(Not) just a girl: Reworking femininity through women’s leadership in Europe

Abstract

This article applies a critical femininities perspective to the concept of women's leadership, interrogating the market-oriented instrumentalization of femininity. The author presents empirical research consisting of in-depth interviews conducted with young women leaders in European student organizations. These participants juggle complicity and subversion as they negotiate the divergent expectations of femininity and leadership through interpersonal interactions and sociocultural positionalities. In these narratives the themes of social responsibility, difference, femininity, culture and embodiment are interlaced. The analysis of findings complicates monolithic interpretations of femininity by evidencing intra-categorical fracturing, multiplicity in locations and manifestations of femininities, conflicting attachments and affective relations to femininity, and broader geopolitical contextualization. This theoretically and practically challenges tropes of hegemonic femininity, and presents opportunities for resistance. On this basis the author argues for countering the feminist trouble of engaging with non-transgressive femininity from within strongly normative spaces in the development of critical femininity studies.

Factors Contributing to Female Teachers Underrepresentation in Schools Leadership: A Case of Sumbawanga, Tanzania

“…The findings correspond with Weidekam and Willer (2012) which shows women are rarely given priority in leadership positions because of work-family syndrome. Furthermore, the findings concur with Wilson and Clerkin (2017) and Enderstein (2018) findings which exposed that failure to plan and manage time also hinder women to acquire high ranks of leadership because anything to do with career advancement requires personal effort.…”

“…In the same vein, the study sought to find out whether respondents' sex, the place where they grew up and their information level about existing job opportunities impact their participation in leadership and established that job occupations are effective vehicles for communicating gender stereotypes. In addition, culture, social economic factors and ignorance limited women to family affairs in central Europe (Enderstein, 2018;Wicker, 2019).…”

Women’s Participation in Leadership in Schools and Local Government in Ibumu and Image Wards in Kilolo District, Iringa Region,Tanzania

“…This was confirmed by one participant who said, "Women are not ready to participate in leadership position due to traditions and culture. "3/November /2022 This is consonant with [16] and Enderstein [21] stated that Social cultural factors are critical to the selection and appointment of head to the school leadership based on gender. Culture still influences leadership positions; women exclude themselves from participating in leadership because of the oppressive culture which made them to be convinced that leadership are for men.…”

‘I don’t want to be known for it’: Girls, leadership role models and the problem of representation

“…Here, Beyoncé's celebrity and wealth, and Michelle Obama's political celebrity status are seen as inevitable adjuncts of power, as means of doing good rather than as sought for their own sake -fame becomes 'the only way' a woman can help people. This 'doing good' discourse aligns with essentialised models of the caring, ethical woman leader (Enderstein, 2018;Lewis, 2014;Prugl, 2012) and becomes a way of reconciling the individualism of popular leadership models and neoliberal self-advancement with acceptable modes of femininity.…”