Probing Educational Management as Gendered: An Examination through Model and Metaphor

Abstract

This paper explores the proposition that educational management is a gendered construction. The author utilizes Scott's analytic model, which distinguishes gender as sexual difference, denoted by cultural symbols, signs, and representations; and gender as a signifier of power, identified by four different types of social relationships. Against this model, the author casts a gender-specific metaphor (“leader as mother”) and a gender-neutral one (“leader as visionary”). Applying model to metaphor offers a mechanism to expose gendered assumptions about educational management. Such an analytic device forces an examination of educational management with women at the center, rather than at the periphery, of the construction.