The Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) at West Virginia University was introduced 10 years ago as a campus-wide effort to connect, empower, and provide leadership development for a small group of women leaders at the university. Over time, membership in the WLI has evolved to include women of all career stages and career paths who see themselves as leaders, those who aspire to be leaders, and those who exert influence within their units and the university structure. The WLI supports women through learning, networking, and mentoring opportunities. The purpose of this article is to describe how the initiative supports women's leadership, introduce the WLI framework for leadership development, and share examples of 2 leadership-education opportunities for women administrators, faculty, and staff working within academia.
This chapter is introducing readers to A Research Agenda for Gender andLeadership during a momentous time -one where language is evolving quickly, there is ambiguity in how to speak without offending, and our feelings about identity -and who should lead -may feel destabilizing. We are in a time of transition where it is easy to get upset at the long history of inequity while simultaneously trying to build a world where all voices are heard. We may feel like we are walking on eggshells -not wanting to hurt those we do not understand. All of these unsettling feelings are valuable because it means we are learning. It is a rare event that education is totally comfortable -where we consume new ideas, swallow them whole, and have no problem with digestion. A level of vulnerability is necessary for leadership and change.As editors, we invite you into this discussion about gender and leadership knowing that the issues are not settled. We ask that readers contemplate the ideas in this volume with kindness and grace, to debate and disagree, and to do so with the loving aim of moving our field forward. You will not find answers to all of your questions in the pages that follow, but you will find the best thinking by leading scholars from around the world. These are not final views, but our greatest efforts at this moment in time, to understand more about gender and how it relates to leadership. This is the cutting edge where we will learn more together rather than condemning each other for offering a new perspective. Welcome to the conversation -it's not for the faint of heart! * * *We see the term gender all the time: on applications and surveys, we are told to 'check the box' for male or female; in news articles we read information about the gender pay gap; and we are encouraged to be gender inclusive in academic writing. The American Psychological Association (APA), in its Publication Manual (2020), instructs writers to use the most inclusive pronouns and
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.