Women in Leadership

During our core Global Cities study, we spotted differences in how women and men leaders experienced and talked about their careers, leadership and aspiration. We had anticipated the more traditional discussions of gender and leadership. There were substantial conversations about orchestrating careers with lives and families. We also learnt about how leaders feel influenced by the varying degrees of accountability, middle-tier support and greater social policies on their leadership, careers and personal lives. By looking across London, NYC and Toronto, we noticed conversations about women in leadership varied by city and may, in fact, be linked to larger system-level issues including: bias in hiring; accountability systems; maternity/paternity leave; health care; pensions and job stability.   

In previous generations, women leaders either chose not to have children or waited, most often, to step into senior leadership until their own children were older. For Boomers, women leaders with small children were a rarity. GEnX leaders are stepping into leadership roles at a younger age than their Boomer colleagues did. If they choose to have children, they are often waiting until they are older to do so. This brings GenX women leaders with children to a new temporal space, for themselves but also the study of women in leadership: the nexus of big jobs, small kids.

Gender was only a small part of our overall Global City Leaders study---at the start! Our work on Women in Leadership has become a substantial focus of our research, outreach and advocacy work.

Work with schools, leaders and advocates

We have delivered workshops and keynotes on our GCL Women in Leadership findings for Department for Education (UK) Leadership, Equality and Diversity Fund-supported programmes to enhance recruitment and retention of women and BME leaders across the system. We have worked with Outward Grange Institute of Education to share our findings. Our Global City Leaders study has directly informed DfE bids jointly prepared by UCL Institute of Education and both Kingston Teaching Schools Alliance and the Mulberry School for Girls. Our team actively supports the on-going program with delivery of keynotes, workshops and strategy sessions. We are proud to be a founding member of the Leading Women's Alliance and we were thrilled to present 3 mini-keynotes and lectures as the Leading Women into Headship event.

In the Press

Our findings from the Global City leaders study on Women in Leadership have been featured in the Times Education Supplement on the potential of co-headships and the Guardian on recruitment and glass-ceiling issues.  We recently shared our findings with Esteem Journal at Teachers College, Columbia University on role modelling and talent spotting as essential levers for recruiting and retaining women leaders.

Papers and reports

Coming soon.......

Conferences Presentations