Navigating senior leadership in higher education: a case study of women in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Women are significantly underrepresented in leadership roles across sectors in Cambodia, and governmental policy is seeking to change this to promote gender equality in all high-level leadership. This qualitative research identified what factors supports Cambodian women to be successful in higher education senior leadership and the barriers they encounter in attaining and maintaining senior leadership roles. Eleven women in senior leadership roles from six prestigious higher education institutions in Phnom Penh were interviewed. Key findings revealed that self-efficacy, opportunities to learn, and support from the family, the workplace, and society were supportive factors for these Cambodian women to become senior leaders. Barriers faced by the women in this research included an overarching societal mind-set about women in society, constraints in the workplace, the pressures of family responsibilities, and their personally held expectations and values. Analysis using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework reveals that opportunities and challenges are embedded across levels – from the individual level to family, institutional, and societal levels. Change therefore requires intentional interventions targeting all levels, including individual beliefs, institutional norms, organizational culture, government policy, and ultimately, societal values. While this is a complex endeavor, this research provides insight into what is possible for women when they experience support across these levels.

Introduction

The global higher education context

Women are globally underrepresented in higher education leadership and continue to face a complex web of obstacles to gain their seat at the male-dominated table of decision-making in universities. The U.S.A. has seen a recent decline in the number of universities led by women; in 2021, only 17% of US universities had a female leader, compared to 21% the year prior (Times Higher Education, 2021). The European University Association (2022) reports that, although there has been a 73% increase in female leadership in the last 8 years across their 800-member universities, women still make up less than a fifth of the leadership in 2022. A gender equality report published in 2020 noted that, although women make up almost half of UK academic staff, only 29% hold a senior leadership position (see Meredith, 2022). This global picture of women’s limited involvement in leadership continues despite women being more educated than ever; women obtain undergraduate degrees at higher percentages than men in 74% of the countries with available data (UNESCO, 2021).

Women in Cambodia

Although Cambodia is a unique country, it appears to have commonalities with other countries and cultures when it comes to societal expectations about women’s participation in senior leadership roles. Cambodia has been referred to as a male-dominated society (Maxwell et al., 2015), wherein men occupy most employment opportunities across all sectors. Cambodian cultural norms are thought to constitute the main obstacles to women moving into paid employment (Booth, 2014). According to Chbab Srey (traditional codes of conduct for Cambodian women), women play an important role in representing the honor of their family (Meurn, 1957). Women are expected to respect their husband and family and to undertake household responsibilities rather than going out to work, obtaining a higher education, or doing business. Women have been expected to depend on their husbands or families and to manage home responsibilities, including taking care of children.

Today, this traditional code of conduct is being challenged, and many women in Cambodia have more opportunities to pursue higher education and hold leadership roles. However, women remain underrepresented in leadership positions, and low rates of women’s inclusion in economic activities and employment remain a concern. For example, women have limited representation in politics; Cambodia takes 121st place among 146 countries for its commitment to women’s political empowerment (World Economic Forum, 2022). Men are more likely than women to be involved in political decision-making, and there is a low percentage of women officials in both provincial and national government (Cambodia Development Resource Institute, 2020). Inequitable gender patterns are also evident in the context of higher education in Cambodia. Men hold the majority of leadership positions in this sector and are more likely to be promoted than their female colleagues (Maxwell et al., 2015).

Thus, although there have been more women in leadership roles recently, women are still underrepresented in all sectors, including higher education settings. Women are often perceived to be inferior to men when competing for senior leadership and management roles (Cambodia Development Resource Institute, 2020). These inequities are understood to be due to a lack of support for female empowerment, male dominance, gender stereotypes, family burdens, discrimination, and limitations placed on women’s education, abilities, and confidence (Kasumi, 2020).

A way forward

Cambodia has ratified a number of treaties at UN and governmental levels regarding human rights and freedom from discrimination. However, despite the governmental commitment to nondiscrimination, there are still a range of factors that both promote and restrict women’s full participation in work and leadership; gender discrimination therefore clearly remains evident. This research explores the experiences of women in Cambodia who currently hold senior leadership positions in higher education; specifically, it seeks to identify some of the opportunities and challenges that these women face. One of the important aspects of bringing about change is understanding the perceptions held by people who are involved in the change process. To comprehend what it takes for women to hold senior leadership positions in higher education institutions, it is therefore important to gain insight into both their perceptions of their own values and the larger macro systems and societal values that influence their choices and opportunities. Uncovering and understanding these issues is also important if change is to be possible.

Influences on women’s opportunities to lead

Gender disparity and stereotypes within the institution are a well-researched and globally recognized phenomenon (Islam et al., 2023; Tran & Nguyen, 2022). Islam et al. (2023) identified socio-cultural, organizational, and individual barriers that affect women’s ability to advance toward leadership. These include cultural projections that men are natural leaders; a lack of training, support and flexibility within organizational policy; and women’s lack of confidence and empowerment. Almost a decade ago, Morley (2014) reported that women are not strategically positioned on the pathway to leadership. This pathway is mapped out by the psycho-social construction of what leadership looks like and also by the very material threads that are woven into organizational structures and promotional culture. This means that leadership as a concept inherently conjures masculine properties, but more than that, it provokes a double entendre. First, women have to overcome a string of obstacles to even have the desire to occupy this stronghold of masculine leadership; then, once they have begun their occupation, they also have to embody and perform those masculine properties with which leadership is synonymous. There is a distinct discrepancy between leadership stereotypes and female gender stereotypes, with women bearing the brunt of both (Tran & Nguyen, 2022). These stereotypes mean that women leaders often have greater difficulty acquiring respect from colleagues – a key ingredient to the legitimacy of leadership and one that men inherently receive (Tran & Nguyen, 2022). Morley (2014) wrote of a ‘cultural climate, or hidden curriculum, resulting in organizational and cultural norms that depress women’s aspirations and career orientations’ (p. 121). A few years later, Shepherd (2017) wrote that the very nature of an academic career rests on individualism, self-promotion, and self-responsibility, making the weighted role of structural and organizational inequality perfectly obscured.

Importance of research

The societal structures that are reflected in leadership identities and organizations tend to benefit and advantage men whilst creating barriers and challenges for women (Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016). These structures also perpetuate and actively participate in reproducing societal norms that favor men and masculine ideals (Acker, 1990). This turbulent road to leadership for women has far-reaching consequences, with Longman (2018) writing that the ‘underrepresentation of women in leadership has detrimental ripple effects across communities and countries’ (p. 1). There is a plethora of research that recognizes organizations are more efficient and effective when they have diverse leadership; Islam et al. (2023), for example, argued that institutions would see increased benefits across organizational culture, innovation, and performance if they recruited women into leadership positions in long-term and sustainable ways. Seno-Alday (2019) contended that gender-diverse workplaces and leadership teams are better able to cope with dynamic change and increased uncertainty, whilst Emerson (2022) argued hat organizations which actively incorporate a variety of experiences and perspectives into their internal processes are more profitable, healthy, analytical, and dynamic.

The study

It is crucial to understand what influences women’s opportunities to obtain leadership positions across both developing and developed countries. The majority of existing research has been undertaken in developed nations, so this research focuses on an economically developing nation that has a complex history and cultural context.

The overall aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of women in Cambodia who have achieved senior leadership roles in higher education. In particular, this study sought to answer the following question‘What supports and barriers to attaining and maintaining a senior leadership position do women encounter in Cambodian higher education?’

Method

This is a qualitative interview study. Six institutions of higher education were selected as sites for this research. Selection was based on: 1) high academic reputation; and 2) two or more women in positions as either vice chancellor, vice-rector, dean, vice-dean, academic coordinator, head of department, officer, or assistant dean. All universities were situated in the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

Participants

Six institutions in Phnom Penh were identified as fitting the criteria for both academic reputation and having two or more women in senior leadership positions. Study participants were purposefully selected from the six institutions based on three criteria. First, they were women; second, they held a senior leadership position; and third, they had been in their leadership role for at least two years. The scope of this study in terms of funding and timing allowed for 11 participants to be randomly selected from the list of 52 women who met these criteria. All 11 agreed to participate (see Table 1).

Table 1. Participants.

Pseudonym	Position	Highest Qualification	Years in role
Kanitha	Head of Social Science Department	Master of Social Work	4
Sopheap	English Language Department coordinator	Master of Arts in Teaching	14
Vary	Vice-rector	Master in Economics for Development	2
Kunthy	Internal quality assurance officer	Master of Arts in Teaching	2
Kalyan	Dean, Social Science	Master of Finance and Banking	2
Bopha	Vice-dean, Law	Master of Private Law	5
Rachana	Assistant dean, Humanities and Languages	Bachelor of Tourism	10
Leakhena	Head of library	Master of Administration	14
Theary	Vice-chancellor	Master of Business Administration	12
Rana	Vice-rector academic	PhD in History	2
Neary	Senior official	Master of Public Administration	5

Interviews

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken on-site in each participant’s university. Interview questions were designed to gather information about the leader’s perceptions of the supports and barriers they had experienced in relation to their leadership roles at the university. Semi-structured interview questions were developed following a review of the literature regarding leadership, higher education, and women in Cambodia. Questions focused on the personal experiences of the women interviewed. Questions included, for example, ‘What in particular supports you to succeed in your role?’ and ‘What are some of the challenges you face in your leadership work as a woman?’ Each interview was approximately 90 minutes’ duration. Interviews were undertaken in the Khmer language, audio-recorded, and later transcribed and translated into English. Each leader engaged in one interview.

Data analysis

A thematic analysis was employed in this study (Braun & Clarke, 2022). The first two authors collaborated in the steps of familiarization, categorization, and synthesis of the data. Themes were synthesized from each transcript, and the data were interpreted based on each coded theme. Where researchers disagreed on coding, the coding categories and instructions were more finely defined, and discussion ensued until agreement was reached. Analysis was an iterative approach and was informed by existing themes in the research while also allowing for themes to emerge from the data.

Once all data were coded using thematic analysis, a further level of analysis using the established themes was led by the third author using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979). This analysis was used to enable exploration of the ways in which the barriers and supports identified exist and interact within a wider societal context. Bronfenbrenner (1979) posited that individual development is influenced by interactions across macro, meso, and micro environments. In our analysis, the macro represents the wider cultural context, the meso represents family and organizational levels, and the micro represents the individual or personal level.

Findings

First, the findings regarding supportive factors for women’s leadership are presented, followed by the barriers women experience in undertaking leadership roles.

Supportive factors

The supportive factors are presented in relation to where they are situated (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

Micro

The first findings presented sit within the micro level. These are particular to the women as individuals.

Self-efficacy

In this study, self-efficiency refers to female leaders’ beliefs in themselves to succeed in their leadership roles. Characteristics of this belief system consist of confidence, courage, willingness, commitment, goals, dreams, and ambitions. Nine of the 11 participants stated that possessing at least one of these beliefs played a crucial role in their success and accomplishments. All 11 participants agreed that confidence was one of the factors which led to their attaining leadership roles. The notion of self-efficacy in the ecosystem sits within the micro level, as it personalizes the responsibility of leadership onto the individual woman and frames her abilities to achieve success in terms of her emotional and motivational abilities. This view is communicated by the following participant:

If we want to be a leader, we need to have willingness to be a leader. Willingness plays an important role. If we have everything except willingness, it is also impossible … The ones who don’t want to get into a leadership role may not work hard enough to produce good work outcomes, or they might give up easily when feeling challenged. (Bopha)

The notion of commitment is relevant here, as it relies on an unwavering resilience toward the challenges and obstacles that confront women in their pursuit of leadership. This is echoed here by another participant:

The more people we communicate with, the more confidence we will have. Although sometimes we may have negative experiences from people we interact with, just keep it as a lesson learned. So don’t be shy to socialize or meet different people. (Sopheahp)

The acceptance of negative experiences as part of the professional landscape for female leaders is highlighted by this participant, but she also suggests that the more social access women have, the more confident they can become. Social access relies on women’s abilities to mobilize around and be accepted within social networks.

Moreover, to be a minority in a workplace requires an implicit level of courage in one’s daily operations, both socially and professionally. This is explicitly asserted by the following participant:

Courage plays an important role … We need to learn from our mistakes and keep them as our experiences. Mistakes taught us in many ways. We should be brave. Otherwise, we cannot challenge other male leaders or colleagues. If we are not trusted by the team, we need to prove our abilities to others by the achievement of our work. So, we shouldn’t be shy to take assigned tasks or try new things to challenge ourselves to unlock our potential as female leaders. (Neary)

This comment is multifaceted and resonates with many levels of the ecosystem, although the way in which the participant has framed it puts the onus entirely on her own bravery. The notion that women must prove themselves to men is indicative of a wider cultural issue that places women initially in a deficit position. These women have outlined that, regardless of challenge or obstacle, their self-efficacy is crucial for overcoming and persevering in their leadership careers.

Meso

The following findings sit within the meso level of the ecosystem, as they are factors that are outside of the individual’s control yet deeply affect their ability to succeed in their leadership careers.

Opportunities to learn

This factor emphasizes the need for professional development, knowledge enhancement, English skills, and role models for women’s growth as leaders. Eight participants in the study claimed that strengthening their own knowledge was vital for increasing their capacity to become more effective leaders. Seven participants specifically noted role models as key to providing opportunities for learning. According to one participant,

Society needs us only if we are as qualified as men or even better. To be promoted to higher positions, we must be capable. We must try our best to sharpen our own abilities, such as English language proficiency, knowledge in our field, and leadership skills. As leaders, if we don’t have enough knowledge, it is difficult for us to show the way to others. (Rachana)

To be qualified requires these women to have opportunities that lie beyond their own control. Rachana’s comment highlights the belief that women do not need to be as good as men – they need to be better than men, and this requires women to be persistently upskilling and adding to their abilities. The last line in Rachana’s quote points to the future generation of leaders and gives a nod to the necessitation of role modeling.

Family support

This refers to the practical and emotional support identified by these female leaders as aiding and strengthening their ability to achieve success. All 11 participants said they were supported by their families to pursue and gain a higher education, resulting in their ability to attain leadership roles.

Lucky me. I was born into a supportive family … They always support me. (Kalyan)

Luckily, my husband is understanding. He helps me mop the floor and does dishes … We take turns doing the laundry and cleaning our house. (Kanitha)

These statements suggest that some of the participants regarded strong family support as a source of good fortune and a means of helping them succeed in their workplace. Such comments highlight the need these women had for their families to accept their chosen careers and to subvert some of the traditional gender roles in order to support their success.

Workplace support

In this study, workplace support refers to the motivation, value, and opportunities provided to female leaders by their senior management team and colleagues. Ten out of the 11 participants stated that they were supported by their bosses:

My boss gave me the opportunity to give myself a try. That’s why I am who I am today. With motivation, staff want to develop themselves and work harder for better outcomes despite tiring work. (Leakhena)

Senior management ‘taking a chance’ on the women in this study appears to act as a motivating factor and is indicative of the organizational culture at play; the women feel encouraged and valued rather than tested and trialed.

Macro

The following findings sit within the macro level of the ecosystem, as they are factors that are situated at a societal level.

Support from society

This factor is identified as significant for female leaders to succeed in their leadership roles, and it sits within the macro level of the ecosystem due to its ability to affect the mind-sets of families, workplaces, and women themselves. Support in this study focuses on the opportunities given to women to be educational leaders and the value and recognition provided to them as leaders. When asked about women in general in Cambodia, seven of the participants believed that women were now prioritized and provided more opportunities than in previous times:

The government works on giving value to women. In our country, women are prioritized, so I am happy with that, unlike other countries where women are left behind. I think what women could do is not miss any chances coming to them. Good chances do not always come to us so we must not take them for granted when they are given to us. (Rana)

Participants spoke about the government’s encouragement of female leaders, the promotion of gender equality, and the valuing of women. The Cambodian government is committed to promoting women’s empowerment and strengthening gender equality at all levels in all sectors, since women play an important role in the economy and society (Ministry of Women’s Affairs, 2020). This speaks to the effects of affirmative action and suggests that, regardless of the sliding scale of aspirations, these women’s expectations were being met. Interestingly the participants’ responses suggest that women need to feel empowered to take up these opportunities in the first place, thus highlighting the relationship between micro and macro factors.

Barriers

The barriers women face are again presented in terms of their positioning based on Bronfenbrenner (1979).

Micro

Personal challenges

In this study, personal challenges consist of English language proficiency and changing roles. Five participants indicated that they perceived their level of English to be limited, and this became a barrier when engaging with relevant stakeholders. Seven participants reported that shifting into their leadership roles was a challenge due to their lack of previous experience.

What scares me the most is English language … Almost 35% of my work needs English, so is it easy for me? Of course not. (Neary)

At first, I felt so pressured since I was new and I did not hold this role before. Everything was new to me. I just started with a big role right away, so I felt so challenged. (Bopha)

A degree of fear is apparent here, with these women indicating the need for a level of self-belief in order to overcome these challenges. They also highlight the lack of preparedness that they experienced in their newfound leadership roles. The need for high levels of both self-efficacy and organizational support is clear across these comments and crystallizes the importance of the supportive factors the participants have outlined.

Meso

Constraints in the workplace

Participants identified constraints in the workplace as a barrier, with four citing administrative demands, six citing limited human resources, seven citing a lack of cooperation from their team, and eight citing their own reluctance to make decisions.

The cooperation here is poor. I want my work to be successful, but it is difficult due to poor cooperation … Power is important, but I don’t have it. So, it is hard to get good cooperation at work. (Kunthy)

The ‘power’ that Kunthy refers to here is her capacity to have influence in her organization. Colleagues’ perceptions about how much influence a woman in a leadership role should have can potentially affect the female leader’s actual level of influence. Although many of the constraints highlighted by participants are resourcing issues, this comment indicates that perhaps there are more social barriers at play, with women’s colleagues preventing them from succeeding in their leadership roles. The notion of the glass cliff, where women are placed in a high-risk role with a likelihood of failure (Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016), resonates here, as there is a clear lack of support and an indication that the boundaries of women’s leadership are tightly controlled.

Pressures of family responsibilities

This factor was also identified as a barrier encountered by female leaders. Eight participants referred to not spending a sufficient amount of time with their families, despite attempting to balance their time at work and home:

I don’t have much time for my family. There is no balance between work and family … I am concerned about my children because I don’t have enough time for them, so this is a pressure too. (Theary)

We can’t just care about work and forget our children. My work is important, but my son is also important. (Kalyan)

These comments highlight the diversity and nuance in the female experience of leadership; although societal conditions may be consistent, women’s response and opinions will differ. Family is clearly important and valued in these women’s lives, yet it is not catered for within their professional roles. This idea pertains to standardized male organizational culture, which upholds masculine norms and ideals.

Macro

The participants referenced common mind-sets that are influenced by tradition and culture, identifying them as a barrier to female leadership. Two dominant elements of the mind-sets were spoken about by participants, with six women commenting on the traditional Cambodian saying ‘Women can’t move the stove around’ and five women remarking that there was still a dominant societal perception that women were weak:

We grow up in our culture in which men dominate women and men are more privileged than women … That’s Cambodians’ mindset … When women can do well, then sometimes men are just quiet. They don’t compliment or say anything. But if women can’t do well or have weaknesses, men won’t be quiet. (Kanitha)

Although the government tries to promote women, some men still have that kind of mindset about women. In meetings, I am the only woman, and young. (Bopha)

These insights highlight the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes and the myriad ways these assumptions and beliefs can permeate organizational culture. There is evidence of cultural control and constraint that impacts the access and mobility women can obtain, both literally and psychologically, within society. Kanitha’s and Bopha’s comments describe men undermining them in strategic and subtle ways, ranging from withholding praise and support to blatantly not listening to, or trusting, female leadership. The comment regarding the government’s effort to promote women is a poignant example of the necessity for policy and action across all levels of the ecosystem.

Discussion

Multileveled and multifocal

The opportunities and challenges experienced by the female senior leaders who took part in this study reveal that supports and barriers are multileveled. This was confirmed and made more visible when we undertook a secondary analysis of the data gathered in this study. Research that focuses on either the individual (micro), the organization (meso), or the larger societal system (macro) as a unit of analysis can provide valuable insights; however, these insights are also limited in scope and usefulness (Borko, 2004). Attaining a deeper, more complex, and complete understanding of the opportunities and challenges perceived by these women required both a different way of focussing our analysis and a multifocal approach.

Borko’s (2004) description of multifocal prescription lenses is helpful as a metaphor for understanding the power of researching, understanding, and intervening in a multileveled way. Borko explained that near-vision prescription lenses allow us to explore the psychological frameworks of, for example, the individual women in the leadership roles in this study; mid-distance prescriptions allow us to understand the organizational opportunities and constraints that affect them; and distance-vision prescriptions place larger social-cultural frameworks and societal influences in clearer view. The capacity to use multiple lenses and frameworks simultaneously is a powerful way to deepen understanding and create opportunities that ultimately enable effective action and intervention (Borko, 2004).

Problems such as the low representation of women in senior leadership positions are systemic and require multidimensional and integrated approaches (Barrenechea et al., 2022). The current study suggests that enabling women to attain and maintain senior leadership positions in higher education demands a multifocal response in terms of the nature of the research undertaken, the initiatives and interventions designed and implemented to support women in leadership roles, and, ultimately, the evaluations and ongoing planning undertaken to evaluate these initiatives and promote sustainable change and improvement. Next, we focus on one of the key findings that necessitates a systemic, multifocal approach.

Engaging and changing values, beliefs and expectations

A recent review of research about how education systems can improve (Barrenechea et al., 2022) identified the importance of interventions that engage and change the values, beliefs, and expectations of actors within the system. This current study makes apparent how values, beliefs, and expectations need to be engaged and changed at all levels. It is not possible for individual women to efficaciously integrate their leadership role with significant family responsibilities unless the institutions and organizations of higher education are guided by changed values, beliefs, and expectations. This is not a challenge unique to the women of Cambodia. For women globally, leadership in higher education is too often experienced as an all-consuming task, wherein leadership roles are too big, resources too few, and institutional support too minimal (Acker, 2014). The values, beliefs, and expectations held within the larger higher educational institutions need to foster women’s ability to attain leadership roles and provide work structures and expectations that sustain women in their capacity to maintain their roles.

The levels

Micro: individualising the responsibility

A prevalent thread across many of the women’s responses was their proclivity to personalize the problems they encountered in their leadership roles, along with their belief that they were their own barrier to success. The idea that women just need to be more confident, more courageous, and more willing situates the structural burden on the individuals’ shoulders and fails to account for wider and more structural barriers at play. The notion of self-efficacy, which was identified by participants as a supportive factor, is deemed necessary when women are viewed as consistently in deficit and needing to prove themselves. Burkinshaw and White (2017) identified this idea as having to fit in to get on – effectively having to fix one’s womanhood and adapt to the masculine culture. The idea of self-efficacy that these women articulated as being crucial to their leadership success is predicated and founded on their ability to masculinize their performance and embody a male version of leadership. Morley and Crossouard (2016) talked to the individualistic and competitive nature of the neoliberal academy, whilst Shepherd (2017) acknowledged that these ideals reinforce the belief that women are personally responsible for making their success come to fruition and that the problem of women’s underrepresentation lies with the women themselves rather than with structural inequity. This sentiment resurfaces when the participants spoke to their lack of preparedness and their fears about failing in their leadership position. Wider investigations are needed into the dominance of masculine leadership qualities; but it is nevertheless a farcical notion that women can succeed in leadership by performing masculinity. Women will continue to be women, and therefore always deemed ‘less than’ leaders.

Meso: organizations promoting traditional/prescribed notions of what leadership means and what it means to be a leader

Participants identified the workplace and family as both supportive factors for and barriers to their leadership positions; their responses thus locate these topics as primary sites of inquiry. Women and familial responsibilities are well-researched (Burkinshaw & White, 2017; Maxwell et al., 2015; Morley & Croussouard, 2013), and the gendered division of labor continues to impact women in their pursuit of professional success (Burkinshaw & White, 2017). Nevertheless, Morley (2013) argued that, although these barriers are important to acknowledge, such reductive and binary understandings of womanhood serve to reinforce essentialist values and, in fact, distract us from the more pervasive and structural issues in operation. Although participants identified family as a key factor in their success, the nuance in the ways family affected their professional roles highlights the diversity of personal experience and reifies the insufficiency of hegemonic assumptions surrounding gender.

Acker (1990) argued that organizations not only reflect a patriarchal society, but they also work to reproduce the systems that sustain male dominance. Meza-Mejia et al. (2023) highlighted several ways this process is maintained: female faculty are disproportionately likely to undertake advising and mentoring duties across academia, whilst men predominantly occupy leading positions within research; both of these inequities reduce the likelihood of women’s promotions in their institutions. Aiston and Fo (2021) referred to this as the ‘ivory basement’ (p. 139) and emphasize this is just one of the ways that women experience that institution differently to men. Their research focussed on the silence and silencing of women in academia, particularly in the contexts of traditional Asian cultures, and they suggested that both the internal and external silencing that women experience impact their career progression (Aiston & Fo, 2021). Rectifying these factors, alongside the social predictors of parental influence, spousal support, and collegial support from male colleagues, is likely to enable women to establish their professional trajectories on more equitable grounds (Oti, 2013).

Considering the interrelated nature of levels and factors, we argue that, if organizations began to reflect a less-gendered spectrum of characteristics, family responsibilities and gendered labor would not hold such impact. These masculinized workplace norms can often be subtle and insidious (Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016), and they work to implicitly undermine and inhibit women in their professional aspirations and endeavors (Ely et al., 2011). This is evident from the participants who identified various opportunities, such as professional development and English language enrichment, as factors that would support their leadership progression, without acknowledging that men are inherently more flexible (Burkinshaw & White, 2017) and more mobile (Shepherd, 2017). The women were not on a level playing field in the first place, in part because men have the advantage of being more flexible and mobile due to their relative lack of familial responsibilities. We argue that, without zooming out to understand how organizational culture is inherently gendered and without acknowledging that the meritocratic framework is a mask (Gupta, 2007, as cited in Morley & Croussouard, 2013), men will continue to progress toward and dominate leadership at a much faster rate than women. By understanding the systems and practices that implicitly favor men (Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016), we gain greater insight into how these masculine paradigms implicate the way women construct their leadership identities (Morley, 2013); this approach allows the collapse between meso and micro levels.

Macro: few women in policy/political space—the global patriarchal mindset

It is important to note that the participants’ responses were mixed when it came to the issue of Cambodians’ cultural mind-set regarding women, with an almost even split among those participants who believed that women were valued and prioritized in their leadership journeys (6/11) and those who saw the cultural mind-set toward women as a barrier to their success (5/11). This allows for a double-sided insight into how the wider socio-cultural level of factors translates to personal experience. Those who perceived Cambodia to be adequately progressive with regard to opportunities for women highlight that women’s visibility in top-level decision-making roles empowers and encourages women to feel valued and prioritized. This aligns with the literature that argues representation and role modeling are important in the struggle toward gender equity (Sedara & Öjendal, 2014) and also aid in the subversion of dominant gendered stereotypes. However, many argue against mere representation, or the counting of women; Ahmed (2010) states that this is not the main goal for gender equality and redistributive justice, while Morley (2014) asserts that simply inserting more women into elite systems will fail to solve gender equity. Seno-Alday (2019) wrote that, despite regulatory frameworks enabling equal work opportunities, the gap cannot be closed without interrogating the more deeply entrenched and culturally rooted gender roles and expectations. This is exemplified in the number of participants who believed that the dominant cultural mind-set was that women are weak, incapable, less than, and untrustworthy in leadership – a template likely to be based in historical foundations (Alvesson et al., 2008). There is a resignation about cultural progress being slow and these stereotypes being persistently strong, despite governmental efforts to effect change. We join Morley (2013) in her assertion that ‘leadership is socially articulated and constituted by a social and policy world that many women do not choose or control’ (p. 118), and we believe that increasing female presence in this space will work toward gender equity, but transformation requires a multi-leveled approach with personal, societal, organizational, and cultural barriers addressed.

Conclusion

Research from many economically developed Western nations and from a growing number of economically developing nations continues to identify the underrepresentation of women in higher education leadership globally. Thus, it can be tempting when one gets to this stage of a paper to begin offering solutions; however, this trend represents a complex and ongoing problem. Heifetz (2010) refers to such problems as adaptive challenges. Adaptive challenges exist in complex environments where there is no known and predictable solution; these challenges demand that people work systemically, learning and changing the way they and others think, feel, and act (Le Fevre, 2022). Humans across countries and organizations have the tendency to try to resolve complex and adaptive problems with simple solutions; however, these are rarely effective (Heifetz, 2010). For example, simply appointing women to senior leadership roles or providing training for junior women staff on leadership skills is insufficient to bring about systemic and sustainable change. Instead, intervention needs to be targeted at all levels, with an understanding that unique contexts mean there is no one easy-fix solution. Instead, it is important to create complex solutions to these issues that intersect across the multiple layers of the macro, meso, and micro environments identified in this analysis. Future research might explore in greater depth what opportunities and challenges there are for supporting women in leadership across these different domains.

Working to intentionally address complex and adaptive problems often generates a sense of loss for those involved at all levels (Heifetz et al., 2009). Understanding the values and anxieties experienced by others is an important aspect of seeking to address such problems. For example, changing individual, family, organizational, and societal values and expectations regarding women’s roles may result in a sense of loss and uncertainty for many. Indeed, it may result in a sense of uncertainty and risk for the women themselves (Le Fevre, 2022).

Unsurprisingly, the narratives of the women in this study reveal a systemic web of influences that both support and challenge the opportunities they perceive as being possible for women in senior leadership. The hopeful narrative this research reveals is that there are, therefore, multiple avenues for supporting women and increasing their agency to attain and maintain senior leadership roles.

Systemic approaches to change and improvement for women in leadership need to acknowledge the complexity of the challenges (Heifetz, 2010) that could have a simultaneous impact on micro-, meso-, and macro-level systems. This means adopting a multifocal response to interventions that seek to increase the engagement of women in high education leadership; it also involves taking a multifocal approach to research and evaluation that explores if this is making a difference.

Future research and limitations

This research has intentionally focused on women in leadership in Cambodia, as this is an economically developing nation that is focussing resources and policy on trying to increase the engagement of women in senior leadership roles. However, the findings from this research are relevant to other countries and contexts.

As one Cambodian and two Pākehā (New Zealand European) women, it is important to acknowledge our researcher positioning and bias, as well as the lens we bring to this research. Much of the international literature is written and researched from a Western perspective, bringing with it Anglo values and assumptions; although the commonality of patriarchal structures is apparent, there are many complexities and nuances that make a broad-brush analysis challenging.

Limitations of this study include the fact that the perspectives analyzed were those of women who have been successful and have navigated the layers of influence to attain leadership roles. Future research might explore the perspective of women who have not yet been successful or who do not seek to secure leadership roles. This would provide a more comprehensive picture of the nature of support that women recognize as important to female leadership in higher education. Further research into perceptions of gender and the impact these have on what it means to be a leader would also contribute to understanding how the engagement of women in senior leadership might be increased, both in Cambodia and beyond.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the New Zealand ASEAN Scholar Awards (NZAS).

Notes on contributors

D. M. Le Fevre

Deidre Le Fevre is a professor in educational leadership at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on leadership, equity, professional learning and organizational improvement.

C. Meng

Channy Meng is a researcher in educational leadership at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on leadership, equity, and early years education.

G. Foreman-Brown

Gabriella Foreman-Brown is a researcher at the the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research focuses on improving equity and access in education.