Finding the right woman for the job
First published in Schools Week on 4 July 2015. Figures suggest governors have a gender bias when they appoint headteachers. So what happens when they don’t have a say? I have written before about the apparent gender bias among some governing bodies that contributes to women being significantly under-represented in headship. So I was interested to see what would happen when we took governors out of the equation in recruiting headship-ready leaders for the Talented Leaders programme. The results were fascinating: 44.8 per cent of applicants were women and 45 per cent of those who were successful in the selection process were women. My conclusion is that there is much we can learn about female leaders’ ambitions and the likelihood of them being realised when governors’ preconceptions about who makes a good headteacher are eliminated. That women are almost as likely to apply to the programme as men challenges the notion that women aren’t up for headship. Although 44.8 pe