Education for Sustainable Leadership: Fostering Women’s Empowerment at the University Level

Abstract

Education is imperative to driving sustainability and gender equity. Moreover, it is extremely important to develop initiatives in sustainable leadership education for women in order for them to acquire skills and competencies in leadership and to improve their self-perception of their capabilities. The purpose of this study was to assess a Women’s Leadership Program for university students. The sample consisted of 50 students enrolled in the program. A mixed-method approach was applied. Quantitative methods with a survey were conducted to evaluate the training and attainment of leadership skills. In the data analysis, a descriptive statistics variance analysis, using a Welch statistic and T2 Dunnett test, was applied. Qualitative research methods were conducted through three focus groups to evaluate changes in their perceptions of themselves and their self-confidence. The results suggest that the female students in the program obtained a level of leadership knowledge with practical tools for their future. The program inspired them and confirmed changes in their self-confidence and view of their personal capacities, including reflection on facing challenges in the work environment. The findings support the effectiveness of specific education in breaking two barriers, identified in the literature, for women in managerial positions: lack of training and self-confidence.

Sustainability Leadership in Higher Education Institutions: An Overview of Challenges

“…The discussion of gender, women in leadership positions, has gained increasing interest in research [63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]. That is since women in many countries represent almost half of the workforce, but are underrepresented in leadership positions [72].…”

“…These results are presented in Figure 4. The neutral to strongly disagree position of most respondents on women as better sustainability leaders could be explained by one or more of such factors as the still prevailing stereotype on women's abilities as leaders [63,71]. Women on leadership positions leaders consider their experience being leaders as gender-neutral based on merit and hard work [92], organizations do not emphasize gender nature of sustainability achievements, and there is very limited dissemination of studies on women in managerial positions as drivers to better organizational performance, including sustainability [63,64,68,93].…”

A University Training Programme for Acquiring Entrepreneurial and Transversal Employability Skills, a Students’ Assessment

“…Other authors [67][68][69][70] research the incorporation of transversal competences applied to the university sector; while other studies analyze the integration between higher education and job skills and the positive effects that it entails [53,54,71]. The Phoenix report of Future Work Skills H2020 [72] proposes the following skills as a basis for achieving success in the workplace: Creating meaning, social intelligence, original and adaptive thought, trans-cultural competence, literacy in new means of communication, transdisciplinary to understand concepts through multiple disciplines, developing a way of thinking in order to attain the desired results, cognitive load management, virtual collaboration as a member of a virtual team, computational thinking for transferring large quantities of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning [73].…”

Rethinking Women’s Empowerment: Insights from the Russian Arctic

“…Sci. 2020, 9, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 18 boarding schools provided female students with an opportunity to "acquire skills and competencies… to improve their self-perception of their capabilities" (Segovia-Pérez et al 2019) in order to obtain relevant qualifications for a competitive urban labor market. Therefore, over time, many of them managed to avoid so-called "indigenous path dependency" by choosing further education or vocational training and expressing increased ambitions to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated spheres.…”