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Recent educational literature has produced a plethora of gendered experiences encountered by women working towards leadership positions in education. Gender plays a complex role that shapes the relationship between perceived ideals of womanhood and leadership. This paper focuses on the variations in leadership and management distributed in the early years and the competencies needed in areas of socio-economic deprivation. The paper has focused on the findings taken from a research study (2014) that involved the lived experience of eight black women leaders within the UK. The study by Curtis (published 2014, see text for details) highlights a number of demanding complexities that do include gendered assumptions relating to the role of leadership within educational establishments. These issues pertain to certain identifying factors, such as a leader’s accent or choice of dress and traditional hairstyles (e.g. braids, afro, dreads or weaves). Alongside women’s choice of food, including any personal dietary requirements linked to religious beliefs, are areas that identify black women leaders with identities separate from those dominant within society. Such ideals may include a prescriptive view of women as leaders. The road to leadership demands a crescendo of shared voices and visions that support the diversity in the expression of women’s values, shaped by their perception, intuitive lenses, worldviews and lived experiences. This paper is intended to present black women’s intersections as one in which black women share skilfully their biculturalism and their abilities to act as a bridge for others sharing their cultural competencies.

Study findings highlight the benefits of providing professional development opportunities and mentoring programs for novice CNEs. Programs, such as the SEM enable transformation of a novice educator's practice, and the consolidation of new knowledge, skills and confidence to effectively educate less experienced nurses.

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As black women leaders within the 21st century sharing our stories, reflections and contributions remain an area of high anxiety, reluctance and resistance. The fear of these contentions can elicit feelings of invisibility, voicelessness, rejection and reprisal. Black women's experiences of leadership are, at times, visualized metaphorically as a single bare thread. A thread that maneuvers and meanders aimlessly, not through choice, but by navigating their way through institutional systems. Their journeys are fueled with micro aggressions, convoluted racial barriers and systemic obstacles placed within their paths while attempting to reach and sustain their leadership positions. In her research (Curtis, 2014, 2017), has sought to connect these threadbare yet bonded experiences by weaving the participants counter-narratives into a collective quilt. A quilt designed and developed to show their stories of leadership. This methodology displays their strengths and commands visibility while displaying vibrant, passionate social justice leadership within these symbolic colorful, tired and tangled yarns. Black women's survival in leadership positions is often not one of centrality within mainstream literature. These experiences are not commonly championed or celebrated by those who hold dominance within society. However, within this research, black women's survival is one in which their resilience hangs solitary at times by a threadbare yarn. Using these threads to authenticate connectedness and weaving their journeys of leadership has utilized a bond and created an opportunity to share with other black women leaders their often isolated experiences. The research expands their expressive, creative liberation using the lens of Critical Race Theory and black feminism to explore the women's cultural identities as educational leaders.