If you happen to be a woman and a primary-school teacher, then by the time you are 40 there is a one in 10 chance that you will be a principal. On the other hand, more than 40 per cent of male teachers are principals in the primary sector by the time they are 40.
By retirement age, this progresses to a situation where more than 70 per cent of male teachers are principals, compared with just over 20 per cent of women.
In secondary schools, the proportion of women principals has been declining as women religious leave these positions. Women have been only been appointed to 30 per cent of positions vacated by religious sisters. In the community and comprehensive sector, from 1992 to 1994, women were appointed in 20 per cent of vacant principalships. In the vocational sector there has been an increase in the proportion of principals who are women to just over 11 per cent.
A new book Stepping Out of the Shadows: Women in educational management in Ireland, places the Irish situation in the European context. Authors Leonie Warren and Eileen O'Connor note that teaching at primary level is highly feminised throughout Europe, with women making up almost three-quarters of the teaching force in all but two countries (Belgium and Greece). Men account for the majority of principalships in all but two countries: in France, women make up 64 per cent of principals, compared with 79 per cent of teachers; in Portugal, 91 per cent of teachers are women, while 90 per cent of principals are female.
Ireland is somewhere in the middle, with women accounting for 78 per cent of teachers and 46 per cent of principals. In the Netherlands, where the situation is considerably worse (76 per cent women teachers and 13 per cent principals), a number of factors have contributed: the introduction of coeducational schools in the 1970s, with the resulting loss of women principals, the replacement of religious sisters by men and the amalgamation of infant and primary schools from 1985 onwards, in which two-thirds of women lost their principalships compared with one-10th of men.
At second level, teaching is less markedly feminised. But, in a number of countries, including Ireland, Italy and Greece, the proportion of women teaching at second level is increasing.
The gender-balance statistics do not transfer to principalships. The proportion of women principals is lower at second level than at primary, going from a low of 7 per cent in the Netherlands to a "high" of 36 per cent in Greece.
Again, the second-level education system in the Netherlands has gone through a process which is now developing in Ireland. In the 1960s and 1970s single-sex schools were amalgamated to from co-educational schools. At the same time, religious sisters withdrew from the management of single-sex schools.
In Ireland, the education system is going through similar change, as two-thirds of the 54 per cent of principals who are women are religious sisters. The likelihood is that many of these sisters will be replaced by men. To date, almost 40 per cent of principals appointed in single-sex girls' schools in the period 1991 to 1995 were men. So the gender imbalance is likely to increase.
EXPLORING the reasons for the lack of women in principalships, Warren and O'Connor say that there are "filters" where there is a danger that women will find their careers blocked. This may happen when they need a reference from a person in a position of authority who has a biased attitude (real or perceived) towards women in management. Another filter is the use of "an elaborate application form, which may or may not be useful or necessary". The decisions of selection committees which filter out teachers who have not held a certain grade of promotion of a certain grade of promotion, irrespective of levels of administrative experience or ability, also play a part.
Other problems may include women's own lack of preparedness for success and the predominance of men on selection committees.
The authors make a number of recommendations. In the area of record-keeping, they suggest, among other things, that the Department of Education collect, analyse and publish records of applications and appointments to principalships by type of principalship, type of school and gender.
"It is essential that positive interventions in the form of inservice training are provided at different levels, with a view to effecting attitudinal change in a number of critical areas." Recommendations include training courses to encourage women to apply for leadership positions, to provide an opportunity for them to discuss options in a supportive environment and to provide a forum in which alternative styles of management can be discussed.
Suitable support structures for principals are also recommended. "These recommendations, if put into effect, will not change the gender imbalance in educational management in the short term," they write. "However, in concert with a broad policy on gender equality in the education system, they would have a positive impact on the pressures leading to change."
Stepping out of the Shadows: Women in educational management in Ireland by Leonie Warren and Eileen O'Connor is published by Oak Tree Press.
