriminatory web.

A critical theory perspective

Critical theory is variously defined, its contestation in part a result of the range of perspectives of various interest groups. The article takes from the spectrum of views a common commitment to give voice to and thereby to engage with those who are often silenced, aiming to create ‘societies and workplaces which are free from domination where all members have an equal opportunity to contribute’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 1999: 192). However, the article resists what Ogbor (2001) characterises as the western predilection to seek understanding and progress predicated on a degree of consensus about knowledge, interpretation of its significance and action in response; what McCall (2005, p. 1777) terms ‘the normative fix of a hegemonic order'. This article adopts a different stance: that consensus in perceptions of equality issues is unlikely and that the appearance of agreement in narratives depicting progress is often illusory, dependent on hiding views and experiences which run counter to the dominant enlightenment narrative. Ogbor (2001: 592) suggests that ‘no aspect of our life world can be understood in isolation’ and that consequently an important tactic of a critical perspective is to see the world as dialectic, reflecting tensions in understanding and in perceptions of progress. The article assumes complexity, disorder and contestation as the foundation of analysis and resulting knowledge.

Gender and identity

Being a school leader is a dramaturgical task (Collinson, 2003; Goffman, 1959; Schrock and Schwalbe, 2009) in which the identities of women school leaders may be understood as constructed through the intersections of personal factors and the exigencies of leadership scripts. Gender is conceived as shaped and reshaped, ‘a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 126), created and deconstructed, done and undone on a daily basis. It is an identity enacted by each individual, influenced by the societal parameters of permissible boundaries of one's perceived biological sex, family role and work role. Identities involve the creation of narratives of self, partly reflecting self-choices and partly responding to external expectations, enacting conformity and resistance in contexts of varying in/security (Gagnon, 2008). How gender is done, what gender signifies, and particularly what advantage or disadvantage perceptions of an individual's gender accrue therefore appear infinitely variable. However, patriarchal analyses stress that although the cultural form of domination by men may vary, women remain subject to male norms and male power in all societies and at all times (Bryson, 2000; hooks, 2000). In seeking to form and control an individual identity, a woman cannot avoid confronting the patriarchal systems that have variously evolved in cultures and religions over time.

Effort is expended in managing identities to the best advantage. Bauman (2004: 126) argues that modernity demands light-footedness of identity, manoeuvring always for the most advantageous positioning, requiring internal maintenance, adjustment and external presentation (Burke, 2006). A gender identity therefore will always embody an accommodation of what the individual desires alongside responses to the pressures of patriarchal expectations and the demands of alternative identities, for example those relating to work role, sexuality, ethnicity, age, culture or religion, all of which may align or be in tension with a gender identity. Managing identities may involve not only accommodation between the multiple identities of each individual, but also the disruption of a single identity by enacting it in ways that subvert expectations. Khelan (2010: 190) suggests that women attempt to disrupt disadvantageous notions of gender in such a way: ‘the idea would be to create gender trouble and to displace gender. This would mean enacting gender in a way that goes beyond conventional parameters'.

The aim in this article is to advance theories of gender relations in the school workplace by considering what strategies are adopted by South African women principals to position their identities. The focus is an examination of how women principals construct gender through leadership in a context where women are subject to men and where amongst women there are further subordinated subgroups, in which gender is a factor modulated by other identities.

Intersectionality

To achieve this end the article adopts an intersectionality framework, ‘the notion that subjectivity is constituted by mutually reinforcing vectors of race, gender, class, and sexuality’ (Nash, 2008: 89), looking to see the interconnectedness of those aspects of people's identities and lives in a specific location that results in their disadvantage or exclusion. McCall (2005: 1780) locates the provenance of intersectionality theory in race and gender-related study as ‘failing to account for lived experience at neglected points of intersection—ones that tended to reflect multiple subordinate locations as opposed to dominant or mixed locations'. South Africa is an environment where gender, ethnicity, culture and religion, amongst other factors, may influence individuals’ experience in ways that are both historically nuanced and painfully current (Chisholm, 2004; De Lange et al., 2012; Moorosi, 2010). However, the issues related to multi-dimensional diversity are acutely evident in many other parts of the world as the heterogeneity of populations increases (Scholte, 2000).

Nash (2008: 1) argues that intersectionality has become the theory of choice for feminist and antiracist research, seeming to offer a means to resist the exclusionary tendency of ‘the disconnect between feminism’s claims to speak for all women and feminism’s perennial inattention to racial, ethnic, class, and sexual difference(s)'. While the values base and political intentions of intersectionality theory have been applauded, failure to implement its conceptual assumptions effectively in research have followed (Lumby, 2011; McCall, 2005; Walby et al, 2012). Additionally, there are concerns that the use of categories of person, even an expanded range of categories incorporating numerous personal identities, may create or exacerbate inequalities even while aiming to reduce them (Choo and Ferree, 2010; Crenshaw, 1989). McCall (2005: 1773) formulates three approaches to using intersectionality theory, the first of which is ‘anticategorical complexity’ (original emphasis), emphasising the unsatisfactoriness of analysing complex reality by means of simplified and arguably simplistic categorisations. Yet to an extent all research, indeed all human learning, is a simplification process, reducing human experience to comprehensible, partial insights. Partiality and simplification may be unavoidable conditions of comprehensibility.

The approach in this article attempts to engage with the multifaceted nature of individuals’ working lives, considering the intersections of different identities and the implications for gender and equity. It acknowledges the potential reductiveness of analysis of data that reflects complex lives, but also justifies the approach as a means of understanding better than would otherwise be the case. While there are limitations, the imperfection is set aside with the justification of stimulating learning in readers, who ultimately hold the responsibility of responding to the article. The intention and hope is that they will do so in ways that reduce rather than increase inequalities.

The research

The premise that identities may be managed to best advantage and yet still meet discrimination demanded a research strategy to allow insight into the lives of respondents and to enable them to characterise their experience as uniquely their own and also as shaped by context. Face-to-face interviews gathered data on the perceived experience of women principals in schools in the North West and Gauteng provinces of South Africa. In order to consider a wide range of contexts and capture something of the differences brought about by a range of cultures, ethnicities, languages and religions a relatively large sample was needed. The 54 women who were interviewed form a larger sample than in most equivalent studies. Nevertheless, the data cannot encompass the potential variation of interplay between individual identities and context: only data from the entire population would have a chance of coming close to that. However, in line with the acknowledgement earlier in this article that research is necessarily a process of simplification, despite its limitations, the data set generated understanding of identity positioning strategies undertaken to manage or reduce disadvantage.

The two provinces, one densely urban and the other relatively sparsely populated and predominantly rural, encompass a range of school communities. A sampling matrix was constructed to include geographic locations (urban/inner city, suburban, township, rural/town, village/deep rural and farm) along one axis and school size and category along another. The 54 women are a maximum variation sample selected from the matrix to include those who lead schools in the full range of socio-economic contexts, in urban and rural environments and throughout the learner age range. A national learner survey (Statistics South Africa, 2010) provides a snapshot of school conditions. Results indicated that just over 60% of schools had electricity and running water, 70% a telephone, approximately half a computer but only 15% internet access. Specialist teachers are in short supply. Classes often contain a mix of ages, with children up to 16 years old in schools intended to cater for up to age 12, and secondary schools having learners up to 21 years old. In rural areas some children travel long distances to school, often on foot. Impoverished schools are likely to be staffed by less well trained or untrained teachers who teach large classes with minimal learning resources (Books and Ndlalane, 2011; Smith, 2011).

Spaull (2013) argues that there are in effect two educational systems in South Africa, one well resourced and effective and a second embodying multiple deprivation. The demarcation is along the racial lines established during the apartheid era. Van der Berg (2008: 145) suggests that schools with predominantly or wholly white and Indian learners produce better results than schools with black learners, and that there is ‘far greater between-school variance than for other countries'. Some principals therefore face extreme challenges in sustaining even minimally effective schools while others work in contexts comparable to those in developed economies.

Forty percent of the principals interviewed were in schools in quintiles 1–3; that is, the most disadvantaged of a five level system. However, the categorisation of schools by quintile of disadvantage was disputed by some principals who argued that the growth in the numbers of disadvantaged learners in their school was not reflected in their quintile category. The system was too slow to keep up and too blunt to be accurate, in their view. Certainly some schools categorised as the most advantaged in quintiles 4–5 appeared to have impoverished facilities and a large number of children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. While some schools appeared to be the responsibility of the provincial administration, others, such as farm schools or mining schools, did not. The latter categories are schools originally established to educate the children of workers on a farm or mine and run by the employer rather than a government department. While the education administration may now have formal control, the local employer still appeared to have primary responsibility in some cases. The age category of schools in which the principal was interviewed is shown in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Category of schools in which the principal was interviewed.

Pre-primary	Primary	Intermediate	Secondary	Combined age	Special needs
1%	41%	6%	35%	13%	4%

The language of instruction varied, including not only indigenous African languages but also German, English and Afrikaans.

Demographic information for each principal and details of each school's context were collected. However, the collection was problematic in a number of ways. Reliable and complete school information was not available from the provincial administration. Questions that were asked at each school would be considered by respondents in the light of the painful recent history of apartheid and continuing economic differentials within the education system. Ethical issues precluded the researchers pressing into areas that were not comfortable for respondents. For example, asking individuals about their ethnicity in South Africa potentially resonates with the significant advantage or detriment the answer would carry in the recent past. Some principals did not indicate their ethnicity so an overview of the ethnicity of the sample is not possible.

The principals lead schools with a variety of ethnic, religious and cultural profiles amongst their learners and were themselves from a wide range of backgrounds. Their age range is shown in Table 2.

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Table 2.

Interview respondents' age.

Age	Number	Percentage
under 30	0	0
30–35	0	0
36–39	1	2
40–45	8	15%
46–50	13	24%
51–55	14	26%
56–60	15	28%
61+	3	6%

A high percentage did not have a partner. Sixty percent were married or living with a partner; 20% were single; 11% divorced and 9% widowed. The span of education level was large. Of those with higher level qualifications, one held a PhD and five a master’s degree. The rest had an ordinary or honours bachelor’s degree, with the exception of 14 respondents who had only a teaching diploma. Each principal was asked about the process of being prepared for, supported and appointed to a principal role, the experience and achievements of leadership, and the context and family circumstances that may have impacted on enacting their role.

Line by line thematic coding was undertaken on the personal characteristics and background of the women and also their experience of becoming and being a principal. Inductive interpretation drew from the coded data relationships between the identities constructed in relation to gender, ethnicity, age, religion, language and culture and the connectedness, if any, between the interrelated identities and action taken by the women principals to resist or minimise disadvantage (Thomas, 2006). Some principals spoke only of their gender and/or ethnicity and either did not mention or disavowed the significance of other identities.

Relating the context and the impact of intersections of identities to strategies of resistance and their effect is challenging. This is not least because the space needed to detail each instance would break the bounds of that available in an article and would risk an incoherent and unrelated plethora of details from which it is difficult to make sense. Consequently, the presentation and interpretation of evidence is a compromise of selection and summary to wrest meaning from the principals’ perceptions of their lives as reported to the researcher. A second challenge results from the critical approach, which implies a dual analytical stance in relation to the data acquired. The analysis credited the women's narratives as their reality, but also took account of socialisation and contextual pressures, questioning the interpretation they made of their experience. Therefore, alternative interpretations are sometimes offered to those given by respondents. As discussed earlier, consensus in understanding by respondent, researcher and reader is not assumed.

Strategies of positioning

The respondents were those who had achieved a formal leadership role. They had therefore been successful to a degree in career terms. However, they reacted in different ways to an environment in which the majority discerned discrimination. The Constitution of South Africa established in 1996 embodies equal rights and also supports affirmative action in relation to groups that had been previously disadvantaged. Officially, South Africa asserts that it ‘has in place a comprehensive and forward looking legislative framework to ensure the promotion of equality and nondiscrimination and to ensure that women’s concerns are integrated into all areas of work'. (The Presidency Office on the Status of Women, 2006: 2). Nevertheless, research evidence indicates that discrimination against women principals persists (Chisholm, 2001; Moorosi, 2010). The principals reflected a range of beliefs about advantage/disadvantage experienced on the path to appointment, and how far their incumbency in a leadership role led to respect by others and an equal chance to enact a leadership role. All of the respondents used one or more strategies to position their identities in relation to the group(s) to which they belonged and to other reference groups (Shibutani, 1955). The strategies listed below emerge from this data set, but previous research provides evidence of their deployment more widely (Chisholm, 2001; Gaertner and Dovidio, 2000; Jogulu and Wood, 2006; Laufer-Ukeles, 2009; Rosenthal and Crisp, 2006; Sa'ar, 2005; Smulyan, 2000). The strategies used by respondents were:

Transforming the value of low-status identities

These were not necessarily mutually exclusive and were enacted in a variety of ways. The sections that follow will consider each in turn.

Transforming the value of low-status identities

A striking response to professional disadvantage caused by gender discrimination was a strategy to transform a stereotypically female and so low-value role. There was a frequent focus on converting the mother status of women from that of low skill and limiting to one perceived as particularly advantageous to leading a school. The adoption of a mothering approach to leadership has been noted by others (Chisholm, 2001), although Chisholm connects this strategy with black women. The data here evidences both black and white women characterising their leadership as maternal and citing this approach as the reason for greater effectiveness than men in leading schools.

Of the 54 interviewees, 29 promoted the attitudes and skills of motherhood as vital to leadership, and as enabling them to outperform male principals by bringing to school leadership the skills of childrearing and the single-minded commitment of mothers to their children. They argued that they were more able than men to understand and respond to the personal and educational needs of learners, to discipline children and to relate to parents and teachers (Lumby and Azaola, 2014). They described the knowledge and skills of mothers as particularly pertinent to countering the poverty of learners. As mothers would at home, they provided food and clothing in the school and organised medical care, taking children to the doctor or hospital. They also in some cases differentiated their approach to learners as more able to understand and engage both boys and girls by developing personal and meaningful relationships that underpinned the students’ capacity to learn.

…having children I think makes you a better educator…if you are a mother yourself you see children differently…[North West, white principal, married, two children, secondary]

…you’re the mother at home, I will be the mother at the school, so if anything bothers me, I will contact the parents and tell them, if it was my child I would have done this and this and that…it is an advantage, yeah. [North West, black principal, married, two children, farm primary]

However, the words of another suggest that this strategy to create value simultaneously creates disadvantage for others, as childless women as well as men are portrayed as lacking: ‘…the gifts of having a child brings you an insight which you don’t have when you haven’t had a child’ [Gauteng, white principal, single, one child, secondary].

Some principals with no children still claimed the advantages of motherhood but are precariously positioned by others at the intersection of gender and childlessness:

…some of the younger members of staff, call me ‘mum’…it’s naturally me you know…. Not having given birth to any children doesn’t mean I haven’t had children in my life. [Gauteng, white principal, single, no children, inner city primary school]

A principal who was ‘happily single', childless and young commented on the nurturing role expected of women:

I am lucky; I am not married and don't have children…because you are seen as the female you are the nurturing, you are the caring one to go home to your family. [Gauteng, unstated ethnicity principal, single, no children, primary]

If, as over half the women claimed, being a mother was an essential component of effective school leadership, this principal as a young, single, childless woman is lacking. However, her religion is powerful: ‘I do believe God has a plan for me in my life’ and is related to a mothering approach: ‘We are the nurturing, caring type, let’s just face it. No matter how strong I tend to want to be, that will come through at the end of the day and I thank God for it'. However, the ‘natural’ nurturing that is characterised by some as due to motherhood and by this principal as a gift from God is culturally nuanced. This principal explains that while to her ‘a boy kissing a girl behind a building is a big no, no and a big problem and a big everything', in her view ‘Other cultures may go well “what are you making a big hoo-hah about?”’ Though motherhood or a mothering approach is characterised as advantageous to workplace practice by the majority in this sample, it is not understood or enacted uniformly. The understanding of the gender role of mother is modulated, reflecting intersections of gender, religion and culture.

Over half the women in this sample claim to enact a school principal role as mothers, disrupting the assumption that mothering is a role confined to the home and in a few cases, to one's own children. The 29 respondents who claimed a mothering approach are therefore attempting to take one of the most enduring and restrictive of female stereotypical identities and to metamorphose it by means of relocating it to a professional role and converting its qualities to advantage.

Nakano (1994) suggests that mothering has been regarded as natural and unchanging, an embedded and immutable aspect of the female stereotype. It is viewed in some respects positively, possibly because it is limited to the domestic sphere and enacted in a nurturing role in support of others, children and husband. It consequently presents no threat to the masculine sphere of work; indeed, it facilitates men's dominance in the workplace (Adkins, 1998). However, simultaneously it is low status because its purpose to serve the family locates it outside the context of economically valued activity. Consequently it is both feted and despised (Arendell, 2000; Maher and Saugeres, 2007). By transporting the mother identity into the workplace and using it to argue superiority over males, a kind of strategy is visible that consciously or unconsciously attacks notions of women's lesser competence as leaders in the workplace and perceptions of their primary location as the home.

The potential for this strategy successfully to ameliorate women's position is questionable. If stereotypical female skills are intended to be transformed to acquire greater value, as a by-product they also confirm an essentialist view of women as mothers and as leading primarily in this way amongst the register of possible leadership styles. It is also clear that in claiming advantage for mothers, disadvantage is created for those women who are not, and that how motherhood and/or nurturing qualities are understood and enacted is nuanced by culture and religion, subverting any universal assumption of the benefits of a mothering approach to leadership.

The evidence can therefore be interpreted as showing women attempting to disrupt limiting views of their role and of the value of their role. In the respondents’ view, they were using skills acquired outside the professional role to dismantle a reductive assessment of their approach. Their action may also be interpreted as doing the opposite: confirming the limitations that others saw as embedded in women's capacity for leadership. They were caught in the web; the more they struggle, the stronger the threads that bind.

Promoting the identity of women

The majority of the 54 interviewees placed themselves as a member of the reference group ‘women’, constructed as positive and asserted to be superior to men. For example, one drew strength from the matriarchal society in which she grew up and which offered a contrast to the cultures of other ethnic groups. She asserted that:

I realize we have been brought up properly, we have been so respected. Back home I remember my grandmother was a tall regal woman; when they’ve slaughtered [an animal for food] we would be the first to be served by men. [North West, black, married, three children, secondary]

For her, there was no need to adjust the identity of women; she perceived women as a strong, capable and valuable group of which she was proud to be a member.

When you are a woman you don’t come into a post like this and start behaving like a man. I am who I am, I copy from them but I remain who I am. I copy the good but I love the woman that I am. I want to remain a woman, I like my feminine side.

Among the 54 respondents, only one positioned herself as drawing strength from the community in which she was born and which valued women, though this was contrasted sharply with attitudes to her amongst the school community to which she had relocated. Her confidence related to a gender identity that was shaped by her ethnic group and its culture. Others asserted the value of women in their greater ability to multi-task, work hard, discipline both girls and boys, nurture educators and learners, achieve good examination outcomes and build relationships with parents. They strongly promoted the positives of an identity as a woman, extending this beyond the role of mother:

You know women, how do I put it, we have got so many things in one, I can be a mother, I can alternate my roles, I can be a mother I can be a manager, I can be lots of things and I say we have the power. [North West, black, married, two children, secondary]

Limiting views of women were indicated to be embedded in ethnic cultures as well as being a response to gender itself: ‘The Africans, most of us, specifically the Tswanas, the Sothos and Ndebeles, all those people, they, they used to believe that the ladies place is in the kitchen’ [North West, black principal, married, three children, farm primary].

This respondent gave evidence of continuing discrimination. Another felt similarly, that ‘…especially with our black schools…I think you know this culture of saying that as women we cannot be managers’ [Gauteng, black principal, divorced, four children, secondary].

In this instance, religion, culture and role status intersected to make a principal feel particularly vulnerable: ‘You know in our culture as Blacks, even Indian culture, we believe a lot in Witchcraft’ and ‘if somebody doesn’t like you, they can use medicine to stop you from progressing'. Her attitude to the reality of risk was ambiguous:

…in our culture, every time when you are in a superior position you are more in danger. I’ve been bewitched; bewitched by other people…And other people, even if you, yourself you don’t believe in it, but other people want to make you to believe in it.

Afrikaans culture was also implicated:

…especially in our Afrikaans community, being a principal of a high school, it was just not seen…she won’t be able to cope. It was a given…It was never written down, and it was never said very loudly, but it was. [Gauteng, white principal, single, no children, secondary]

Working to counter such negative views and to position the identity of ‘woman’ as a positive was draining. It was not just a question of being dynamic, as the role demanded, but of expecting more of themselves than would men, thereby hoping to achieve a similar level of respect, and being expected to do more than men: ‘Yeah, obviously. We work twice as hard as the men’ [Gauteng, black principal, divorced, four children, secondary].

In constructing being a woman as a valued identity, the effect was at the least a very heavy workload, striving to confound negative expectations (Lumby and Azaola, 2011), and in some cases ill health or resignation from the post were perceived as resulting from the strain. One respondent believed ‘women are hard workers and they even want to see themselves achieving more than males. We don’t want to undermine ourselves'. She believed her performance was superior to that of male principals, in part because of her hard work, but this, along with resistance to her as a woman leader, took its toll. Such was the animosity to a woman being appointed to her current post that it ‘affected my health…and I ended up being admitted at em, tsk, mental hospital’ due to ‘…depression, and well, the harassment I lived under’ [Gauteng, black, married, two children, informal settlement primary]. She spoke of the entwined implications of her gender, ethnicity, language and religion. Not speaking English well she believed had led to being overlooked for principal appointments. While she was aware that her culture led to both men and women undermining her as a leader, simultaneously her Tswana background and African traditional religion demanded respect for men. She recounts the strain leading to anxiety, sleeplessness and mental illness.

Women were asserting their competence while at the same time communicating that they appeared to need to work harder than men to do so and not make mistakes. ‘…if a female principal makes some mistakes, it seems it is more noticed than that made by a male’ [Guateng, black principal, married, three children, informal settlement primary]. They both elevated the value of women and undermined it.

Deflecting attention from stigmatised identities

A very different strategy was used by some who tried to deflect attention from a stigmatised identity (Bauman, 2004). Studies have uncovered a process of misdirection, where an individual diverts attention to an identity which is prized and away from another which may be lower status (Lumby, 2008; Lumby and Heystek, 2012). Gurin and Nagda (2006) write of individuals reclassifying into a higher status group of which they are a legitimate member, thereby distracting attention from membership of other lower status groups. For example, women who insist that they are just head teachers and not women head teachers or black head teachers are forcefully projecting a reclassification (Bush et al., 2006). Reclassification was evident in this study, particularly in relation to ethnicity.

Ethnicity remains a salient characteristic in people's life chances in South Africa, as apartheid era racial classifications persist but may hold different meanings from that era (Seekings, 2008). Whiteness is arguably a stigmatised identity in some South African contexts, for example in the labour market or political office (Steyn, 2001). A number of respondents urged the irrelevance of their ethnicity in their ability to do the job. In a school of 1300 children and 43 educators, the only white person was the female principal, who believed:

We don’t even see the difference.…when you want to see me and you walk in here and you say to me ‘how many black staff members do you have now, how many white staff members do you have?’ And I say ‘I don’t have any of those'. I have…to me there’s just educators; there’s two different educators, there’s good educators and there’s bad educators and I fortunately only have the first one but I don’t have black and white. [North West, white principal, married, three children, secondary]

She also perceived that the appointment panel had ‘wanted a black male here', and that the unions had pushed for a black male appointment. She also ‘felt a little bit left out when they [staff] spoke in their own language’ but believed she was too old to learn a new language. The assertion that skin colour has no implication in the school is the reality for this principal, but may appear otherwise to members of the school community and to external observers.

Another white woman principal described the irrelevance of her whiteness when working as the only white person amongst a group of local black principals:

All our children are black or coloured…And for me it’s not an issue. Some people ask me and then they say you’re white, okay. Yes, I’m white. You know what I’m trying to say, because if you look at a picture, sometimes I’ll sit in a room, where we’re discussing something at a meeting or so on, and I’m the only white person, but because you are busy with your work and you kind of try and understand the culture, that is not the issue. [Gauteng, white principal, single, no children, secondary]

Denial of the relevance of ethnicity by white people has been depicted as a strategy to avoid confronting difficult truths (Gallagher, 2003). It may also be a means of deflecting disadvantage. By insisting that ethnicity was irrelevant, these two principals are attempting to reclassify as a principal rather than a white woman, thereby avoiding the detriment attached to the intersection of these two, in a South African context, stigmatised identities. However, as Gallagher argues, they may be embedding racism further. The second principal also described how she would hesitate to apply for a principalship in a school for Afrikaans children as a Christian male would be preferred. In the varied contexts of application for a leadership post, gender, ethnicity, language and religion were perceived to impact on the likelihood of appointment and enacting the role if successful. As a consequence, identities were managed to deflect attention from those seen as disadvantageous.

In another case, being a woman was argued to be irrelevant:

We are all on the same page; there shouldn't be a problem, male or female. It is your core values and your core principles…It doesn't matter who you are, it is what you are that you are looking towards. [Gauteng, white principal, married, three children, secondary]

Ignoring or concealing an aspect of identity that confers privilege or attracts detriment may be driven by a different motivation for those who are privileged and those who are not (Branscombe, 1998; Lumby and Heystek, 2012). The privileged, as Gallagher (2003) suggests, may wish to avoid responsibility for the unjustified advantage an identity related to gender or skin colour attracts. The disadvantaged may wish to avoid dealing with the unjustified disadvantage they experience and/or may wish to minimise the impact of the lower status attached to a characteristic. It therefore appears to the advantage of both groups to collude to turn others’ attention away from their gender or ethnicity. However, if social justice is perceived as a long-term benefit for all, the tactic of identity misdirection disadvantages everyone.

Denial of disadvantage

As an alternative to directing attention away from their gender, a few positioned themselves by explicitly denying that they had experienced any disadvantage as women. For example, asked about whether she had ever experienced different treatment to men, one principal was emphatic in her denial: ‘No, I don't see it, no it's OK, I'm not being treated otherwise or whatever, no’ [North West, white, married, one child, farm primary]. She later recounted how a panel explicitly wished to appoint a male to a post for which she had applied. She was not successful in her application. Another did not believe she had experienced any disadvantage related to her gender, ethnicity, religion, age, marital status or culture: ‘I mean if you are capable, if you are a man or you are a female, if you are capable of being, to be in that position, and then it should be like that’ [Gauteng, black principal, divorced, two children, primary]. Yet another believed that she had never been treated differently to men ‘maybe because of my age, and I think also because of my gender, they see me as a mother, it gives me an advantage’ [North West, black, single, two children, secondary]. Age appeared to trump any disadvantage related to gender, as did the status of mother.

This small group stands in contrast to the large majority who provided examples of and acknowledged discriminatory behaviour related to gender and/or other identities, sometimes by their recall of experience, sometimes by factual data related to salary, or numbers of male/female appointments in their locality. Assertions of gender irrelevance appear untenable in the light of considerable evidence to the contrary, including from those who denied such experience. Branscombe (1998) argues that acknowledging disadvantage is painful and increases feelings of not being in control. Distancing oneself from a disadvantaged group is therefore understandable. Adopting such a strategy or not may depend to some extent on the assessment of the circumstances. The individual may find that attributing disadvantage to external factors is encouraging, as negative experiences have not been caused by her own choices and behaviour. On the other hand, if the external factors which disadvantage are perceived as immutable features, a refusal to recognise them may bring dividends for wellbeing, blanking out what cannot be changed. What appears as an illogical choice by women, denying the experience of discrimination whilst recounting instances of such, may in fact be a logical tactic related to protecting self-esteem and a sense of control in the face of phenomena that they perceive as immutable. Denial of disadvantage consequently may bring immediate benefit to individual women but strengthen structural inequality by communicating that it does not exist or does not matter.

Acceptance of women's inferiority

A very small minority of participants identified themselves with women as a group, differentiated from men and of lesser ability, encompassing views that men held qualities or abilities necessary to lead a school that women did not hold, or held less strongly, and/or that they should be preferred for appointment to leadership roles not only because of their superior abilities but as a right. One principal who could not cope with computers wished ‘I had this instinct that guys are having’ [Gauteng, black principal, divorced, four children, secondary]. Another believed that men worked harder than women and that ‘Women are working but they, they don’t have the discipline to discipline their classes’ [Gauteng, white principal, married, no children, pre-primary–intermediate]. One principal reflected that during the appointment process she offered to step aside if the panel could find a suitable male. She also believed that, for a primary school, it was not appropriate to ‘appoint a male teacher, without making him…allowing him to be principal’ [North West, secondary, no demographic data]. She also believed that in relation to her own appointment, because ‘the person that they had sort of in mind, was more an administrative type of person, and less a teacher', a man would be more appropriate.

These kinds of views were very much the exception. There are, of course, many cultures that embody a belief that men and women have or should have different qualities and roles, and that men should be dominant. Rejection of the principals’ view that they are less fitted to leadership roles may be shaped by a western cultural and feminist stance. However, those interviewees who upheld such beliefs also reported evidence of their own leadership effectiveness, and so to some degree contradicted their assertions about women's lesser ability to lead. The data set as a whole presents considerable evidence of women's conviction of their competence as leaders. Nevertheless, acceptance and accommodation of inferior status were evident amongst a few. In agreeing that women were inferior leaders, the principals removed themselves from any strain of competing and also possibly enjoyed the approval of other staff members, their family and the wider community who shared similar views. This strategy may consequently have positioned the individuals in ways they perceived as advantageous. It also simultaneously contributed to the view of women as inferior to men and so may have sustained disadvantage.

Conclusions

The article aimed to advance theories of gender relations in the school workplace by considering the dialectic of progress and its antithesis in South African principals’ experience. It has outlined how gender is part of a web of identities which creates, sustains or denies status and impacts on working lives. The data provides insights into whether there is leverage to break the cycle of deep-rooted inequity. The analysis presents a range of strategies that the principals used in the school workplace, reflecting previous evidence on women's positioning as they attempt to survive or thrive in oppressive personal and professional systems (Bush et al., 2006; Coleman, 2002; Lumby with Coleman, 2007; Sa'ar, 2005; Tallerico, 2000). Whether attempting to transform the reaction of others or the value assigned to stereotypes, denying discrimination or accepting it, the reference point is a normative standard that delineates a binary insider and outsider within a hierarchy of value. In each case, the principal made choices about the most favourable approach to securing her own self-esteem and the goals she prized. The analysis confirms Sa'ar's conclusions (2005: 680) that ‘Responses range from eager collaboration, whereby women act as devout guardians of patriarchal mores and values, to skilful manoeuvring to make gains while avoiding overt conflict, to different levels of passive and active resistance'.

All of the strategies presented in this article have been interpreted by respondents as benefiting the individual woman. They may also potentially embed sexism further in the workplace, as outlined earlier in the article, for example by strengthening limiting views of women's nurturing approach to leadership, accepting very heavy workloads in aiming to demonstrate the superiority of women principals, failing to acknowledge racism or perpetuating limiting views of women's roles by accepting male superiority. Whether transgressing or remaining within the boundaries of the stereotypical feminine role, women are subject to a double bind and may trigger negative consequences (Krefting, 2003; Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock, 1996; Swann et al., 1999). Consequently, as Kandiyoti (1988: 280) suggests, though ‘women become experts in maximizing their own life chances', their ‘individual power tactics do little to alter the structurally unfavorable terms of the overall patriarchal script'.

And yet, arguably, progress has been made. Some respondents noted the fact that more women were being appointed to principal posts, themselves amongst this group. Some believed it was the combination of women's individual actions and the structural adjustments written strongly into the constitution that had achieved progress. They believed that their efforts had brought rewards for themselves and for their learners. Though a few were broken by their experience, leaving their post or becoming ill, more remained strong and grew in confidence. For example, one respondent's reaction to discrimination was, ‘It fuels me. It makes me even stronger'. Above all, they were concerned with directing attention to gains for learners. Respondents outlined the outcomes of their work in pulling round a whole school or transforming the life chances of individual pupils. For many, their achievements as leaders outweighed any negative experience of discrimination encountered in their role.

We do not have the tools as yet to definitively unravel the consequences for patriarchal structures of gender actions in the school workplace or the means to assess the balance of gain and loss each woman creates. The volition for change may be a result of a dance of steps forward and steps back that, over time, convert to change in unanticipated, perverse ways as well as planned consequence.

If we abandon teleological yearnings to see a straight line of progress brought about by determined feminist action, we can discern faintly in this data the possibility of weakening the web. Though the principals’ experience is rooted in their context, it also resonates with that of women in widely differing national locations. Many of the principals themselves believed progress had been made. Their efforts were perceived as bringing benefits for women principals and for schools. Though it is only a faint suggestion, the data offer some hope that though women may be caught in the web, their individual stories may in some measure defeat simplistic cause and effect analysis and are part of an ongoing movement leveraging limited gains. What is clear is that there is no secure ground in interpreting the implications of women's positioning of their identities, nor of what constitutes progress and for whom. The dialectic between the individual's perspective on their experience and the impact of such experience on wider structural change remains contestable.