From Culturally Defined to Self-Defined: Career Stages of Women Administrators

Abstract

This article begins with a literature review which establishes the need for research which neither asks 'what 's wrong with women; why don't they aspire?" nor " who are the bad guys and how are they discriminating unfairly?" Instead research must ask "what are the salient organizational socialization processes which enable people to move up in administration and how do these processes affect women?" It then describes an ethnographic study designed to address this question. The study was of twenty-five women in educational administration careers. The research revealed three stages crucial to mobility into the highest administrative positions. Women must move from being Culturally Defined through Transition to being Self-Defined.