Feminist Knowledge | Student Writings

What Drives Women Leaders to Adopt an Authoritarian Model of Power? An Essay on Female Principals in Kenya

by Caroline W. Kariuki
University of Cape Town

Abstract

There is ample evidence that a number of women leaders tend to adopt an authoritarian model of leadership. If I have found it necessary to question what drives women principals to adopt authoritarianism, it is not to denounce them, but to try to understand the issues that confront them as they endeavor to lead their schools, and some of these issues, no doubt produced by the patriarchal hegemony in Kenya. Following this logic, I will show that female principals are products of and players in a patriarchal social world that reminds us that survival is at stake for women in the leadership game.

Authoritarianism and Female Leadership

To put into context the question of what drives women principals to adopt an authoritarian model of power, I will set off from a recent study (Kariuki, 1998) that I carried out on the leadership behavior of Kenyan women principals, in terms of goal attainment (initiating structure) and group cohesion (consideration). The greater part of my research was based on the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). After a battery of analyses, I was led to believe that the women principals in the study exhibited authoritarianism in view of their high-structure-low-consideration leadership style. Moreover, the teachers drew attention to the domineering and impartial practices of the female principals in the open-ended items of the questionnaire. One feature that emerged in the study was that women principals received higher ratings on their leadership performance from the male teachers than from the female teachers. How could I not feel worried that my research had portrayed women so negatively? Thus you can see how I have come to question the driving force behind authoritarianism among women principals.

It seems to me that powerful androcentric standards in Kenya can provide a rationale for female principals' attraction to authoritarianism. Why do I bring up the patriarchal model in Kenya? It is because leadership in Kenya has long been a male terrain. Between 1969 and 1992, women in Kenya never formed more than 3% of elected members of parliament, while in the civil service they formed on average 4.5 % of all personnel in the top echelons (Maina and Mbugua, 1996:54.) But how does authoritarianism feature in these prevailing conditions? The idea of political leadership in Kenya has tended to reflect the male, authoritarian and aggressive model of power. The benevolent dictatorship of President Kenyatta (Kenya's first president) and the Big Man dictatorship ascribed to his successor, President Moi, are well illustrated by various writers (See Lacey, 2002; Throup and Hornsby, 1998). If we accept that some women principals in Kenya tend to be authoritarian leaders, the similarity of their leadership style to the dictatorial mode of leadership by the political establishment in Kenya then needs to be accounted for. Thompson (2003) notes that patriarchal relations of power may allow a small percentage of women to enjoy positions of power or privilege, but they do so on men's terms and as exceptions to the rule.

To be clear about this, a number of writers confirm that indeed some women in leadership positions are not only authoritarian but also competitive, individualistic and non-supportive, if not antagonistic to other women. They lament that women adopting this type of leadership now risk being seen as unfeminine and earn labels such as 'social males', 'queen bees', and 'isolates'. They argue that female presidents such as Philippine's retired prime minister Corazon Aquino, Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Britain's retired prime minister Margaret Thatcher resorted to masculine leadership strategies that were marked by authoritarianism and lack of support for women (See Blumen, 1992; Weiner, 1995; Peterson and Runyan, 1999). One has to ask whether patriarchal dynamics play a role in manipulating the power relations of female leaders and their female workers. For example, Bryce (1989) writes that one of the career women she interviewed in her study, had a secretary who always delayed typing her work and always gave preferential treatment to men in her section. My point is simply that women have been socially constructed to be commodities that have to compete in a male dominated market. At the very least one ought to expect a struggle between the powerless commodities and the powerful ones.

To elaborate on the connection between female principals and the authoritarian model of leadership, one could, like Thompson (2003) suggest that when the situation of women demands exceptional survival skills and lends itself to oppositional skills, it may promote a type of authoritarian agency incompatible with the ideals of femininity. This would assume that masculine leadership is associated with authoritarianism. Eagly and Schmidt (2001) suggest that while agentic characteristics, which are ascribed more strongly to men than women, describe an assertive, controlling, and confident tendency, communal characteristics that are ascribed more strongly to women than to men, describes primarily a concern with the welfare of other people. Thanks to the patriarchal set up, the caring style of leadership has been attributed to women in leadership positions. Indeed, a number of scholars have documented that female principals have a caring, relationship-oriented or collaborative style; a style that has been viewed as instrumental to the morale of staff and students (See Gilligan, 1989; Kochan, Spencer, and Mathews, 2000; Hines, 1999; Brunner, 1998; Ouston, 1993). So the question that I am raising is why women leaders feel the need to break out of this generally accepted caring 'feminine' leadership style.

In order to understand why female principals adopt authoritarianism, first means understanding the conditions in which they work through to attain leadership. A major phenomenon that must not be overlooked is their personal struggles. Sufficient evidence exists that gender based discrimination in Kenya is frequently reflected in socio-cultural attitudes that tend to favour boys and place girls at a disadvantage (See Republic of Kenya, 1999: 78.) Hence, girl child discrimination marks the point at which early gender subjugation begins for future women principals and yet it is the stage in which they form deep-rooted norms and values. As a young female student in Kenya comments:

Why do we argue with tradition that will never change? We are women and we must do as we are told, otherwise who will marry you, if they know that you are so aggressive? (Student quoted in Mungai, 2002:67).

Turning to the work place in which young female teachers find themselves, gender oppression can be seen in the promotion system where it takes longer for female teachers to become heads of departments than their male counterparts; and the female teachers' experience of disrespect from boy students in communities where females have low social status compared to males (Eshiwani, 1995; Republic of Kenya, 2001: 56). Yet this is the stage that prepares female teachers (as candidates for headship) for prospective leadership positions. Finally the principalship arrives and patriarchal norms are still to be found in the deployment and promotion of women principals' in Kenya. This is evident in the fact that the Teachers Service Commission of Kenya finds it necessary to deploy women to head schools that will not evoke discontent by school communities that prefer male headteachers. It is also evident in the remarkably low number of women principals when compared to male principals in the highest grades given on promotion (See Barnge'tuny, 1999:54; Teachers Service Commission, 1997.) These are only some of the conditions that may unconsciously influence a female principal to adopt authoritarianism if her social life and career path have been particularly difficult.

Authoritarianism may also be influenced by the social context in which the female principal works. When forces within the school invoke negative socio-cultural norms, it may drive the female principal to respond aggressively if not in an authoritarian manner. I think that it is possible to consider schools headed by women in Kenya as highly gendered spaces. This is evident for example in FAWE's (1995) account of Headmistress Priscilla Nangurai from Maasai-land in Kenya, which begins with how Maasai men do not always appreciate her radical defiance in the face of traditional beliefs and cultural norms relating to Maasai women and girls. At times her mission has been to retrieve young girls, often as young as 10 years old, who have gone home to be circumcised but haven't come back-invariably because the parents have been paid the bride-price and are about to marry off their daughters. Nangurai admits that few male principals would retrieve Maasai schoolgirls after their circumcision cycle. Female circumcision in the Maasai culture not only prevents girls from reporting back to school, but also leads to poor performance among the girls. Knowing that they are esiankiki (real women), the girls no longer put effort into academic work as their new status has made them ready for marriage. In view of this context, Nangurai does not send children away for lack of fees since these children may never be brought back to school. In this mission to retain children in school, Nangurai is not only a ferocious fundraiser, but also an aggressive 'gatekeeper' in the sense that she has to protect her pupils from getting 'hijacked' into unwanted marital contracts. This story remains true to the patriarchal setting predominant in some women led schools in Kenya. It is my contention that social contexts such as these, inevitably intrude in a female principals style of leadership.

The same is true of the political context of Kenyan schools whereby politicians who are usually male (drawing upon patriarchal power) promote politically motivated agendas. Yet women principals as custodians of power and authority in their schools have had to implement these decisions. I conceive politically motivated education agendas as, for example, the hasty directives that Moi made on educational matters during his tenure as the second president of Kenya. A good example of such a directive is the quota system that stipulated that secondary schools admit 85 per cent of their students from their district (local area). This directive disadvantaged students from districts poorly endowed with good schools. This arrangement according to Kibera (1994) impacts negatively more on girls than boys in terms of educational aspirations and occupational choices.

Aside from politically motivated agendas, politicians who would like to use schools for political ends promote patronage in schools. Consequently, female principals have to work with members of their school boards who frequently appear to be dependent on powerful 'godfathers'. Listening to a female principal talk about how a 'powerful' member of her school board occasionally humiliated her in front of the students until she became 'tough' (whilst I was an education officer in Kenya), I was struck by how vulnerable female school heads were to political patronage. In reality, government reports in Kenya have expressed concern that there is political influence in the appointments of governors to school boards and politicisation of educational decisions (See Republic of Kenya, 1999: 227; Republic of Kenya, 2001: 57). It seems to me that women principals in Kenya are faced with a challenging political context characterised by the use of male privilege in politicians, a factor that cannot be ignored in any discussion on authoritarianism among female principals in Kenya.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is sufficient to indicate that there is considerable support that the schools within which women principals operate, are predisposed to social and political factors linked to patriarchal dynamics. The women principals have to take charge of these settings as individuals who have been exposed to patriarchal attitudes and discrimination that are rooted in socialisation. An initiative that seeks to address female principals authoritarianism needs to take into account the convergence of the contexts found in the schools, and the female principals social and professional trajectory as a girl child, teacher, and principal. Producing awareness of this mechanism is the beginning of not only absolving authoritarian female leadership, but also seeking ways to disarm the patriarchal order that sustains it. Finally, I should at least say that I intend to address some of the issues that I have raised in this essay in my ongoing PhD thesis on the social and political factors that shape the leadership styles of women principals in Kenya. This essay can thus be seen as an approachable discussion that will be developed further in a more rigorous form.

References

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