ABSTRACT
Social media is widely used by feminist activists (Baer, 2016) and increasingly by educators (e.g. #Edutwitter) (Carpenter and Krutka, 2014). Drawing on digital and hashtag feminism (Baer, 2016; Mann, 2014; Tuzcu, 2016), this chapter explores women’s use of social media to raise consciousness about unequal gender relations in educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA). I focus on how a network of professional women benefited from social media and overcame a male backlash in the digital space (Locke et al., 2018). The #WomenEd research data show that social media facilitated valuable connections. Social media brought offstage conversations to front-of-stage (Goffman, 1959; Robinson, 2007) with implications for women’s online presentation of self, including their identification as feminists, and the revelation of behind-the-scenes work accompanying the achievement and exercise of educational leadership.
I address these questions:
What do we mean by digital and hashtag feminism?
How was social media used to develop the #WomenEd network?
What are the benefits and costs of using social media to connect women in educational leadership?
What are the implications for ELMA?
Research data were generated from a multi-stage mixed methods project that explored the development of the #WomenEd network and women’s self-identification as feminists and activists (Fuller and Berry, 2019).
