The Quandary of Collaboration with Female School Administrators

One of the key factors, and yet often missed by current scholars, in the discussion of collaborative administration of any kind, anywhere is the interpersonal relationship that exists between heads of administration and their subordinates. Undergirding the valence that pulls people together with their out-group is the absence of factors of discrimination, stereotyping, fanatism,, sexism, and sometimes rancor. Some of these repulsive factors are the creations of one's cultural institutions or ideological beliefs by which people have been socialized. These cultural ideological beliefs orient members of one society to ascribe hegemonic statuses to themselves while looking down on others considered as belonging to an out-group.

In patriarchal societies, for instance, men are considered superiors of the female population especially when it comes to issues of decision-making and leadership prerogatives. In such cultures, it is believed that gender ideological beliefs of a less egalitarian type plays a role in ascribing to women subservient statuses. The general society then expects women to defer to men in moments of leadership and decision-making. The issue becomes even more complex when a female becomes the administrative head with less egalitarian subordinates (traditionalists) under her, who now should experience a power twist to accept the authority of the female culturally considered as the subordinate of the man.

One would think that such traditional, cultural considerations were things of the past. However, startling revelations were made by this work of research that keeps the researcher wondering whether society is aware of the social distance still existing between female administrators and their subordinates; and whether individual's professional performances under female headed administration have been compromised by a slag in collaborative administration; and whether this can be the function of the presence of a social distance between those subordinates and their female heads