Leading While Female: A Culturally Proficient Response for Gender Equity

by Trudy Tuttle Arriaga, Stacie Lynn Stanley, Delores B. Lindsey

Overview

Your take-action guide to gender equity

First, just to be clear: Leading While Female is not a book about how to get a leadership job. Nor is it about fixing or transforming women into male managers or mindsets.

Instead, Arriaga, Stanley, and Lindsey’s bigger ambition is to help both women and men educational leaders confront and close the gender equity gap—a gap that currently denies highly qualified women and women of color opportunities to better serve our millions of public school students.

Designed as both a personal and group discussion guide for taking action, Leading While Female draws on the research of feminism, intersectionality, educational leadership, and Cultural Proficiency to help us all:

• Better understand the impact of faux narratives that foster lack of confidence among girls and women
• Utilize the Tools of Cultural Proficiency to examine barriers to overcome and support functions to locate for your own career planning
• Learn from the stories of women leaders who have confronted and overcome barriers to career development, including women of color who were targets of implicit bias
• Explore and expand the roles and opportunities for our male colleagues to serve as allies, advocates, and mentors.

If we look at the data, we can safely say women are doing the work of classroom teaching while disproportionately, men are making administrative and leadership decisions. Here at last is a resource for the breaking down the barriers and leading the way for future generations of women leaders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781544360751
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/05/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	160
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Dr. Trudy T. Arriaga served the Ventura Unified School District for 14 years as the first female superintendent.  She began her career as a bilingual para-educator and enjoyed 40 years of service in education as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, director, superintendent and university instructor at all levels.  Trudy retired as superintendent in July 2015 and was honored by the naming of the VUSD District Office, The VUSD Trudy Tuttle Arriaga Education Service Center.  She is currently on the Cal Lutheran University faculty as the Associate Dean of Equity and Outreach in the Educational Leadership Department in the Graduate School of Education.  Trudy is the co-author of Opening Doors: An Implementation Template for Cultural Proficiency with her esteemed colleague, Dr. Randall B. Lindsey.   Trudy has focused her life work on the fundamental belief that the educational system has tremendous capability and responsibility to open doors for all students.  Her leadership has focused on core values that ensure equity, access, and opportunity for every child and their family.  It has been her privilege to assist school districts throughout the United States to align the actions of the organization with their stated values and principles in their effort to build a culturally proficient organization.  Trudy and her husband, Raymundo are enjoying this grand chapter of life as grandparents to Rayo Mana and Sofia Anuhea. 

Dr. Stacie L. Stanley currently serves as the Assistant Superintendent in the Twin Cities Metro Area.  Stacie has served in a variety of education roles including classroom teacher, elementary school principal, math specialist, curriculum and staff development specialist, director of achievement equity and director of curriculum, assessment and instruction.  Stacie is a Senior Training Associate for The Center for Culturally Proficient Practices and served as a contributing author for the text Innovative Voices in Education: engaging diverse communities (2012).  Stacie continues to seek out and harness the voices that are missing from the table, and supports schools and districts in doing the same. She earned her doctorate degree from Bethel University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she researched the impact of intercultural development on K-6 administrative leadership practice.  Stacie is also a graduate school adjunct faculty member at Hamline and Bethel Universities in Minnesota.  She lives with her husband, and enjoys being an empty nester, taking long walks, and spending time with their grandchildren.  

Delores B. Lindsey, Ph.D., retired as Assistant Professor of Educational Administration, at California State University, San Marcos. However, she has not retired from the educational profession. Using the lens of Cultural Proficiency, Dr. Lindsey helps educational leaders examine their policies and practices, as well as their individual beliefs and values about cross-cultural communication.  Delores’ message to her audiences focuses on socially just educational practices and diversity as assets to be nurtured. Dr. Lindsey coaches educators to develop their own inquiry and action research.  Her favorite reflective questions are: Who are we?  and Are we who we say we are? She serves schools, districts, and county offices as an Adaptive Schools Training Associate, a Cognitive Coach Training Associate, and a consultant to develop culturally  proficient  educators and schools. Her recent publications include A Culturally Proficient response to the common core: Ensuring equity through professional learning (2015, Lindsey, Kearney, Estrada, & Lindsey); and Culturally Proficient inclusive schools: All means all! (2018, Lindsey, Thousand, Jew & Piowlski).

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Introduction: Identifying Pitfalls and Pipelines
Chapter 1: Owning the Stories We Tell: Our Counternarratives
Chapter 2: Cultural Proficiency: A Framework for Gender Equity
Chapter 3: Confronting and Overcoming Barriers
Chapter 4: Moving Forward with Guiding Principles
Chapter 5: Understanding Feminism, Identity, and Intersectionality: Who Am I? Who Are We?
Chapter 6: Recommending Men’s Actions as Allies, Advocates, and Mentors
Chapter 7: Leading While Female: A Call for Action
Women in Education Leadership Retreat: Leading While Female August 2018
Resource: Essential Questions
Book Study Guide for Leading While Female
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"I am truly excited about the new book which Trudy Arriaga, Delores Lindsey, and Stacie Stanley have written about women raising their voices in the fight for gender equity. I am pleased that the authors are continuing the work which was begun in the book by Franco, Ott, and Robles, titled A Culturally Proficient Society Begins in School: Leadership for Equity (Corwin, 2011). It is hard work that must be continuously brought to light if change is to occur at levels equal to the population statistics for women today. The conversation must be ongoing, robust, confronting, and engaging and the three authors address this in Leading While Female. Through the efforts of Arriaga, Lindsey, and Stanley, and their acknowledgement of those who have gone before, the topic of gender equity will endure in the daily lives of women and those who inspire women to break through barriers to success. "

Dr. Carmella S. Franco

"In Leading While Female, Delores Lindsey, Trudy Arriaga, and Stacie Stanley hold up a mirror for all of us as we consider the inequity that exists in educational leadership. Unlike many corporations, education is a field where the majority of women are teachers, yet only a small percentage go on to become superintendents. Helping us to ask why and to when consider how we can all make a difference is the central focus of the book. We hear from women directly about their experiences and their journey. The authors' stories and those of the women that they interviews help us to understand the many facets of this challenge, and it is in these stories that we can see just how much we are all losing by not looking for ways to lift each other up in order to address the current inequities. This is an important book for our time. "

Brenda Hall

"This book challenges us to look at educational leadership inequities with our eyes wide open, data in front of us, and a determination that we can do better. This book is about raising our voices to match our passion, dedication, and competency as female Educational Leaders. The barriers we encounter are both external in the form of sexist notions and internal in the form of those cultural mantras playing in our own minds. As women, we need to share our stories, which outline the barriers we have faced because those experiences are so pervasive. Understanding the enormity of the problem allows us to take more control of the future. This book gives us the tools and resources to find our own unique courage and the blueprints to build strong partnerships for this work. "

Rachel Gorton

"Finally a book I can relate to as it speaks to the struggles, grit and perseverance women experience as we aim for equity and access in educational leadership. Leading While Female is the clarion call for access and equity in the arena of educational leadership. It reminds us that we cannot make changes in silence. It is a research-based book chock full of practices and real possibilities as we aspire towards an inclusive educational leadership landscape worthy of our children. "

Michele R. Dean

"This comes to leaders at an urgent and pivotal time in education. Gender inclusivity is necessary for all educators, but also for the students they serve. Nowhere else have the necessary advocacy, tools, and tangible actions been harnessed into a single book for leaders. Changing perspectives and creating actions that lead to an inclusive and diverse workforce is a challenging endeavor. However, it will create lasting experiences for students and empower the leaders and educators who serve them. Knowing about gender inclusivity is not enough: the authors force us to act on it. "

Jacqueline Perez

"Leading While Female is a much needed and timely piece that thoughtfully explores the multidimensional experiences of women in educational leadership. The authors take an inside-out approach that encourages men and women to reflect and take action toward disrupting gender inequality. "

Dr. Jaguanana Lathan

"A book about Culturally Proficient Leadership such as this, which examines the historic and current reality of gender inequity, is truly a must read for all leaders at all levels. In the name of striving for a pluralistic society, to move away from individualism towards collectivism—the questions in the book that ask 'Who Am I? Who Are We?' bring leaders to truly look into the mirror and identify whether their values and beliefs are reflecting back to them. Dr. Stacie Stanley’s leadership defies the statistics of women of color in leadership, more importantly her story of 'becoming' as a leader in a male-dominated field for executive leadership is truly inspiring and an example of breaking the glass ceiling. Leaders will appreciate the Gender Equity Action Plan and Rubric to guide the work in order to make informed, systemic decisions that will increase women in leadership roles for the year 2020 and beyond. "

Dr. Naomi Rae Taylor

"Leading While Female is the journey and verbal testament of three women who speak to reveal the racial, classed, and gendered injustices they have witnessed as educational leaders as a means of healing, empowerment, and advocacy for a more humane present and future grounded in equity. Arriaga, Stanley, and Lindsey provide powerful counternarratives to interrupt the status quo, master narratives of male-dominated leadership roles, inspire male leaders to grow as culturally competent leaders and feminists, and to pave the way for future generations of women leaders from diverse backgrounds. "

Gilberto Q. Conchas

"As someone who believes deeply that we need to find our voices around what matters, this book is a necessary and supportive addition to my bookshelf. The authors combine powerful statistics, personal narratives, and concrete strategies into an accessible and useful text both men and women can use to shift the conversation around gender equity at all levels in education. "

Jennifer Abrams

"Throughout Leading While Female, I was struck by the importance of gaining allies in the work of leadership. The alignment between racial and gender equity allies is truly significant. Just as white leaders absolutely cannot stand by quietly as our leaders of color step up time after time, men cannot be silent supporters of gender equity leadership. "

Dr. Jenny Loeck

"Gender equity is an educational issue for women and men school leaders as allies, advocates and mentors. Arriaga, Stanley and Lindsey provide school organizations and individual school leaders pathways for ensuring that schools and school districts have the expertise of highly qualified women educational leaders. The authors skillfully combine their personal experiences with current women’s narratives that illuminate lingering barriers to leadership roles. Then the authors provide narratives that highlight successful personal and systemic pathways to entry-level and district-level leadership roles. "

Randall Lindsey

"Leading While Female is an essential work for educational leaders at all levels. It calls for opening space for those who makeup the majority of school personnel to more effectively lead for justice and equity. This voice has too often been missing in shaping policies, practices, and procedures. "

Ray Terrell

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