Enhancing Equity for Women’s Leadership in International Schools Through Transformative Action

Abstract

Despite increased recognition of its importance, most activities promoting the inclusion of women in leadership in the international schooling sector occur within discrete pockets or subgroups of women advocating for and supporting other women. Actions being taken by these women for women are not reaching a broader audience and have yet to sufficiently address the challenge of meeting gender equity in leadership in international schools. This article presents findings from interviews with eight women who are experts in the field of International Schooling. We use Shields’ Transformative Leadership Theory as a lens to analyse, problematise and theorise the structures surrounding women in leadership in international schools and propose a way forward. Our findings reveal the difficulty of defining the problem and the evidence of significant silences around women in leadership. We argue that if International Schooling is to be transformative, then institutions and systems must pursue a more socially just agenda. We argue for the need to overcome silences and challenge traditional notions of leadership that have disadvantaged women. Finally, we present an adaptation of Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Capability Framework to propose a potential pathway forward to support equity for women in leadership in International Schooling.

1. Introduction

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) highlight the importance of ensuring “women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life” (Target 5.5) and the critical need for “equitable inclusive and quality education and lifelong learning for all” (Goal 4). These goals and targets indicate that increasing participation of women in leadership is crucial for equitable distribution of power in public life and supporting the ideal of equitable, inclusive and quality education. The 2025 Women Lead for Learning Gender Report (Global Education Monitoring Report Team, 2025) echoes this sentiment, illustrating a critical need for more women leaders in education globally. The privileged (Bunnell & Gardner-McTaggart, 2025) and cosmopolitan (Savva & Stanfield, 2018) context of International Schooling1, is not exempt from this phenomenon. In fact, the proportion of women leaders in international schools trails behind average Western school systems. Whilst full statistics are difficult to ascertain, the 2025 Council of International Schools (CIS) Heads of Schools Salary Survey (CIS, 2025) shows 29% women leaders, in contrast the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, n.d.) Education Leadership database states that the average proportion of women school principals in OECD systems sits at 47.3%.

1.1. Context: International Schooling

Understanding the context of international schools and their position in the greater landscape of International Schooling (Bunnell, 2014) is crucial for transformative change at a broad, systemic level. Multiple factors need to be grasped including historical establishment features (Hill, 2016) of individual schools, embedded privilege and elitism (Bunnell, 2020b), the broader landscape (Pearce, 2023), and the often-underplayed neoliberal tension between business goals, educational values and the broader remit of International Schooling (MacDonald, 2006). Relatedly, hegemonic Western influences transmitted through curricula, teaching approaches, faculty and leaders, are highly relevant in the way that they shape the idea “of what it means to be international” (Gardner-McTaggart, 2021, p. 2). This preserves an isolation of the internal context of international schools from the cultural context in which they exist; despite promoting global perspectives and cosmopolitan ideals (Bunnell & Gardner-McTaggart, 2025; Savva & Stanfield, 2018).

Attempts to define the landscape of International Schooling continue to illuminate the complexity (Fertig & James, 2016) and its changing nature (Bunnell, 2022). Building on the work of other scholars in the field, we have previously defined international schools as:

a loosely collective noun referring to individual or chains of schools “with a global view, located mainly outside an English-speaking country, delivering a non-national curriculum, at least partly in English” (Bunnell, 2019, p. 1); where governance and/or ownership may, or may not be, transnational (Gibson & Bailey, 2021; Bourgeois et al., 2025).

Nevertheless, International Schooling as a grouping remains nebulous and indistinct. In this article, we refer to the plethora of school groups (such as Nexus or Nord Anglia), accrediting agencies and organisations—of which the International Baccalaureate (IB) is an example—and businesses running alongside international schools, including recruiters and professional learning consultants, as the “built-biome” (Bourgeois et al., under review). In this study, our focus extends beyond individual schools or agencies to examine women in leadership within this built-biome.

Positionality

The authors’ experiences within the international schooling sector span a wide range—from past employment to current, to never employed within the sector, from extensive related research to new interest in the field. All three authors have a research interest in women and leadership.

1.2. Educational Leadership in International Schooling

Leadership studies, particularly in the context of International Schooling, identify a need for additional theorisation (Bourgeois et al., 2025; Bunnell, 2020a; Calnin et al., 2018). A growing body of scholarship critiques International Schooling generally, and the IB itself (Gardner-McTaggart, 2024b), acknowledging ingrained challenges such as “a reported lack of internationalism/diversity in leaders and educators” (Gardner-McTaggart et al., 2024, p. 559), and identifying inherent tensions enmeshed across the sector, particularly concerning the currency of privilege and advantage (Gardner-McTaggart, 2024a). Within this article, we take up the call to bring theory and empirical evidence to move beyond description through the application of Transformative Leadership Theory (TLT), (Shields, 2010, 2017, 2019, 2025) and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s (AITSL, 2022b) Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Capability Framework (ICRCF). The language, concepts and relationships within and between these two frameworks enable us to move from descriptions of raw data towards in-depth insights, leading to new understandings about the ongoing inequity of women’s leadership across the international schooling sector.

We recognise that leadership is more than positional, hierarchical roles and that leaders exist at all levels within a school both formally and informally (Gurr & Nicholas, 2023). However, this paper addresses leadership roles such as Head of School or Principal—those often grouped as being the senior leadership team.

Within the rapidly changing field of International Schooling, transformative action is needed to support women in their pursuit of leadership within these schools to facilitate a more equitable and inclusive context for learning.

1.3. Women and Leadership

Factors found to be hindering women’s pathways to leadership have been explored in multiple studies, across various fields, including Higher Education (Fitzgerald, 2020) and School Leadership (Fuller, 2017; Thompson & Stokes, 2025). Yet as Chase and Martin (2021) reiterate, women face “the same discriminatory experiences documented in research…over the past few decades” (p. 15) and intersectionality compounds these challenges further (Blackmore, 2020). There is a need to move beyond identifying barriers and facilitators to individual success in order to deconstruct and reimagine systems and structures that provide a more inclusive and equitable distribution of power in international school leadership (Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016; Keohane, 2020; Tan & DeFrank-Cole, 2018), one that results in full “parity of participation” (Fraser, N. 1997 cited in Blackmore, 2016, p. 76). Indeed, our earlier examination of the experiences of women leaders in IB international schools identified a key challenge, with women leaders often relying on their individual agency and the joint efforts of like-minded women to navigate career pathways (Bourgeois et al., under review). A shift to considering this issue as one of collective, systemic responsibility and examining what equity means for roles and responsibility across the international schooling sector is a significant next step to paving the way for transformative change.

1.4. Transformative Leadership Theory

TLT (Shields, 2025) foregrounds social justice as a key purpose of education, one that calls educational leaders to challenge “inappropriate uses of power and privilege that create or perpetuate inequity and injustice” (Shields, 2010, p. 268). Refined over time, TLT posits two hypotheses and eight tenets that frame a transformative orientation for educational leadership; combining pillars of leadership with a moral and ethical stance (Shields & Sayani, 2005).

The acknowledgement of the ripple effect of schools on society differentiates TLT from the more organisational focus of Transformational Leadership (Bass, 1998; Burns, 1978). Although the idea of transformation underpins both approaches, TLT seeks deep, active change for social justice “not simply of the educational organisation or system, but of society itself” (Shields, 2025, p. 21). For leaders, aligning the vision of the UNSDGs to application within local contexts is one way that Shields (2025) and Shields and Hesbol (2020) recommends for achieving the social justice embedded in TLT. One of the central tenets of TLT, described by Shields (2025) and Shields and Hesbol (2020), is the need for leaders to balance critique and promise; it means to critically examine existing structures and reconstruct them in ways that might fulfil the promise of more equitable and socially just educational settings as a foundation for social change.

While critiques form a central role within TLT, it is difficult to find a published critique of the theory itself. In the 3rd edition of TLT (Shields, 2025), Shields addresses some of the possible critiques that she has pre-empted, including the potential for TLT as too prescriptive or its remit of promoting social change being beyond the role of schooling. We further dispute the idea that enacting TLT leans into a single heroic leader finding instead that it situates transformative leadership amongst the structures and roles of leadership. At the same time, and particularly applicable to women and leadership, we caution the conflation of the idea “we are all leaders” (Shields, 2022, p. 8) as suggestive of equitable distribution of power within International Schooling.

While International Schooling has been largely exempt from studies of transformative leadership, a majority of the research in this field is focused on leadership practices that support student learning and the school community (Carrington et al., 2024). Our use of TLT in this article differs in two ways. First, rather than reporting on school leaders’ practices within a school context, our focus is on transformative action for school leadership, in the built-biome—within and across schools. In order to achieve the goal of “equitable and inclusive education and lifelong learning for all” (United Nations, 2015), issues of inequity within systems and organisations that provide education need to be addressed. While International Schooling has made some progress in promoting change (Chatelier, 2025), further transformative action is required to ensure an equitable distribution of power.

Second, we are using TLT as a lens for examining interviews with expert women leaders in International Schooling. This lens enables us to identify challenges and opportunities for transformative action within the sector. Like Carrington et al. (2024), we have used TLT to illuminate approaches to promoting ethical, equitable and inclusive practice. We argue there is a need to overcome current silences in relation to gender equity in order for International Schooling to move in a transformative direction2.

Limited information is available about the distribution or experiences of women in leadership in International Schooling. As such, a key aim of this case study was to draw on the knowledge and experience of expert participants (Bogner et al., 2018) to deconstruct current structures and systems of International Schooling to promote greater equity for women who pursue leadership roles.

Therefore, this article raises and responds to the questions:

1. 

What are the systems-embedded barriers and facilitators to equity for women in international schools’ leadership?

2. 

How could the international schooling sector achieve or move towards Transformative Leadership?

2. Methodology

This article is informed by a case study (Yin, 2018) exploring women leaders within the international schooling sector from a broader systems perspective via engagement with “experts” (Bogner et al., 2018). Underpinned by a theoretical and methodological bricolage (Kincheloe et al., 2018), our study draws on a pragmatic and eclectic range of approaches to understand how elements in the international schooling sector enable and constrain women’s pathways into senior leadership roles. Case study methods enabled the collection of a range of data, including interviews examined in this paper, to overcome current limitations of available data on women in leadership in International Schooling. Drawing on TLT (Shields, 2025), we move beyond describing barriers to individual women’s leadership progression to challenge current structures and show how the international schooling sector could dismantle the current inequitable distribution of power within its leadership.

Expert Participants

Nine participants (

Table 1. Participant’s time in international schools/international education, current role zone and curriculum discussed.

	Years in International Schools/International Education	Current Employment/ Voluntary/Self-Employment Zone	Curriculum Discussed
Participant 1	20+ years	Built-biome	United States (US) National, International
Participant 2	25+ years	Built-biome	National, International
Participant 3	27+ years	Built-biome	National, International
Participant 4	40+ years	Built-biome	British, US, International, International Baccalaureate (IB)
Participant 5	40+ years	Built-biome	US, IB, International
Participant 6	30+ years	Built-biome	IB
Participant 7	29 years	In-school/built-biome	British National, International
Participant 8	29 years	Built-biome	IB

) were purposively sampled as “experts” based on roles over time within the built-biome, and/or due to the profile of their work related to women in leadership advocacy. The limitation of accessing a richly diverse sample within this context is acknowledged. This study used the definition of “expert” as “anyone who is responsible for and has privileged access to the knowledge of specific groups of people or decision-making processes” (Littig, 2009, p. 100). These nine women were specifically selected due to their longitudinal relationship to the “specific field of interest” (Döringer, 2021, p. 265), namely women in leadership in International Schooling. Of the nine approached, eight provided informed consent and received the semi-structured interview protocol (see Appendix A), including two questions personalised to the participant’s role, experience and/or organisation3. All of the participants had been involved in International Schooling for between 20 and 40 years, and their combined insights serve to establish a chain of evidence, from multiple voices across the interviews (Yin, 2018). Interviews lasted between 45 and 100 min in duration and were conducted via Zoom (Version 6.0.2).

Data were initially inductively coded using NVivo software, and clustered into groups. At that point, the initial code clusters were deductively coded according to the tenets of TLT (Carrington et al., 2024), with all members of the research team reaching consensus on the final thematic constructions. Through this reflexive process, it became apparent that although the mandate of a need for change around women and leadership in the context of international schools was generally accepted, there were two key challenges. With the bricolage methodology underpinning the research, scope to be responsive to this need led to seeking out a research-based framework to develop strategies for understanding and ameliorating the inequitable distribution of power. Ultimately this led to the anchor of the AITSL (2022b), ICRCF forming the basis of our discussion of potential avenues for transformative change in international school leadership.

3. Thematic Constructions

Engaging with experts with long-term experience in the built-biome, this case study brings together insights into the sector of international schooling and the role of women as leaders. The contributions of these experts serve to deepen understanding of the context within which examination of and solutions for increasing women’s inclusion in school leadership can occur. This case study illuminates two thematic constructions: (1) a lack of problem definition, clear goals and strategic actionable outcomes, and (2) pervasive silences in need of rectification. When examined through the lens of TLT, these data demonstrate a need to reimagine the role and responsibility of the built-biome and school ecosystems to promote the equitable distribution of power.

3.1. A Lack of Problem Definition

The participants consistently reported five shared perspectives on the topic of women in international school leadership: lack of data, historical barriers, additional challenges women experience, concepts and spaces of leadership and opaque pathways. First, most participants shared a sense of progress in increasing equity in international school leadership, despite very little evidence to support this sentiment (

Table 2. Sample of participant quotes embodying a sense of progress and numerical references to around women in leadership.

A sense of progress

I certainly hear it, and I certainly see more women in those positions, but I don’t have the data. (P1) …the shift’s happening. There are a lot more female (participant’s usage) principals now, and of course more heads of school. (P2) Well, we haven’t had much of a revolution, really. No, no big revolution…I think it might be that the numbers are slowly growing. (P3) As a woman in leadership, I have seen over time definitely more interest in getting women into leadership positions. (P5) So, I think in those spaces, just knowing that there’s a growing cohort of senior female (participant’s usage) leaders has been powerful. (P6) Great school leaders tell me, and this is in the last 12 months… it’s ‘I think it’s all better now, though, isn’t it, I mean, for women. Things are great, and there’s other diverse groups and minorities that really need concentrating on’. (P7) Because the international education space leadership has it been so much led by the men, you find that there have been fewer and fewer women, but as it has evolved now, we have more women joining that leadership in the international education space. (P8)

Considering numbers

I don’t think there’s been as much of a change as, or at least an increase in the numbers…I think the percentages have improved…the reality of the statistics isn’t necessarily the reality of people on the ground with real power and influence. (P3) The stats are still fairly abysmal. Although improving, but it’s sort of like, you know… it improves it goes from quite a low baseline, and improves a bit, but we have like a long ways to go. (P5) …Within international settings, statistics demonstrate even less equity. (P7) But if we’re not tracking it, how do we know what’s emerging and what’s coming forward? (P7)

). This highlights both the challenge of securing comparable and longitudinal statistics and the lack of clear evidence of progress in terms of ensuring an equitable distribution of power (CIS, 2023, 2025).

3.1.1. Lack of Data

Within the interviews, participants were divided on approaches for defining and addressing the challenges for women leaders in international schools. In fact, some debate was evident around whether the collection of data on gender distribution within international schooling leadership was necessary. Participant Seven strongly advocated for keeping robust data; however, Participant Four argued that gender data is private and disclosure should not be a requirement. Either way, the current lack of empirical evidence continues to distort the picture.

Despite the general sense of optimism that change is occurring, voiced by six participants, the degree of progress is still questioned, with one participant stating, “We are still not making dents”, asking “where is the real power?”, and quickly realising that it is “in decision-making” (P4). Another participant identifies a lack of evidence and a lack of change, stating “my feeling…because I’m not basing it on anything is that we haven’t increased the numbers of women sufficiently” (P3). In addition, Participant Six notes that currently it appears that “women leaders from Western, English-speaking countries” are experiencing more success in international school leadership, illuminating a two-fold reason to collect detailed data over time: First, to be able to see change over time and celebrate small milestones for the proportion of women in leadership, and second, to acknowledge that intersectional identities continue to be marginalised in the context and are often not represented within leadership in International Schooling.

3.1.2. Historical Barriers

The expert participants adopted a critical stance when discussing the proportion of women in leadership, considering how International Schooling inadvertently hinders equitable opportunity for and representation in leadership, and querying whether current progress towards equitable representation is sufficient. Half of the participants explained how a historical barrier for women has been the “very tight, closed networks” (P5) of membership organisations across the built-biome. Whilst there has been general support for initiatives to support women’s leadership by built-biome organisations, these have primarily made space for women leaders and aspiring leaders to connect with other women. Interestingly, despite sharing their own experiences and observations of gender-based discrimination, three of the expert participants indicated that they had never established any personal connection with women’s affinity and advocacy groups, with one questioning “what value is this adding?” (P4). Regardless, all participants acknowledged that women working for and with other women have supported critical knowledge-building for many women pursuing leadership, and yet women always having to upskill themselves was identified as a “tir(ing) and frustrat(ing)” (P5) burden. This finding suggests that while there is awareness of historical barriers and advocacy groups, awareness itself is not sufficiently transformative and achieving deep and equitable change (Shields, 2025) requires further action.

3.1.3. Additional Challenges Women Experience

All of the participants recognised that women face additional challenges in pursuing leadership pathways (Gurr et al., 2025; Thompson & Stokes, 2025). Consistent with an earlier multi-case study with women leaders in international schools (Bourgeois et al., under review), the interviewed experts spoke about challenges women experience in becoming leaders and practicing leadership in international schools. These include prohibitive job descriptions that inhibit women from applying for jobs (P7), men’s career trajectories being much shorter due to “leapfrogging positions” (P5), and time taken for raising families being essentially a “non-refundable tax” (P7). Participant Two raised concern regarding negative women-to-women interactions and limited support systems. These were perceived as a result of a “scarcity mindset” (P6), a conception of it being so difficult to get into senior leadership and there being so few roles that bringing others along will be a cost to one’s own progression opportunities. Additionally, societal constructs were noted to play a role here, particularly perceptions about women’s role in society. Deeply embedded prejudices persist including the “myth that women can never be as good as leaders who are men because they are not tough enough” (P4). This finding supports problem-posing and unveiling reality (Freire, 1970, 2000; Shields, 2022) as provocative pre-cursors to transformative change at systems and societal levels.

3.1.4. Leadership Concepts and Spaces

Across the interviews, the idea recurs that concepts and spaces of leadership need to be challenged and deconstructed so that reconstruction can occur. The majority view was that generally, the role of the leader is changing—“there’s been a really big shift in expectations of leaders” (P7)—moving away from “concreteness” (P3) and skillsets that have contributed to the perception of who can be a leader. Instead, participants suggest that desirable leadership capabilities include “flexibility” (P3), “emotional” (P7) understanding and comfort with “the high pressure, highly complex role” (P1), with half citing the IB Leadership Intelligences (Calnin et al., 2018) as one framework that encompasses these. Three of the eight participants attempted to elevate potential shifts that women might bring to the leadership space, highlighting women as “embracing deep empathy and care” (P5), as “negotiators…reclaiming ancestral roles…possessing an innate power” (P8) or as exceling in “relational…, emotional…, empathic leadership” (P7). What became apparent is a fine line that could easily fall into socially constructed, stereotypical iterations of women as leaders. However, there is also validity in reshaping leadership to place value on less transactional aspects of leading, as one participant suggests, leaders who are men could also be held “accountable for empathy when the job requires” (P4). Participant Four explains: “I do think it’s a barrier that we associate women with softer and more relational qualities. But we’ve also thrown up this idea that softer relational qualities don’t work in leadership, right?” (P4). Overall, this study raises the need to challenge the status quo (Shields, 2022, 2025) through the deconstruction and reconstruction of knowledge frameworks to promote equity.

3.1.5. Opaque Pathways

All participants reference the unique complexities of leading in international schools, yet what becomes clear is a lack of consensus or clarity around leadership pathways and challenges in ensuring upcoming leaders are equipped to handle this landscape. Participant One described the need to optimise leadership development across the sector, particularly around what counts as experience. In agreement, Participant Seven referenced specific skills required for school leadership that are not generally experienced in middle leadership roles, including human resources; equitable recruitment processes and conflict resolution; financial aspects like projecting and managing budgets; and operational features such as project management of new buildings. Some structural solutions were suggested for practical aspects of school management; however, the need for a broad structural approach that reimagines the role and responsibility of the built-biome and school ecosystems was not evidenced. The importance of acknowledging contextual inequities appears to be a vital element for the application of TLT to practice.

Participants all intimated that there is a women and leadership problem, but not a clearly defined one. Theorising through the application of TLT during analysis enabled us to start to more clearly define the problem. Compiling the five features—lack of data, historical barriers, challenges women experience, concepts and spaces of leadership, and opaque pathways—contributes to the problem definition. Moving forward, we identify the silences from the participants and further theorise this challenge through the adaptation of the ICRCF (AITSL, 2022b), providing a starting point for “the work to overcome” (Shields, 2025, p. 39) inequitable distribution of power in International Schooling.

3.2. Silences

TLT (Shields, 2025) highlights the importance of critique as a means of identifying how a system advantages some groups or individuals. Balanced with promise, we envisage pathways that lead to action. A key challenge in critique is attending not only to the descriptions of these structures but also identifying issues that are not discussed. Across the interviews, three silences were identified by examining what was not said or attended to—acceptance of leadership as a gender-neutral concept, the reluctance to see women as an equity group, and the ongoing inequity being perceived as women’s issue.

3.2.1. Gender-Neutral Presentation of Leadership

For the most part, participants referred to leadership, or specific leadership approaches without accompanying the critique that they may be underpinned by gendered constructs. Two participants exhibited a critical stance. One recognised that in job advertisements “certain words are more associated with masculine traits and may deter female (participant’s usage) applicants” (P7). Other than these examples, throughout the interviews, leadership is discussed as a gender-neutral concept or “function” (P6) with limited critiques of what this entails. Even when one participant recognises the need to revise leadership training so that it “might encourage a broader perspective of people to believe that they can do it” (P3), the notion of biases in how leadership is perceived was not mentioned. This participant also frames ideal as “a situation where work and roles and responsibilities are attributed to people as it is needed, as opposed to who’s got the right colour skin or gender, or whatever else it is” (P3). Accepting leadership as a gender-neutral construct creates further silence around the challenges that women pursuing this pathway continue to face.

3.2.2. Reluctance to See Women as an Equity Group

Gender disparity in school leadership is in some ways recognised as a “matter of urgency” (P7), yet throughout the interviews, over half of the participants exhibited reluctance to specifically address women and leadership as a social justice issue. A recurrent theme in the interviews was a shared sense that advocacy and action about women’s leadership should occur for all leaders and aspiring leaders, under the umbrella of what the Council of International Schools terms Inclusion via Diversity, Equity and Anti-Discrimination (I-DEA) initiatives (CIS, n.d.). That is, while diverse representation in leadership is a common goal, we note reluctance to also engage with the idea of challenges for women specifically. This appears to be driven by a genuine desire to advocate for diverse, intersectional individuals, who experience marginalisation. However, we find that this is, in large part, a “conscious unconsciousness”, defined by Diehl and Dzubinski (2016) as a “deliberate choice not to notice, be affected by, or challenge the role gender plays in the workplace” (p. 192).

Half of the participants advocated for change for all, stating that the challenge is “only one of many things we need to address” (P3), even cautioning against action outside of I-DEA framing. Many participants gave intersectional examples to reiterate the point (

Table 3. Sample of participant quotes related to intersectional examples and I-DEA inclusion.

Examples of intersectional challenges shared

What is missing is while the percentages of women, while there have been gains, we in the international school world are still woefully lacking women of colour in leadership positions. (P1) I’ve got quite a few Indian teacher friends and like them trying to get positions—it’s so hard for them. (P2) …because when you hear about diversity in schools, it’s like, well, there’s a diversity, of colour of course, but there’s also diversity of culture, of representation, and we deal so much with Asian students, but when you think about the number of Asian teaching staff, (I’m not talking support staff), it’s not that high in a lot of international schools. (P7)

I-DEA encompassment will make this more well-received or be effective

I think that might be changing, but it will be a part of a bigger movement, to be more open to everyone. (P3) I think we’ve got better chance of making significant strides if it’s encompassed by DEIB, DEIJ *, rather than just females (participant’s usage) in leadership, but I think that’s a significant part of it. (P3)

* DEIB, DEIJ: variations of I-DEA (CIS, n.d.) as used throughout the article.

). The intention is indisputable, as is the positive modelling of active allyship, and yet, by maintaining a broad silence around women’s leadership inequity, the necessary impact for all women leaders has not yet been seen.

3.2.3. Positioning Equity in Leadership as an Issue for All

Despite seemingly positive change being recognised in various spaces, it is not consistent across the international schooling landscape, including a lack of engagement by current leaders who have room to develop proactive support and generational scaffolding for women leaders. Aside from a few examples of individual colleagues who were men supporting personal career moves, participants did not speak to the engagement of the entire international schooling sector in recognising and taking action to resolve the issue of women’s leadership representation. This silence alludes to the under-representation of women in senior leadership in international schools still being perceived as a women’s issue. Reiterating this idea, one participant cautions, “if you want people to read this (study) and move forward you’ve got to make it accessible and interesting to all and not speak to an echo chamber of people” (P3). This statement indicates that discussions about the need for more women in leadership in international schools often only attract the attention of like-minded individuals. It suggests that the majority of leaders who are in a position to engage in transformative practices within International Schooling sit outside of the “echo chamber”.

Overcoming this pathology of silence (Shields, 2004) is critical to moving towards equity. The persistent inequity around women’s leadership pathways and development is one of multiple, worthy, equity concerns, and one that deserves immediate and direct attention in its own right. Aligning with a key tenet of TLT, the need to balance critique and promise (Shields, 2025), the following discussion examines a potential pathway forward.

4. Discussion

Despite extensive research and well-established scholarship around barriers and facilitators for women leaders (Chase & Martin, 2021; Diehl & Dzubinski, 2016), this study identifies that there remains a lack of recognition in International Schooling of the breadth of the structural challenges for women seeking senior leadership. While we recognize that women may be leading in a variety of ways within their schools (Gurr & Nicholas, 2023), it is these positional roles that this study focuses on. Drawing on the views of expert women leaders positioned across the built-biome, the case study distils two key ideas that inhibit transformative change in international schools’ leadership: (1) a lack of problem definition, clear goals and strategic actionable outcomes, and (2) pervasive silences in need of rectification.

To address these two areas, we draw from TLT to help theorise the problem and consider ways that the sector of International Schooling might achieve or move towards equity. Acknowledgement, understanding and critique of inequitable power structures serve as crucial foundations for transformative leadership (Shields, 2025), requiring moral courage and a focus on the greater good of education beyond simply supporting women’s individual career success (Thompson & Stokes, 2025). A transformative approach indicates that a general acceptance of a need for change is not sufficient; therefore, our proposal offers guidance for the built-biome to determine ways to work towards a solution or reconstruction of current leadership structures.

In order to provide a transformative pathway forward, we have identified a model that could be adapted to support recognition and inclusion of women in leadership in international schools. We draw from research exploring “Indigenous cultural competency4 in the Australian teaching workforce” (AITSL, 2022a, p. 4) to enhance equity and inclusion within educational spaces and identify pathways forward for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and indeed all students, to reach their full potential. Through a consultative inquiry process, involving discussion papers, written submissions, online forums and a two-day National Dialogue event, the AITSL (2022a) recommendations led to intercultural development continuum and a responsiveness framework. Building from 1989 work from The Child Development Center (Cross et al., 1989) at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., the ICRCF (AITSL, 2022b) unpacks intercultural development in working towards equity into six stages: (1) Cultural Destructiveness, (2) Cultural Blindness, (3) Cultural Awareness, (4) Cultural Competency, (5) Cultural Responsiveness and (6) Cultural Sustainability. The ICRCF (AITSL, 2022b) provides a clear description of a continuum from inequity to equity, exclusion to inclusion, from cultural violence to cultural sustainability.

We view this tool as highly useful and adaptable to address various issues of equity and further argue that the addition of intercultural perspectives is critical for TLT if it is to be a theory capable of transnational applicability. Scholarly work on inclusion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and colleagues has taken up the challenge to pursue productive pathways towards equity. Within the framework, a critical first step is to raise awareness of challenges to understand how to move from “destructive” approaches to a more sustainable, equitable future. By adapting this from a cultural competency framework, we offer a lens for viewing potential progressions for change in International Schooling. The issue of women’s leadership can benefit from such a framework to understand how transformative action could occur but not in itself sufficient. We argue that achieving equity for women in leadership is a necessary step towards transformative change in International Schooling.

Within the national context of Australia, the purpose of this tool is “to assist educators and school leaders to critically reflect on and develop their ability to be more responsive to the knowledge, skills, and cultural identities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students” (AITSL, 2022b, p. 10). This iterative and ongoing process, is non-linear, disrupting western constructs of time and progress. We intentionally embrace this continuum as embodying an Indigenous way of knowing, one from outside of the hegemonic norm familiar to International Schooling (Bunnell, 2014). We apply it as a means of considering equitable leadership pathways for women leaders in international schools, adapting from cultural competency to a broader idea of inclusion; as such, we have changed the word “Cultural” in each stage title to indicate this.

Table 4. Stages towards greater equity for women leaders in international schools, adapted from the Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Capability Framework (ICRCF) (AITSL, 2022b). See Supplementary Materials for all Stages.

Stage 2: Blindness Indicators Rephrased to Align with Study Focus	Stage 3: Awareness Indicators Rephrased to Align with Study Focus	Stage 4: Competency Indicators Rephrased to Align with Study Focus
A lack of capacity to help minority educators and leaders who exhibit extremely biased beliefs and assumptions towards women leaders/leaders of any gender. Discomfort recognising difference when considering who leads and how. Dominant (social) group subconsciously takes actions to benefit archetypal leaders. Belief that one-size-fits-all approaches are suitable for all. Belief that achievement is based on merit. Individuals are blamed for failures. Lack of awareness how one’s own biases contribute to maintaining the status quo. Expectations for other (social) groups are lower due to own biases and assumptions.	The belief that women leader’s learning and experiences are within the dominant, universally applicable leadership culture. Verbalised commitment to valuing women in leadership/gender diverse representation in leadership, but no actions put in place. Understands that difference affects engagement, but not sure how to improve. Understands that being a woman in leadership (or aspiring)/non-archetypal leader comes with challenge, but not sure how to improve. Beginning to understand how own attitudes and beliefs affect interactions with women in leadership/non-archetypal leaders. Maintains a paternal attitude towards women leaders/non-archetypal leaders. Views achievement as a result of how well women in leadership/non-archetypal leaders can conform to the languages, values and beliefs of the dominant group. Awareness of differences in knowledges, languages, and cultural identities of women leaders/non-archetypal leaders (i.e., not homogeneous groupings). Recognises how own beliefs, attitudes, and practices impact women leaders/non-archetypal leaders in their role. Demonstrates interest in learning about women in leadership/non-archetypal leader and their histories, cultural identities, and perspectives. Demonstrates interest in establishing relationships with women in leadership/non-archetypal leaders at their school and across built-biome.	Often led by the educators and leaders own desire to undertake inclusive practices and embrace women as leaders/gender-various leaders. Expresses commitment to and values diversity. Engages in critical self-reflection to understand how their attitudes and behaviours influence perspective. Engages with diverse groups and endeavours to ensure Inclusion—via Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Discrimination (I-DEA) their values, beliefs and needs are considered in decision-making and action. Demonstrates behaviours and actions that value diversity as defined by broader groupings focused on I-DEA work. Actively develops intercultural knowledge and skills. Actively seeks input from diverse groups and takes action to meet needs.

Bolded words indicate adaptations from the original text relating to the study.

illustrates three of the stages and their adaptation. The three stages most relevant to the findings and the question of how International Schooling can increase equity and the distribution of power within the international schooling sector are shown here. (The full adaptation is available as Supplementary Materials) We value the resonance for broad gender diverse and intersectional identity groupings and encourage future scholarly examination to explore further.

First, the continuum helps identify areas of success; indeed, there is much implemented in International Schooling that is akin to the Competency stage, in that a commitment to and value of diversity is expressed. Broadly speaking, there is engagement with I-DEA values, beliefs and needs in ongoing and multi-faceted ways, including women and leadership initiatives. However, as mentioned, these are “often led by the educators and leaders own desire to undertake inclusive practices” (AITSL, 2022b, p. 16).

In contrast, the identified silences from these interviews tie closely to the Blindness stage. Most of the indicators, when aligned with this study, echo our findings, in particular, the discomfort in recognising difference and acknowledging the challenges for women pursuing leadership. We argue that focusing attention on rectifying the Blindness indicators and engaging moral courage to address the Awareness stage would lead to more effective Competency for public good. By truly understanding the challenges women face in leadership, perhaps a rising tide might indeed “lift all ships” (P7). It is not necessarily the case that every indicator would be in place before moving to another stage; however, the question remains, can the built-biome of International Schooling truly be transformative if it, as a loose collective, is scattered across too many early stages?

Overall, the case study illustrates pockets of action and advocacy worthy of celebration including instances of effective activism, women building networks, and awareness of challenges faced by women leaders and aspiring leaders being more prevalent than before. Transformative behaviours are evident at an individual level, in women’s collectives, even in some of the organisations’ practices in the built-biome. Yet, the findings also illuminate that a broader transformative change in the way that International Schooling is structured, specifically related to women and leadership is yet to occur. The pockets of transformative leadership are neither core to all international schools nor necessarily represented in day-to-day actions. Neither are they consistent across the built-biome and therefore are not yet able to reshape the landscape. This means truly transformative leadership, the kind “deeply rooted in moral and ethical values in a social context” (Shields, 2004, p. 113), remains an ideal. We argue that the ICRCF (AITSL, 2022b) adapted to focus on broader concepts of inclusion helps to define the problem women face in moving to senior leadership, illuminates steps towards the goal and enables each individual, school, organisation and beneficiary to identify strategic, actionable outcomes to embed across policy, process and practice in the international schooling sector.

5. Conclusions

We recognise that women globally are underrepresented in senior leadership positions in schools, as evidenced by SDG 5.5, which aims to “ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life” (United Nations, 2015). Despite this recognition, International Schooling has made limited inroads in addressing inequities in educational leadership, particularly at the level of the individual school. When structures make inequity in leadership visible, it limits the ability of teachers and students to see themselves reflected in positions of power. Truly transformative action requires the deconstruction and reconstruction of school structures that perpetuate inequity. Attention needs to be paid to social justice at all levels of schooling so that every member of the school community can experience deep and equitable change (Shields, 2010, p. 562).

The bricolage approach within in this case study has enabled us to bring together different frameworks to help theorise challenges of supporting more equitable pathways for women in leadership in international schools. In this article, we have drawn on interviews with expert women in International Schooling to define the problem using the TLT Framework to guide the analysis. This theorisation has helped us to define the challenges and propose a potential pathway for a more equitable future in international schools. We illustrate that while all the expert participants acknowledged challenges for women who seek to pursue leadership in international schools, there is a lack of clear evidence and significant silences around ways to address current inequities.

The international schooling sector offers a unique context to examine the challenges facing women in leadership. The importance of these considerations led us to propose the adaptation of the ICRCF to highlight how silences and a “gender blind” approach to leadership can perpetuate inequities. While pockets of transformative work are being accomplished by subgroups of women, we argue that there is a need for collective action to move beyond awareness to ultimately build sustainable representation of women leaders in International Schooling. Creating equity in senior leadership serves as a necessary step for a more socially just international schooling sector that is transformative for leaders, teachers, and students alike.