Performing and challenging gendered walls in leadership spaces in single sex schools: Lessons from a male-led girls’ basic school in Ghana

Abstract

Women and men are capable of effectively discharging school leadership roles. However, in Ghana, people are socialised to expect females to lead girls’ schools and vice versa. Appointing a female or male to lead a single sex school that is opposite to their gender elicits gender stereotyping, protests and exclusion. While researchers have explored these dynamics in co-educational basic schools, they have not extended them to single sex schools. This case study investigated how the leadership practice of a male-led girls’ school in the Central Region of Ghana has challenged gendered walls. The study engaged 23 multiple stakeholders and gathered data through semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. Intra- and cross-case analyses of data revealed that loyalty to gender walls in single sex schools reflects the desire to respect and maintain the tradition of female headteachers in girls’ schools and male headteachers in boys’ schools. Overall, Ghana is still a traditional and patriarchal society that is characterised by gender inequity in leadership spaces. However, men and women who exhibit professional integrity and leadership competence could convert critics to supporters in a range of school settings. The Ghana Education Service should provide leadership preparation for practitioners to improve their leadership competence.

Keywords

Leadership gender gendered walls male headship girls’ school Ghana

Introduction

The underrepresentation of women in school headship positions is a problem that transcends Ghana (Diko, 2014; Sperandio and Kagoda, 2010). Despite documented evidence that both men and women are capable of effective school leadership, males dominate leadership in Ghanaian educational institutions (Agezo and Hope, 2011; Kailiti, 2018). In situations where women get opportunities in leadership spaces, they are concentrated in lower-tier and less influential leadership positions (Northouse, 2015). In pre-tertiary schools in Ghana, women constitute the majority of the teaching staff but disproportionally less in headship positions (Agezo and Hope, 2011). Thus, scholars have challenged the androcentric grip of leadership (Ampofo et al., 2004; Moorosi, 2010).

Available data from the Ghana Educational Directory (2017) reveals an interesting set of dynamics. The data show that men lead 64% of the co-educational basic schools in Ghana. In the single sex (girls-only and boys-only) schools, women constitute 78% of the headship. Similarly, the data reveal that 64% of the headteachers of the boys’ schools and 81% of the girls’ schools are women. I should clarify that in Ghana, the term ‘basic schools’ encompasses kindergarten, primary and lower secondary schools serving children usually aged between 5 and 15. These statistics suggest that gender and leadership realities in public basic schools in Ghana are complex, differing between co-educational and single sex schools, and contradict views that present women as lacking leadership qualities.

Ghanaian researchers explored gender and school leadership dynamics in co-educational basic schools (Agezo, 2010; Agezo and Hope, 2011; Oduro and Macbeath, 2003). Agezo and Hope (2011), for example, investigated female leadership in basic schools in the Cape Coast Municipality, and challenged the traditional alignment of leadership with masculinity, arguing that people’s gender does not determine their ability to lead. However, they focused their research on co-educational schools rather than single sex schools. Ghanaians are socialised to expect that women should lead girls-only schools and men lead boys-only schools. Indeed, appointing a woman or man to lead a single sex school that is opposite to their gender could well result in gender and leadership politicking exemplified by stereotyping, opposition, protests and even the exclusion of the formal leader. Given the importance of mutual collaboration amongst stakeholders, co-agency and networking to the success of school leadership practice, one should therefore learn about gender and leadership dynamics in single sex schools, especially if we want to better understand the root causes of the opposition and possible solutions to it.

For these reasons, I chose as my focus a girls’ basic school and the particular scenario it faced when a man replaced the female headteacher. In date, the female headteacher at this school (2016) had just retired from the Ghana Education Service (GES). GES is an institution that implements government policies on pre-tertiary education in Ghana and its responsibilities include recruitment and promotion of teachers. The education authorities decided to replace the female headteacher with a 39-year-old male teacher. This decision generated vociferous open opposition from different stakeholders including the retired headteacher, teachers, parents and alumnae of the school. These stakeholders argued that, first, it was not appropriate for a man, especially of such a young age, to lead girls at a tender age. Second, despite the fact that the young man was professionally qualified to head the school, some were unsure of his moral solidity and leadership capacity since he had been teaching in that school for only a year before his appointment. Third, the protesting stakeholders asserted that leadership was not a provenance of only men since women too could lead schools effectively. Thus, some female teachers openly challenged his appointment by refusing to obey his instructions, such as in reporting to school late. A group of alumnae openly advised the headteacher to resign or face a backlash from them. Therefore, the objective of the study was to explore the underlying reasons for gender walling and its effects on leadership practice in single sex schools. The following questions guided the study:

Why do people oppose a man or a woman to head up a single sex school that is opposite to their gender?

What underlying perceptions of leadership influence notions of gender as a determinant of one’s suitability and accessibility to leadership?

How does gender stereotyping affect the effectiveness of leadership practice?

Before describing the methodology and findings of this case study, I consider the nature of what I call ‘gender walls’ – the boundaries between male and female qualities, leadership abilities and expectations. I draw insights from intersectionality theoretical approach to explain how gender categories and boundaries promoted by evolutionary psychology frame much educational discussion and assumptions in a Ghanaian context. It is the walls these assumptions erect which were challenged by the appointment of the head. An intersectional approach is particularly useful in analysing leadership and identifying issues that influence women and men as school leaders (Moorosi, 2014) because it enables us to prioritise people’s professional experiences and expertise rather than their gender affiliation as the basis for their access to school leadership.

Gender walls: gender stereotyping and leadership qualities

Gender connotes a system of meanings constructed by society on human sexual orientation as male or female that influences access to power, status and material resources (Connell, 2006). Evolutionary psychology theorists claim that the essential attributes that account for sex-differentiated behaviour are the sex-specific psychological dispositions that are inherently built into the human species through genetically mediated adaptation (Neuberg et al., 2010). The adaption favours men in terms of physical size, strength and resilience and gives them the psychological disposition to be agentic, efficient, competitive and aggressive compared to women’s primary responsibilities of bearing and nursing babies, and caring for the home (Naidoo and Perumal, 2014). Thus, arguably, evolutionary psychologists justify societies that are organised in a patriarchal fashion which negatively affects gender equity and the participation of women in school leadership. I use the term ‘gender equity’ to denote equality of treatment and access to opportunities and outcomes for both men and women (Morley, 2006). Fundamentally, gender equity is about a fair and level playing field for people, regardless of their gender orientation, to enjoy their rights and responsibilities, and a sense of belonging, irrespective of whether they are demographically categorised as male or female. The evolutionary psychology theories also portray gender as a unitary social collective, clustering all women into one homogeneous group and men into another. Emphasising gender as a unitary category of identity not only ignores the complexity of identities and factors (Moorosi, 2014), but also exaggerates inter female–male differences while undermining the reality of intra-female and intra-male differences. This simplistic conceptualisation of gender has created an established problem of gender inequity in school leadership spaces in Ghana.

Against this backdrop, the intersectionality theoretical framework is useful in revealing the complex factors, multiple identities and personas that define people’s leadership capacities (Moorosi, 2014). Intersectionality clarifies that heterogeneity exists among women as well as men (Lumby, 2015; Showunmi et al., 2016). As an analytic tool, it explains that a multiplicity of complex factors such as the unique experiences, histories, contexts and circumstances of women and men determine their relationships, access to, skills, expertise and performance in leadership (Christensen and Jensen, 2012). Using South Africa as an example, Moja (2007) argues that women represent diverse races and classes and this has implications for their accessibility to and positioning in school leadership. The category of woman, unless differentiated, can be seen as referring to all women as being too gentle and unassertive and therefore bereft of leadership qualities, whilst by being a man a person might be thought to be powerful, intelligent, agentic, assertive and a good leader.

By portraying men as physically hefty, assertive, courageous, innovative, competitive, agentic and capable, and women as soft, empathetic, caring, nurturing, dependent, weak and non-competitive (Adler, 2005), the evolutionary psychologists disadvantage women. For example, the stereotypical alignment of agency – the moral capacity to choose and act – with men implies that women lack the agency for leadership. Whilst western societies may have progressed with their thinking about gender and leadership, in Ghana, given its patriarchal nature, issues still arise about gender difference and strong gender boundaries, which lead to gender walls in relationship to school leadership. Patriarchy, in this context, excludes women from formal school leadership positions (Blackmore, 2016; Bradbury and Gunter, 2006; Fraser, 1997b; Smith, 2016) – in effect it refers to the extent to which women not only lack power, control and authority, but also are perceived by society as inferior to men. Yet research evidence shows that gender stereotypes are overly simplified accepted gender-based biases regarding a person or group that have no objective base to communicate the true information about individuals and their capabilities (Hoeritz, 2013). The fact that women dominate headship posts in single sex pre-tertiary schools in Ghana and show effective leadership (Agezo and Hope, 2011) contradicts such stereotypical assumptions and corroborates the tenets of intersectionality, which emphasise unique experiences, contexts, skills and expertise of people as important determinants of their leadership capacity.

While acknowledging that behavioural and role differences exist between women and men, Wood and Eagly (2002) do not see the differences as necessarily mutually exclusive, arguing that both genders are sufficiently malleable and capable of effectively complementing each other in discharging leadership roles. There is evidence of erosion in gender-based differences exemplified in the expression of leadership capabilities (Agezo and Hope, 2011; Konrad et al., 2000). However, Daft (2017) believes women and men lead differently because the hierarchical, top-of-a-pyramid, male style of leadership differs from the interpersonal, task-oriented and democratic style of females who drive leadership from the centre through a network of relationships and collaboration. These polemics have been persistent but what is clear is that both women and men are capable of leading and deserve the opportunity to lead. However, how we theorise leadership can include or exclude people from school leadership.

Male leadership: its locus of influence

Theories of leadership tell us the story behind how people perceive leadership and locate its locus of influence. The trait theorists of leadership (Bingham, 1927; Galton, 1869) portray leadership as a hierarchically dualistic relationship between leaders and followers. Leaders hold a position of privilege because they are superior to their followers through natural ability (Gordon, 2002). In trait theory, leadership and leader represent the same thing, implying that the locus of leadership is in the special, heroic or extraordinary man (Harris, 2009). By locating and centring power and authority in an ‘extraordinary’ individual, the trait theory encourages the erection of unhealthy hierarchical and gendered walls that exclude both men and women from school leadership. Theorising leadership as such leads to the evil of leader-centrism or romanticising leaders (Gronn, 2007) and exclusion.

Influencing stakeholders who can mutually influence themselves to achieve a school’s moral purpose is an activity that both men and women in the school communities can undertake and may do so volitionally (Hawkins and James, 2018). The influencing occurs at multiple levels by different people in schools (Harris and DeFlaminis, 2016) through speaking, a look or by being present, and/or with an action (Connolly et al., 2019). It may be collective, whereby a group, for example, of teachers influence the headteacher and vice versa, or one teacher influences or is influenced by a group of teachers. This means that mutual influencing can be vertical or horizontal.

A contemporary approach to unpacking school leadership has been to link leadership to the idea of positive change and influence. The need for change is a prerequisite for school improvement and, for Hallinger (2003) and Bush (2008), bringing about change is a leadership practice, which is fundamentally about relationship and mutual influencing. As an influencing process, leadership seeks to cause people to think or act in ways that they would not have done otherwise to provide equal opportunities in learning to all students (Bogotch et al., 2019; Connolly et al., 2019; Leithwood et al., 2008). Thus, leadership is a dynamic relational activity (Branson and Marra, 2019; Eacott, 2016) that places a premium on mutual interactions to build, motivate and encourage others (Hawkins and James, 2018) rather than a static position located in a heroic individual.

In the Ghanaian school context, the interpretation of leadership as an influence is a tension-laden issue (Oduro and Macbeath, 2003) between adherents to the traditional hierarchical perspective on leadership and its critics. The tension revolves around the relevance of the hierarchical, person-centred forms of influence vis-à-vis the Ghanaian existential realities. People continue to wrestle with the question of whether or not the traditional modes of thought and leadership behaviour, including reinforcing of gender walls around single sex schools, constitute resources or impediments to the leading, teaching and learning activities. The ubiquitous desire by Ghanaians for an improved and robust educational system is a sufficient signal that gendered walls should not frustrate activities which relate to the achievement of a school’s vision. Rather, we should dismantle these walls to allow leadership to be accessed by those who have a blend of humility and intense professional will (Collins, 2001) to exchange talents and influence education stakeholders to achieve schools’ moral purposes. I describe below how I investigated the functioning of such gender walls in the case study school, before analysing the findings.

Methodology

This section explains the research strategy, participants, data collection instruments, and positionality, reflexivity and trustworthiness. Qualitative case study was used for the research, enabling me to investigate the particular contemporary phenomenon – male headship in a girls’ school, in depth and within its real-life context using multiple sources of evidence. Case studies are a useful research strategy when a ‘how or why question is being asked about a contemporary set of events’ (Yin, 2014: 913) to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the complex real-life event in the context of the school. Context represents the dynamic reality that researchers and participants co-create constantly, based on their geographical, historical, socio-cultural, political and ethical sensitivities (Stake, 2006).

Participants

Twenty-three stakeholders participated in the research. They were purposively sampled with the exception of the parents and alumnae who were snowballed. Table 1 shows the participants and criteria for inclusion.

Table 1.

Participants and criteria for inclusion.

Participant categories	Quantity	Criteria for inclusion
Current headteacher	1	Privilege knowledge as headteacher
Former headteachers	2	Privilege knowledge as former headteachers
Teachers	6	Length of service in research school, gender, availability, sense of critical balance
Pupils (Basics 8 & 9 aged between 14 and 15)	4	Gender, age, length of stay in the school, ability to communicate in English, willingness
Parents	2	Availability and ability to communicate in English
Parent Teacher Association (PTA) chair	1	Capacity as PTA chair and willingness
School Management Committee (SMC) chair	1	Capacity as SMC chair and willingness
Circuit supervisor (CS)	1	Capacity as CS and willingness
Alumnae	5	Availability and willingness
Total	23

Data collection methods

Semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations and document analysis were used to collect data for the study. All the contributors participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews at locations of their convenience with each interview lasting from 50 minutes to 1 hour. With the participants’ consent, all the responses were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. The interviews enabled me to engage with the participants, to probe and prompt them to share their knowledge, perceptions, perspectives and experiences flexibly in reasonable depth (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2015). Some of the interview questions for the headteacher were:

1. Could you share with me how you became the headteacher of the school?

2. How did stakeholders especially teachers, parents and alumnae react to your appointment?

3. Did you feel any pressure to perform well because of the opposition you were facing?

4. How do you conceptualise school leadership?

5. Could you share with me strategies, if any, that you put in place to make teaching and learning in the school effective?

These questions aimed to generate reflection on his experience as a male head of the girls’ school, especially how he handled the opposition and turned it into appreciation and support, and his perspective on the concept of leadership. The interviews questions for the other participants were a bit different and aimed to elicit their direct and indirect experiences of the leadership practice of the male head and their views about leadership. For example, teachers, parents and alumnae responded to questions including:

1. How did you react to the appointment of the male to lead the school?

2. Why did you react the way you did?

3. What is your view about school leadership?

4. Could you describe your experiences of the leadership practice of the male headteacher?

5. Are there any leadership strategies he introduced to make teaching and learning effective?’

My multiple overt, informal and non-participant observations (Cohen et al., 2018) over a period of four months when the new male head was already in post focussed on the general school atmosphere, the quality as well as the presence or absence of physical infrastructure, the organisational culture, and opportunities for teachers and pupils to lead. The observations, which I recorded as field notes helped me to gain not only direct access to events and practices in such a way that ‘live’ first-hand authentic data were collected, but also confirmed or contradicted some of the claims made during the interviews. I was also able to analyse documents such as the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) broadsheets and teacher attendance records to gain insights into the performance of the pupils and teacher punctuality respectively. The BECE is a standardised examination which junior high or lower secondary pupils write and the outcome of this examination determines their promotion to senior high or upper secondary schools.

Positionality, reflexivity and trustworthiness

This research was about human affairs and actions, and entailed sampling of research participants, developing relationships with them, asking questions and observing physical and social infrastructure. The social nature of the research process makes it prone to bias, which can compromise the trustworthiness or credibility of the data and findings. I was conscious of the fact that my patriarchal Ghanaian background and my position as a male university lecturer and researcher based in Ghana investigating issues of gender and leadership in a male-led girls’ school could be a potential threat to the integrity of the research process and findings. Thus, I accounted for my positionality; firstly, by maintaining ethical consciousness and reflexivity throughout the research. By reflexivity, I refer to the methodological self-consciousness that enabled me to engage in explicit self-aware meta-analysis of my personal ideological agenda and role in the research process (Finlay, 2002) to monitor and unmask them. Secondly, by involving multiple participants who were given the opportunity to clarify their responses to the interview questions, I was able to access a wide range of different perspectives that helped to challenge and reframe preconceptions (Atkinson and Delamont, 2008) to enhance the credibility of the research. Thirdly, the choice of using multiple data collection instruments made it possible to triangulate the evidence and enrich the narrative to enhance the trustworthiness of the research. The open and flexible manner of the interview questioning, my appreciation of whatever the participants freely shared, the preponderance of female participants, and the intra- and cross-case analysis of their responses were some of the measures I used to address potential bias to achieve trustworthiness.

Data analysis

The data analysis was ongoing and iterative right from the onset of the research activity as recommended by Silverman (2011) and Robson and McCartan (2016). I analysed the responses of each participant (i.e. unit of analysis) as illustrated in Figure 1 to gain an in-depth understanding of their views.

Figure 1.

Example of single case study design with embedded units of analysis.

After analysing the transcripts from each participant to understand their views, the analysis was conducted across the different participants to identify similarities and differences in their perspectives and experiences. The cross-analysis involved constant comparison (Kolb, 2012), charting the data and mapping and interpreting them (Smith and Firth, 2011) so that the individual findings could be incorporated into a holistic picture. On a case-by-case basis, views from the various categories of participants were thematically coded by hand according to the research questions:

1. What are the reasons why people oppose a man or a woman to head up a single sex school that is opposite to their gender?

2. What underlying perceptions of leadership influence notions of gender as a determinant of one’s suitability and accessibility to leadership?

3. How does gender stereotyping affect the effectiveness of leadership practice?

Some of the themes that emerged from the initial analysis of the data included ‘maintaining tradition’, ‘affirmative action’, ‘resistance of male dominance’, ‘leadership as the leader’, ‘leadership as influence’ and ‘gender walls’. The various codes were constantly scrutinised and compared to highlight variations in the interview transcripts. Charting the codes from the interviews provided the medium to abstract and make distilled judgements about the data. Distilled summaries from each interviewee’s responses were mapped to other interviewees, and then to the observations and documentary analysis to find associations and provide explanations to corroborate or rival interviews. Using the theme ‘leadership as influence’ as an example, the common explanation among the interviewees linked it to social and physical infrastructural improvement in the school. When this claim was mapped with the observation notes, there was resonance because there was evidence of a refurbished kindergarten building, classrooms and the computer laboratory. Similarly, when the current headteacher talked about improved performance of the pupils in their standardised basic education examinations, my analysis of the BECE broadsheets from 2014 to 2019 showed a trend of improvement in the pupils’ performance. The increased number of pupils who attained high grades that enabled them to gain admission into high-performing senior high schools exemplified this.

Results of the study

The analysis shaped the respondents’ contributions into five findings or summary statements that helped to illuminate the story about gender and leadership politicking in the case study school. Regarding the first research question (RQ1), which related to why people oppose a male or female headship in a single sex school that is opposite to their gender, the main findings were:

To maintain the tradition.

To offset the relative male dominance and promote gender-based affirmative action.

For the second research question (RQ2), which sought participants’ perceptions about leadership that influence the notion that gender should determine people’s suitability and accessibility to formal school leadership positions, the main findings were that:

Leadership is coterminous with the positional leader;

Leadership means creating and influencing relationships for greater good.

In relation to the final question (RQ3) – what are the effects of gender stereotyping on leadership? – the finding was that:

Gender stereotyping builds gendered walls that depress effective leadership practice.

RQ1: Why do people oppose others of the opposite gender to lead a single-sex school?

To maintain the tradition

Literally every participant referred to the desire of people ‘to maintain the tradition’ as the basis for opposing a male or female leadership in single sex schools that are opposite to their gender. Using historical lenses and the situation in senior high schools to illustrate their point, some alumnae and the previous headteacher argued that the reason why single sex schools are so successful in Ghana was that they maintained the tradition of being led by people of the same gender. One alumna said:

The tradition has been for a single sex school to be headed by a person with same gender, and that has worked well. That is why up to today, no one dare propose a male head for all-girls ‘schools like (names) and vice versa for all-boys schools like (names).

Drawing participants’ attention to the fact that these are senior high schools, which are often boarding schools, compared to the basic single sex schools, which are day schools, some of the teachers and alumnae were resolute that no one must toy with tradition. Another alumna reacted: ‘When I heard a guy is heading our alma mater, I felt so disappointed because females have always headed this school so why break the tradition!’

In clarifying what tradition really meant in this context and why the insistence on maintaining it, the common response was that tradition was the wisdom of having women lead the school from generation to generation. This is because men lack an understanding of the physiological, psychological and social sensitivities of women. Some participants claimed that women understand women better since they share the same physiology. The previous headteacher asked: ‘What do males know about female psychology, physiology and sensitivity? Most of these girls are adolescents and can’t come to him to share their sensitive issues.’ Therefore, some participants argued that a male headship of the school would break the female–female affinity bond. As another alumna asserted:

(A) male headteacher will break the affinity protocol. We’ve been raised females. As a female, you want to be able to form that connection with your female counterparts; you want to be able to develop your skills set based on your affinity with your other females.

A female parent also said: ‘Men are rough and careless so the girls will not be safe in his custody.’ However, one of the former headteachers, who herself was an alumna and spent her entire professional career in the school as teacher and headteacher, clarified that the school was not always headed by women. She recalled:

Between 1972 and 1992, I worked with two male headteachers. I was a teacher under the headship of one and later succeeded him. The other succeeded me. The current one is the third male to head the school but people have always revolted against appointment of males as heads. I don’t understand why because we the staff and parents worked so well with them to ensure high moral and academic standards.

That notwithstanding, male dominance in school leadership occurred frequently as another reason for opposing their headship.

To offset relative male dominance

When I informed participants that some boys’ schools have headteachers who are women, it elicited mixed perspectives, with some participants rejecting the idea. Two parents – a male and a female – said that they were comfortable with females or males leading co-educational schools, but for single sex schools the positional leader should be of the same gender. However, other participants were excited with the appointment of females to lead boys’ schools because it was a way of offsetting male dominance in leadership spaces and promoting gender-based affirmative action. One female teacher stated that ‘men have always dominated leadership positions and we cannot leave leadership to only men. We need gender equality in school leadership; we need affirmative action.’ When asked whether building walls around leadership was the best way to achieve gender equality, one teacher said: “that won't help.”. The current headteacher and some teachers argued that people’s professional integrity, energy and expertise should determine their access to school headship, and not mere gender affiliation. The headteacher explained:

Leadership is kind of social architecture where you create and build relationships among the various stakeholders into a united force. You can’t do this if you do not have the competence, integrity and the passion so these qualities should be the criteria for appointing school heads.

RQ2: What notion do people have about leadership that makes them think that people’s gender should determine their suitability and accessibility to leadership positions?

Regarding the notion of leadership, the participants provided various responses: firstly, perceiving leadership as coterminous with a positional leader; and secondly, as an influencing activity, which essentially is relational and shared. Participants who equated leadership to a positional leader believed that gender should determine people’s suitability and accessibility to formal leadership positions. However, participants who perceived leadership as activity of influencing others to achieve a goal said that professional competence and passion should determine who accessed leadership.

Notion of leadership as coterminous with the positional leader

Analysis of the interviews showed that some participants equate leadership to the personal traits of the formal leader of the school so they strongly believed in the rigid hierarchical divide between the leader and the led. As the immediate former headteacher of the school asserted: ‘Leadership is about the person who is officially appointed to be in-charge of the school and his/her personal characteristics.’ In responding to a probe about what these characteristics could be, participants mentioned strength, toughness, courage, assertiveness, intelligence, creativity, gentility, care and cooperativeness. To gauge whether these qualities are a preserve of males or females or both, I sought participants’ views about women heading boys’ schools and the current man who was leading the girls’ school. In relation to this latter case, one alumna said: ‘That means they are tough and assertive enough to discipline the boys.’ A female teacher remarked: ‘I am surprised women accept such appointments because men are rough and condescending. The boys will give her (a) tough time.’ From the previous headteacher’s perspective, if a woman accepted to head a male-dominated school, it implied she had a tough skin.

When asked if I should conclude on the basis of these views that men are tough, strong and courageous, and women are not, some of the participants, both men and women, responded in the affirmative. One of the alumnae said: ‘you know females are by nature gentle, caring, and empathetic’. Nevertheless, the teachers of the research school, based on their experiences of female and male heads, disagreed with the categorisation. A female teacher remarked:

My experience is that the female head was principled, always in the school and kept higher discipline and order than the male head. Under her, cleanliness was at its peak but she was difficult to approach because she was a strong and tough character. With the male head, discipline is low but he listens well, is gentle and easily approachable. He motivates or rewards us, and has excellent relationship with us. That is why all those who initially opposed him now praise and support him.

A male teacher corroborated this view as follows:

The female head was very punctual and a great disciplinarian. No one misbehaved; but she was autocratic and insensitive to our concerns. The male head believes everyone is a leader, trusts us and accounts for all funds. He has excellent interpersonal relationships: easy to approach, generous and sensitive to our needs but he is not a disciplinarian.

However, some of the participants perceived leadership not as a provenance of formal leaders but as an activity involving mutual influencing, relationship and sharing.

Notion of leadership as creating and influencing relationships

Most of the participants in the study conceived of leadership as a practice that is essentially relational and shared. As the current headteacher explained:

The heart of leadership lies in creating and influencing relationships that build trust. When people build mutual trust, you can share leadership responsibilities in the school based on their talents, expertise and experiences. Leadership is not about me; it is not about being a male or female. It is about being able to get the various stakeholders to build a strong school family. That is how I transformed people from being opposers to supporters.

A female teacher whose views resonated with the headteacher’s view remarked:

People keep saying males lack the understanding of female psychology and vice versa. Leadership is more than the individual is. Out of the 28 staff in this school, 25 are females. I believe with the support of parents and we the teachers, the children can learn well whether a male or female heads the school. Leadership is about motivating teachers to motivate themselves to do their work well, inspiring the children to learn well, and parents to support. So I don’t care whether a male or female heads the school so long as we create the right environment for trust, effective teaching and learning.

The four learners that I interviewed claimed that they were doing well in their studies and that everyone, including themselves, teachers and parents, was able to take an active part in school activities. One girl said:

Our school is the best; see our new KG block and nice drawings on the walls, and our new computers. Our seniors passed their exams well and some of them are in the grade A senior high schools. Everyone now want(s) to come to our school.

Thus, leadership for these learners was about creating a conducive and peaceful learning environment that allowed them to take initiatives and express their talents. However, some teachers lamented the continued building and reinforcing of gender walls around school leadership. A female teacher admonished:

If we are fighting for gender equity in leadership, we should avoid the mistakes men have made to exclude women from leadership and certain professions. We should focus on professional integrity, competence and passion for the job.

Both the circuit supervisor (CS) (an education officer who supervises a group of schools in a circuit/section of a district) and a female parent believed those who opposed the male rushed to judge him. The CS said: ‘now look, people who used to oppose him are at the forefront supporting him with ideas and cash contributions to furnish the computer lab.’ Some stakeholders believed gender stereotyping never promoted effective leadership.

RQ3: What are the effects of gender walls on leadership practice?

Gendered walls depress leadership practice

In responding to why he accepted the appointment to head a girls’ school, the headteacher replied:

Why not? I am competent and have the professional will to create a conducive environment for teachers to teach well and the pupils to learn well. The issue of gender doesn’t come in here. That’s why my main question has been: How do I lead the school forward from where I found it?

He was quick to add that his biggest challenge was how to address the problem of gender-imposed uncooperativeness; ‘the let’s watch and see’ and ‘let’s prove our opposition stance right’ attitudes. The headteacher lamented:

Gender stereotyping is a big problem. You are judged before you start your work. There was this female teacher who opposed everything I proposed because she wouldn’t accept a male to head the school. It took calm and patient-trust to convert her. My female colleagues heading all-boys schools face a similar opposition, mostly from the alumni. We need to break the gender walls so that we don’t exclude good leaders.

Leadership actions that changed gender stereotyping

The study sought to know how the headteacher broke the gender stereotyping to achieve his vision for the school. He explained that the exhibition of consistent calm resilience, professional and moral integrity, and motivation of staff won him the admiration of stakeholders including his detractors: ‘People can have prejudices against you but once they work with you and realise their biases are unfounded, they begin to accept and support you’ (current headteacher). He further explained that as time went on, stakeholders began to appreciate his efforts to be accountable and creative and to develop the social capital – vertical and horizontal bonds or networks within and without the school. This appreciation led to a successful implementation of the following projects:

getting the school to benefit from the government school feeding programme;

remodelling of the kindergarten block project;

the two teachers per large classes (about 80 learners) policy;

the speech and prize-giving day project;

let every child feel the computer keyboard policy;

let the school be a home for every stakeholder policy;

let the walls and trees educate project; and

our children deserve grade A schools policy.

As stakeholders shared, the success of these projects not only inspires positive attitudinal change, but also makes the school a preferred destination for teachers and learners. It is important to explain the dynamic of positive attitudinal change because of the role it played in inspiring this study. It was in 2016 during my doctoral fieldwork that the GES replaced the retiring female headteacher with a 39-year-old male. This decision generated some opposition from the retired headteacher, teachers, parents and alumnae of the school. Even though this experience did not relate to my fieldwork, it aroused some interest in me, so subsequently I developed informal links with some of the stakeholders through mobile phone conversations. As the years unfolded, I noticed a gradual trend of dispositional reversal from the initial discontent and opposition to content and appreciation of the headteacher. Figure 2 provides a graphical representation of the ways in which the stakeholders opposed the male leader and how he turned the opposition into support and appreciation.

Figure 2.

The trend of attitudinal change from opposition to appreciation.

The headteacher’s approach to creating such attitudinal change was telling. He said to one alumna: ‘I believe that one day, you will see the need to break the gendered walls to free effective leadership in schools.’

Discussion

The headteacher’s belief inspired me not just to follow the unfolding of events in this school, but also to explore the issues of gender equity and politicking in leadership spaces in Ghanaian basic schools. Mindful of the scarcity of studies focusing solely on single sex schools in Ghana (Agezo and Hope, 2011), this study aimed to contribute to our understanding of the reasons that underlie gender politicking in single sex schools.

The findings presented in this article suggest that loyalty to gender walls in single sex schools reflects the desire to respect and maintain the tradition of keeping female headteachers in girls’ schools and male headteachers in boys’ schools. This implies that Ghana is still a traditional society, which like other African societies (Agezo and Hope, 2011; Diko, 2014; Kailiti, 2018; Moorosi, 2014) is characterised by gender inequity in leadership spaces.

The findings of the study also suggest that some people, especially those who subscribe to the trait theories of leadership, perceive leadership as coterminous with positional leaders who are predominantly men. They situate the locus of leadership in the positional leader (Harris, 2009; Neuberg et al., 2010) or what Collins (2001: 45) refers to as ‘a genius with a thousand helpers’. An implication of this conceptualisation of leadership is the possibility that it will reinforce gender identity as a determinant for suitability and accessibility to school leadership rather than professional expertise and passion. Another issue that emerges from equating leadership with the positional leader is that it presents a reductionist view of leadership, which can reinforce gender walls and a rigid hierarchy that either renders the led as passive recipients of top-down directives or excludes them from participating in leadership. The finding also raises the question of gender-differentiated and genetically adapted gender-specific roles (Neuberg et al., 2010), which evolutionary psychologists assigned to women and men.

From the dynamics of contemporary society, there is evidence of erosion in gender-based differences in the expression of leadership. The behaviour of women and men is now thought to be sufficiently malleable for both to be able to carry out leadership roles effectively at all levels and in all contexts (Agezo and Hope, 2011; Wood and Eagly, 2002). Evidences from this study resonate with the views of these authors showing that the male headteacher is as approachable, caring and sensitive as some previous female headteachers, and the latter as assertive, strong and courageous as male headteachers.

There was general agreement among participants in my study of the need to offset the androcentric grip of school leadership spaces by promoting gender equity and equality. Thus, in this study, opposition to male leadership was to correct what Fraser (1997) refers to as the evils of female misrecognition and underrepresentation (Kailiti, 2018) in leadership. Whilst the data from the Ghana Educational Directory (2017), which shows that women constitute 78% of headship of single sex basic schools in Ghana, does not support these assertions, this study demonstrates that there is a lingering problem of gender inequity in school leadership.

The socio-economic and technological complexity of contemporary knowledge society makes the conceptualisation of leadership as a mutually influencing relational and shared activity more appealing. The present study raises the possibility that the success of the current headteacher was because of his ability to harness the social capital and talents of stakeholders to support the leading, teaching and learning activities. Thus, the headteacher’s emphasis on mutual influence, collaboration, interactions and relationship-building as critical aspects of leadership resonates with the findings of many recent educational leadership research studies including Eacott (2016), Bogotch et al. (2019) and Connolly et al. (2019). The findings of this research show that where there is professional expertise and will, accountability, co-agency and a blend of humility, trust develops, and where there is trust, leadership thrives. In such contexts, gender equity in leadership thrives because expertise and professional integrity are the prerequisites.

Conclusion

This study contributed to our understanding of the reasons that underlie gender politicking in single sex schools in Ghana. The findings of the study suggest that loyalty to gender walls in single sex schools reflects the desire to respect and maintain the tradition of keeping female headteachers in girls’ schools and male headteachers in boys’ schools. This implies that Ghana is still a traditional and patriarchal society that is characterised by the perceived alignment of leadership with men, and by gender inequity in leadership spaces. However, the study revealed that competence, moral and professional integrity and drive for excellence are more important determinants of effective leadership practice than gender. Overall, the findings of this study complement existing studies on gender and leadership in Ghanaian public co-educational schools by shedding new light on the reasons that account for gender politicking in single sex schools and how school leaders transcend the challenges to provide effective leadership.

Based on the findings and conclusions, the following observations and recommendations are made. For further research:

Ghana is a traditional and patriarchal society. Thus, gender politicking in Ghanaian schools is an important issue. A further study should compare the experiences of female and male heads of several single sex schools to give a more representative picture of gender politicking.

Co-educational and single sex schools are different in character. Further research should compare gender politicking in both to gauge the degree of convergences and divergences and what account for them.

For practitioners:

Gender-based opposition is part of the reality of working or leading others but once people excel in their responsibilities, they can convert their detractors to collaborators.

For the GES:

Professional competence, more integrity, and passion for excellence are important determinants of effective leadership practice, and should be the basis for appointing people to leadership positions.

Leading schools in environments charged with gender-based prejudices requires professional competence. Thus, GES should provide leadership preparation and development for practitioners to respond adequately to such needs.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

ORCID iD

Raymond Chegedua Tangonyire

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