Despite an abundance of educated, qualified women in the workforce, they continue to be underrepresented at the top of institutional leadership hierarchies. Theories of gendered organizations explain that work processes reproduce gendered structures of society in the workplace. These processes advantage men while forming barriers to women's success. This paper extends critical human resource development (HRD) theory by applying the concept of sexism hidden in the workplace to leadership and by outlining both social and organizational practices that create gender inequities in leadership. Our cross‐sector analysis of women leaders in religion and higher education revealed twenty‐seven gender‐based leadership barriers which operate at the macro, meso, and micro levels of society. We argue that most current efforts to promote women into leadership focus one by one on only a few barriers, primarily those within organizations, while failing to take into account the wide variety of barriers and their prevalence across all societal levels. We offer strategies to address barriers across all three levels to help organizations create gender‐equitable leadership environments.

Gender bias is a pervasive problem with significant negative outcomes for women leaders and organizations. Bias manifests in a multiplicity of forms, ranging from subtle to overt. To date, no instrument exists to measure women leaders' perceptions of gender bias. This study presents a comprehensive measure of how women leaders perceive and experience gender bias. Drawing from a national sample of female higher education executives (n = 488), faith‐based organization leaders (n = 298), physicians (n = 293), and attorneys (n = 527), the present research developed and validated the Gender Bias Scale for Women Leaders. Building upon a previously established and expansive cross‐level conceptual framework to develop the initial item pool, results from both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported a factor structure consisting of six higher‐order and 15 lower‐order factors. Our results show that several factors of the Gender Bias Scale correlated with workplace outcomes of turnover intention and satisfaction. Human resource development (HRD) professionals may use the Gender Bias Scale to identify the specific types of bias prevalent for women leaders in their organizations and apply interventions accordingly. Implications for women leaders and HRD professionals and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Purpose This paper aims to present a model describing how women enact executive leadership, taking into account gendered organizational patterns that may constrain women to perform leadership in context-specific ways. Design/methodology/approach This paper discusses gendered organizations, role congruity theory and organizational culture and work context. These strands of theory are interwoven to construct a model describing ways in which executive-level women are constrained to self-monitor based on context. Findings The pressure on women to conform to an organization’s executive leadership culture is enormous. Executive women in strongly male-normed executive leadership contexts must exercise strong gendered self-constraint to break through the glass ceiling. Women in strongly male-normed contexts using lessened gendered self-constraint may encounter a glass cliff. Women in gender-diverse-normed contexts may still operate using strong gendered self-constraint due to internalized gender scripts. Only in gender-diverse-normed contexts with lessened gendered-self-restraint can executive women operate from their authentic selves. Practical implications Organizational leaders should examine their leadership culture to determine levels of pressure on women to act with gendered self-constraint and to work toward creating change. Women may use the model to make strategic choices regarding whether or how much to self-monitor based on their career aspirations and life goals. Originality/value Little has been written on male-normed and gender-diverse-normed contexts as a marker for how executive-level women perform leadership. This paper offers a model describing how different contexts constrain women to behave in specific, gendered ways.

Women leaders are scarce in evangelical mission organizations. Part of the reason may be gender-role stereotypes, which function very strongly in much of evangelicalism. This article presents the stories of two women who worked at executive-level leadership positions in evangelical mission organizations. Using narrative analysis and a critical feminist lens, I examine their stories to understand how these women describe their leadership and how they portray their use of power. The strength of gender-role stereotypes and evangelical gender roles appeared to define and limit the power they were able to use. As long as they stayed within prescribed norms, they experienced some success. Deviations from the gender-role stereotypes led to sanctions from their organizations. Conclusions and implications are that the stereotypes may limit women's leadership and that both women and organizations need to become aware of how these unspoken assumptions may be functioning. Recommendations for women leaders and for organizations seeking to incorporate women into leadership are offered.

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The pace of globalization coupled with the growing institutional pursuit of online education means online classes are increasingly composed of a multi-national, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural student body. Teaching presence, which is the ability to structure the class, create the social environment, give instruction, and assess student work, is the basis for creating a community of inquiry in an online class where successful learning can occur. However, little is known about effective teaching presence in a multinational classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine my own efforts to co-create a social context in an online classroom environment that was welcoming and supportive to a diverse student population enrolled in a graduate research methods course. Findings show that building student confidence, affirming student voice, and the strategic use of groups can help create a climate of safety. Effective instructor techniques include setting the tone of the class through clear expectations, having ongoing public and private interaction with students, giving effective feedback, and recognizing and valuing cultural differences.

The rapid pace of social and technological change in the early 21st century leaves many adults scrambling to meet the complexities that characterize their daily lives. Adult learners are faced with multiple, often competing, demands from work, education, family, and leisure, which requires adult education graduate programs to carefully consider how best to meet these changing needs of today’s students. Using a developmental action inquiry approach, the authors collected data using multiple rounds of mutual inquiry from diverse groups of stakeholders in adult education. We asked each group to explore the question, “How does adult education as a profession, field, and practice help adults, organizations, and society meet the demands of 21st century life?” The combined results indicate that responsive, dynamic graduate programs in adult education for the 21st century should support the cultivation of critical and timely reflection, create online learning environments predicated on intentional community and mutuality, and foreground the relationship between adult learning and developmental capacity to prepare adult education facilitators who stand confidently in the face of complexity and ambiguity.

PurposeThis paper compares how women leaders in four US industries–higher education, faith-based non-profits, healthcare and law–experience 15 aspects of gender bias.Design/methodology/approachThis study used convergent mixed methods to collect data from 1,606 participants. It included quantitative assessment of a validated gender bias scale and qualitative content analysis of open-ended responses.FindingsResults suggest that, while gender bias is prevalent in all four industries, differences exist. Participants in higher education experienced fewer aspects of gender bias than the other three industries related to male culture, exclusion, self-limited aspirations, lack of sponsorship and lack of acknowledgement. The faith-based sample reported the highest level of two-person career structure but the lowest levels of queen bee syndrome, workplace harassment and salary inequality. Healthcare tended towards the middle, reporting higher scores than one industry and lower than another while participants working in law experienced more gender bias than the other three industries pertaining to exclusion and workplace harassment. Healthcare and law were the two industries with the most similar experiences of bias.Originality/valueThis research contributes to human resource management (HRM) literature by advancing understanding of how 15 different gender bias variables manifest differently for women leaders in various industry contexts and by providing HRM leaders with practical steps to create equitable organizational cultures.