ABSTRACT While the number of women appointed to higher education leadership roles has increased in the last several decades, progress has been slow. According to data from 2022, women earned the majority of post-secondary degrees at every level: 62.8% of associate degrees, 58.5% of bachelor’s degrees, 62.6% of master’s degrees, and 57% of doctoral degrees (Neitzel, 2024). Nevertheless, only 33% of current college presidents are women (Melidona et al., 2023).This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to explore the perceptions and experiences of women currently in senior leadership roles in higher education at four institutions with a higher-than-average number of women in senior leadership roles. Participants were members of the president’s cabinet and/or the leadership team that makes the major decisions on behalf of the institution. Small to mid-size private colleges or universities with less than 10,000 students were selected as sites to allow for comparisons across institutions.
The women in this study framed their experiences with gender bias in their professional lives as challenges and pressures rather than barriers. Further, the participants favored discussing the strategies they have used or continue to employ to overcome and manage those challenges and pressures rather than focusing on the obstacles themselves, which speaks to their resiliency. The strategies include: name the challenge or pressure; add more women to the team; competence and hard work; accept and pursue opportunities; build strong relationships; address discrimination; be authentic and align with your values; adapt to or choose your work environment with intention; maximize informal and formal support systems. The strategies acknowledge the impact of social and cultural gender norms on women's experiences while offering effective approaches to mitigate impediments grounded in social and cultural expectations. Several of the participants described self-limiting their professional aspirations during their career journeys. Additionally, several women in the study described examples of gender discrimination by both men and women they didn’t address at the time it occurred but wish they had. This manifested in them developing strategies that led to their continued advancement. Through that process, they developed more self-confidence, advanced competency, and an increased capacity and propensity to advocate for themselves. Many of the experiences described by the participants mirror those in the literature and can be explained using existing theories. However, emerging phenomena and related factors worthy of further exploration were also revealed in the findings. A crucial insight that surfaced from the data is the significance of explicitly defined and articulated shared values on leadership teams related to what gender bias is, how it can negatively affect team functioning, and a commitment to addressing it if it marginalizes the contributions of any team member or impedes the effectiveness of the team in any way. The ways in which the number of women on the team, intentional expectations for team interactions, and shared accountability relate to open discussions of gender bias and its mitigation were identified as key potential areas for future research inquiry.