ABSTRACT
Even though there has been an increase of women in leadership positions in community colleges, recent trends still show that there are fewer women leaders than men. Critical and feminist research perspectives are increasingly influencing qualitative research; further evidence that even though the leadership norm continues to be male oriented, more women are occupying positions of leadership in our society. A scaled, multicase study approach and design within the phenomenological research tradition informed our exploratory work with women executive leaders. The women executive leaders sacrificed much in their personal lives, limiting interactions with friends and family due to busy work schedules, and expressed nostalgia from missing quality time and having to uproot and move multiple times. "Having positive predispositions, women executive leaders continually challenged themselves professionally—meeting external challenges in times of crisis and maintaining a strong belief that they had power to change the future.
