![]() However, Alvesson and Spicer argue that leadership is not a concrete phenomenon, but rather “something that requires human interpretation and understanding” (2011, 4). The pool of case studies presented here is limited, but these metaphors represent thinking tools enabling a scholarly and imaginative understanding of women’s leadership in education.Īs the literature on women as leaders grows, and discussions of their leadership styles expand, the emphasis continues to be on Western approaches to management and decision-making, often indicating that leadership is a concrete phenomenon, with clear indicators that are innate or that can be developed through deliberate interventions. It is one of the few studies focussing on the stories of women from a non-Western background. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on leadership, especially leadership in education. However, they are not metaphors that fit neatly into the taxonomies recognized in the literature. Somewhat surprisingly, the metaphors used to present leadership are not always based on a local cultural context, with some explicitly including references to European plants, which could be considered exotic. The analysis shows that these leaders used metaphors determined by a dynamic interplay of personal, situational, and cultural factors. ![]() Using narrative analysis, these accounts were analyzed to identify and interpret the metaphors emerging from descriptions of leadership experiences. Taking an interpretive approach, this study seeks to present leadership through the understanding of female leaders involved in the field of education broadly defined, from Rwanda and Bangladesh, who gave accounts of their metaphorical conceptualisation of leadership. This study attempts to break the mold, investigating the understanding of women’s leadership as expressed in metaphors that is contextualized differently across the continents. Metaphors used in discussing women’s leadership in many countries may support this approach, but they do so by highlighting the obstacles women face, for example, the glass ceiling, glass cliff, sticky floors, and the labyrinth. Leadership is generally thought of as “a good thing,” as something important, carried out by people with desirable attributes, such as courage and insight, or with attractive personalities and good communication skills. Our everyday language literature abounds with metaphors that evoke images of the masculine – including of machines, war and fighting, competition, games and sport. Understandably, studies of metaphor tend to focus on metaphors deriving from the English language and from Western cultures. Metaphors are a useful communication tool, allowing us to understand an idea or concept through some other phenomenon. This paper is developed from qualitative data exploring the metaphors used to describe women’s leadership in differing cultural contexts. 2Independent Scholars Association of Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia.1Conjoint Professor of Practice, School of Education, Faculty of Education and Arts, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia.
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