ABSTRACT
When I fi rst began working in the public schools in the early 1970s as a new classroom teacher, it never occurred to me that I could be a building principal. In my experience, principals and superintendents were White males, and although I did not question my competence or ability to do a good job as a teacher or to take on and successfully complete any task assigned to me, I did not question the way things were nor imagine myself, or any other woman, as a principal. Since those early professional years, I have worked in many diff erent schools, in diff erent states, and in diff erent positions. One thing I observed in all of my experiences is that men, usually White, were in education’s leadership and management positions while women carried out the day-to-day work of educating children. In all those years, I never heard anyone really question the gender hierarchy, and it was not until the early 1990s that I worked in a building with a female principal. It was at that point that I decided that I wanted to go into administration and thought that I could.
