Feminist Leaders in Higher Education: A Textual Analysis of Power and Resistance.

This paper examined higher education, women's education, and feminist leadership literature to determine the definitions of power they suggest and the implications of such definitions as they apply to leadership. A textual discourse analysis of five works was conducted; these included works by Clark Kerr, Cryss Brunner, Leslie Bloom and Petra Munro, Luba Chlinwiak, and Rosalind Rosenberg. It was found that all of the texts provided suggestions for how feminist leadership might define power and craft strategies within higher education contexts. All five of the texts agreed, to some degree, on two basic strategies or beliefs about effective leadership. First, they all asserted that in future leadership situations, less hierarchical models will be more useful, especially as these models take into account the perspectives of an increasingly diverse population. Second, the texts suggested that increasingly, there would be a search for dialogic relations with the multiple persons in and affecting the organization. There was marked disagreement, however, over the overt use of power and the goals of leadership. The analysis suggested that power and leadership have multiple forms and strategies, and that the academy brings its own complexities to the feminist movement. (Contains 15 references.) (MDM) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** ropers-huilman feminist leadership -1 Feminist leaders in higher education: A textual analysis of power and resistance Becky Ropers-Huilman Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association