While women carry out most of the work in Australian classrooms, organising lessons, mentoring young students, and influencing the course of the future, the situation is markedly different when it comes to school leadership.
Indeed, a growing body of research shows women continue to be disproportionately underrepresented in senior leadership positions, even though they comprise most teachers. It’s a stark imbalance that continues to expose the gap between those at the front of the classroom and those making the big decisions behind closed doors.
New research contained in the Global Education Monitoring Report titled ‘Women lead for learning’ sheds further light on this issue, providing evidence that despite promoting a more collaborative culture in schools, a ‘glass ceiling’ still bars women from leadership positions.
Female school leadership in Australia: The state of play
Anna Cristina D’Addio is an Economist by background and has worked as a Senior Policy Analyst in the GEM Report team since March 2017. She says despite women comprising a significant majority of teachers in Australia, their representation in senior leadership roles remains disproportionately low.
“For instance, in Victoria, in secondary education women constitute 76% of teaching staff but only 56% of principals,” D’Addio told The Educator.
“Nationally, data from the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership in 2021 shows that men held 31% of leadership positions, even though they comprised only 21% of the teaching workforce.”
D’Addio said this is attributed to systemic barriers, including gender bias, discrimination, and societal stereotypes that question women’s leadership capabilities.
“Such challenges often discourage women from aspiring to or attaining top leadership positions in schools,” she said.
“The GEM Report underscores the necessity of structural reforms to support women in educational leadership such as mentoring programmes, targeted leadership training, equity-based hiring practices and affirmative action.”
D’Addio said resilience and wellbeing initiatives are also recommended as women leaders report higher levels of burnout, stress, and bullying than their male counterparts.
“In Australia, analysis of data from the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey over a 10-year period found that 1 in 3 school leaders frequently experienced symptoms of burnout, and almost 1 in 8 frequently experienced stress.”
Why women face a longer wait to the top
The study also found that women often have to prove themselves as teachers for longer than men before becoming leaders.
D’Addio said women in Australia often wait longer to move into school leadership roles due to a complex combination of systemic, institutional, and cultural barriers.
“In essence, the delay is not due to a lack of capability or ambition among women—but due to systemic inequities. A proactive and gender-responsive policy environment can close the leadership gap and strengthen Australia’s education system,” she said.
“Part of the barrier comes in the form of biased promotion practices. In Australia, female teachers need an average of 2.7 more years than men to become principals, yet they hold these positions for shorter periods.”
Persistent societal norms also cast leadership as a “male” trait, D’Addio noted.
“Traits commonly associated with women, meanwhile, such as collaboration and emotional intelligence are undervalued in leadership selection, despite being highly effective in education settings,” she said.
“Women also disproportionately carry the burden of caregiving, which are hard to balance with leadership roles. In Australia and New Zealand data shows that women spend at least the double of time as men on domestic tasks,”
D’Addio said this ‘second shift’ or ‘double burden’ can impede professional advancement into roles that demand significant time, visibility and networking, especially at higher levels of education.
“Transparent and equitable promotion pathways are needed, as well as setting minimum representation goals for women in principal and deputy roles can help,” she said.
“Mentoring and leadership development can encourage aspiring female leaders. Family friendly leadership structures, with safe and supportive work environments can help navigate the caregiving burden women often face.”
Women principals promote a more collaborative culture
In some contexts, female leadership is associated with stronger community engagement, more emphasis on inclusive policies addressing barriers for girls (such as gender-based violence and menstrual health), and promoting collaborative school cultures.
Data across 44 upper-middle- and high-income countries shows that female principals dedicate more time than their male peers to the curriculum, teaching, and interactions with parents and students.
In some cases, when women lead schools, learning outcomes also improve. Schools led by women have been found to improve learning outcomes by the equivalent of an additional year of schooling in some francophone African countries, and by up to 6 months in some South-eastern Asian countries.
D’Addio said that in order to support and reward inclusive leadership, the system must shift from valuing only managerial efficiency to recognising the power of relationship-building, collaboration, and shared vision—qualities in which many female leaders tend to excel.
“To make these styles more common in education systems for both men and women policy makers need to redefine what effective leadership looks like. Education outcomes go beyond learning,” she said.
“Leadership benchmarks can be broadened moving beyond narrow definitions focused on discipline, hierarchy, or test scores.”
D’Addio said these benchmarks should align evaluation and promotion with inclusive practices.
“Principal evaluation tools should be revised to measure soft skills like empathy, communication, team-building, and distributed leadership, for example. Practices that foster safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments should be rewarded,” she said.
“The GEM Report 2024/5 Lead for Learning showed that many countries principal assessment use sanctions rather than reward with accountability linked to the outcomes of standardized tests that may not take into account these skills or practices enough.”
Additionally, says D’Addio, countries should encourage collaborative leadership models where responsibilities are shared across teaching teams.
“Professional learning communities [PLCs] should be encouraged that foster shared decision-making and collective accountability and provide time and resources for school leaders to mentor and collaborate with staff,” she said.
“Lastly, they should showcase role models and scale best practices by highlighting success stories of inclusive female principals at conferences, in media, in awards and within leadership training programs.”
Empowering women leaders: A lever for better policy, budgets and futures
D’Addio said having more women in school and education policy leadership roles would likely lead to better funding and long-term reform.
“More women in education leadership can drive smarter investments and more sustainable reforms – not just because of who they are, but because of the perspectives and priorities they bring, which historically have been underrepresented in education governance,” she said.
“Empowering women leaders is not only a gender equity issue – it’s a lever for better policy, better budgets, and better futures.”
Yet, rather than seeing inclusive and collaborative leadership as “feminine” traits, education systems should normalise these approaches for all leaders, regardless of gender, says D’Addio.
“This needs to have a Systemic Reframe: From ‘Women’s Ways of Leading’ to ‘Smart Ways of Leading’,” she said.
“When education systems and policies reward the outcomes of inclusive leadership, rather than its gendered origin, it creates the space for all leaders—men included—to adopt these approaches without stigma.”
D’Addio said empowering women to lead is essential, but so too is encouraging men to adopt the very practices that make those women effective.
“That’s how we move from ‘gendered leadership traits’ to a new leadership norm that is equitable, evidence-based, and transformative.”