Cracking the walls of leadership: women in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

Women Leadership in Higher Education in Saudi Arabia

“…Thematic analysis technique was adopted for analysing the data. The thematic analysis technique has been used by several researchers in qualitative researches focused on Saudi women in leadership (see, for example, Hodges, 2017;Al-Asfour et al 2017;AlDoubi, 2014;Gazzaz, 2017). Thematic analysis was considered useful for this research because the researcher was unaware of all the potential themes that it was going to discover.…”

“…These structural factors occur due to management and organizational practices, where the women are provided with very little opportunities to hold some power (Al-Ahmadi, 2011). According to Hodges (2017) the power offered to the women are limited in organizations, therefore, they are limited to the lower management positions.…”

“…Organizational barriers also include the constant interference of men and restriction of freedom for decision making (Hodges, 2017). Studies have found that there have been many policy enhancements and provisions made for taking the female oriented measure at the workplaces and in employment in Saudi Arabia.…”

Collegiate Women in Saudi Arabia: Leading Collectively for the Development of Self, Others, and Society

“…Despite their access to higher education, women in Saudi Arabia are faced with a juxtaposition of factors that support and oppose opportunities for them to develop leadership. A number of studies explored challenges and opportunities women leaders face in Saudi Arabia (Abalkhail, 2017;Albakry, 2015;Aldawsari, 2016;AlDoubi, 2014;Alsubaihi, 2016;Alyahya, 2016;Hodges, 2017;Thompson, 2015). While these studies did not address opportunities for and challenges to collegiate women's leadership development, they provide an understanding of the factors that are likely to hinder and promote opportunities for them to develop and practice leadership post graduation.…”

“…Defined gender roles and stereotypes have been a dominant factor that hinder women's leadership opportunities. Stemming from social norms and practices, the literature pointed to the expectations placed on women to carry out their domestic roles instead of pursuing a career and neglecting their family (Albakry, 2016;Hodges, 2017). In a study on the challenges faced by women leaders in Saudi Arabia, Hodges 2017indicated that there are widespread social misperceptions about leadership's association with masculine traits in which the pursuit for leadership may signal defiance to socially constructed gender roles, and thereby distort their familial and societal reputation.…”