From the Principal

How is leadership for women changing over time?

Each year, our Year 13 students follow a Dio tradition and in one of our first full school assemblies, make a commitment to be leaders of our School. Their actions and attitudes affect and influence the student culture, even though they are often unaware of it.

They collectively make a commitment to: • look for opportunities to be of service to others • have a sense of pride and ownership in our School heritage • aim high and strive to be more than they ever imagined; and • to respect themselves, others and our School.

While they stand to make the commitment to being leaders in front of the whole School, it is easy being one of 180 Year 13 girls to say ‘yes’ to leadership. But if each was to stand individually before us, what would they tell us about what it means to be a caring and confident leader in this School, and in the world ahead of them.

According to the HBR 10 Must Reads, some theories on leadership make caring look effortless – but it isn’t. You have to do things you don’t want to do, and that’s hard. It’s tough to be tough in that it sometimes means giving up something for the greater good or taking a stand against group behaviours that are hurtful or excluding of others. There is a high level of individual difference amongst students and bringing out the best in others requires them to get to know other girls around the School and going well beyond their friendship groups to make a difference. When they make their promises, we encourage Year 13 and all others to think about how they will become the outstanding women leaders that this country needs. The most difficult fact is that women in leadership are stereotyped. Partly this is because there are fewer women in leadership positions. Harvard Business Review says: “According to research in social psychology, if a group’s representation questioned her ability to lead the country. Women leaders are frequently judged on their appearance as opposed to their ideas and capability – on their ability to be ‘strong’, competitive, or on the loudness of their voice. These subliminal default measures of leadership are superficial and judgmental perceptions, and represent the vestiges of lasting gender-biased views on leadership.

Perceiving women as all the same sexual beings who should be nurturing, communal and protective prevents women from applying for leadership positions. In reality, we are as diverse within womanhood as any sample of a wider population. While we are in an all-girls’ school, we are not defined by gender – the freedom is ours to be who we want to be, to explore our differences. We are free from the subtle gender assumptions that continue the gradual stereotyping that has for many years confined women to lower paid labouring positions and less leading. As more women have joined the work force, research into gender balance is growing over time. Professor Alice Eagly, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, has been researching perceptions of women at work over the last 70 years. For advocates of gender balance, Eagly has good news and bad news. On the one hand, women’s perceived competence – the degree to which women are viewed as intelligent, level-headed, organised – has soared through the decades, exceeding the numbers for men in recent polls. Views of women as communally oriented and nurturing have also increased over time. However, women’s perceived ‘agentic’ qualities – measures of assertiveness and

“In reality, we are as diverse within womanhood as any sample of a wider population. While we are in an all-girls’ school, we are not defined by gender – the freedom is ours to be who we want to be, to explore our differences.”

falls below 20% in a given society, then it is going to be subjected to stereotyping whether it likes it or not.” For women, this may mean being typecast as a helper, nurturer, or filling a quota on a board. All such labels prevent women from defining their own differences.

Harmful stereotyping of women in leadership roles is prevalent. The prime minister before Jacinda Ardern was Bill English. He had six children, and rarely did anyone question his ability to be prime minister. When Jacinda became prime minister and announced that she would have a baby, people definitely

Principal Heather McRae with Head Prefect Maddy Gault (right) and Deputy Head Prefect Francesca Masfen (left).

competitiveness – have languished well below men’s for all of living memory. It appears that some gender stereotypes have only become stronger as women have made progress towards equality.

In employment today, women are occupying cognitively demanding positions equally as well as men, but hierarchies and corporate leadership are heavily weighted with masculine agency in terms of what people expect. Eagly suggests that to equalise the path to leadership, we should both weaken the assumption that men are more agentic than women and challenge the notion of competition and assertiveness as the root causes of success. She suggests examining and changing ideas about leadership to include both agentic and communal traits.

In her leadership journey at Dio, we seek freedom for each girl to be the leader who is not defined by gender. We encourage our girls to find that person within who has the intellect, tough empathy and courage to be who she wants to be and to influence those around her. She will be known for her agency and communal traits. We want our leaders to be the role models who will support and celebrate our strengths so that they can deeply engage in a transformative experience through which they come to a new or an altered sense of identity. This is what is meant by being true to yourself and truly experiencing leadership. They will be the much-needed women leaders of the future.

Kia kaha – Ut Serviamus.