Female leadership in the Arab world: an ethnographic study of educational leaders

ABSTRACT

The Arab world is very diverse when it comes to leadership practices. The females’ level of participation in leadership positions in Arab countries ranges from very restricted to fully engaged. Taking on leadership roles imposes many challenges both on micro and macro levels. The aim of this study is to explore the leadership practices of Arab female educational leaders and understand the impact that environment and culture have on their leadership practices. Using an ethnographic approach, seven female educational leaders, who lived and worked in leadership positions in eight Arab countries, revealed that they practice a combination of transformational, servant and instructional leadership dimensions. However, a new leadership style emerged ensuring that these leaders and their followers are valued for who they are and rewarded for what they do. This study highlights the combination of both aspects of change and leadership as critical to female educational leaders success in addition to mentoring, informal networking and social connections. Furthermore, having partner and family support were identified as a cornerstone to their career advancement. This study suggests the need to design policies that support teachers to become involved in decision making and to promote them into leadership positions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Baroudi

Dr. Sandra Baroudi joined Zayed University as an Assistant Professor in August 2020. She holds a PhD in Education from the British University in Dubai (BUID), UAE. Dr. Baroudi provides mentorship, training and professional development for in-service teachers in the Ta’Alouf Program for Career Based Teacher Development, through the Al Jalila Foundation. She developed PD modules to train teachers at the National Charity schools as part of the upskilling sustainable project in partnership between HSBC Middle East and Zayed University. She was a researcher Fellow for Queen Rania Foundation in Jordan and the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK. She held the position of a visiting faculty at UAEU in Al Ain for spring semester of 2019-2020. She worked for 5 years as a freelance researcher at the college of Education at Zayed university in Dubai. Her work explores the leadership and management in education, teacher education and professional development, technology integration in classroom, and development of female leadership in the MENA region. She led the contextualization of the teaching and learning toolkit into the Arab world context. Dr. Baroudi has presented at national and international conferences and published her work internationally in peer-reviewed journals. She is currently involved in various research projects. All her intellectual contributions are cited on her google scholar and ResearchGate profile. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5zrJbe4AAAAJ&hl=en https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandra_Baroudi3

Zeina Hojeij

Dr. Hojeij is currently the Associate Dean for the College of Education at Zayed University. She holds an EdD in Educational Leadership and Administration from Saint Louis University, MI, USA. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, HEA. Additionally, she is a Certified Online Instructor (COI), CELTA & CELTYL certified. Her research interests include mobile learning technology, educational leadership, applied linguistics and teaching & learning. Email: [email protected]: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-zeina-hojeij-abi-abdallah-b9848737/?originalSubdomain=ae ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zeina_HojeijAcademia: https://zayed.academia.edu/ZeinaHojeijGoogleScholar :https://scholar.google.ae/citations?user=htGIykcAAAAJ&hl=en