The Wiley Handbook of Gender Equity in Higher Education

22How High the Ceiling: Gender and Leadership in International Higher Education

Sora H. Friedman

Imagine you are a female international educator who has spent quite a few years working your way up through positions of increasing responsibility and one day, you are finally promoted to director of the office for which you work. You work outside of your birth country, in a culture in which leadership is traditionally held by men, and you are both proud of your accomplishments and nervous about your new responsibilities. As you begin your new work, one of your first meetings is with a group of partners from a local university. You show up eager to continue the relationships between your two institutions and to connect more personally, and as a cultural expert, you are not surprised when the meeting begins with their offering of a congratulatory gift. Now, imagine that you open the gift to find that it's a tie, because even though your partners were given your biography in advance and your gender was clearly stated, they still were unable to reconcile that such a senior‐level leader could be a woman. As incredulous as this may seem, it was the experience of one senior leader in the field. As she noted, “I've kept that tie in my office the entire time” through my career as a reminder of the challenges of this work (Participant Red; identities of participants have been kept confidential when requested).

This is but one of many stories of both success and challenge experienced by ...