Other Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

Gendered Ambition: Career Advancement In Public Schools, Robert Maranto, Manuel P. Teodoro, Albert Cheng, Kristen Carroll

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

We explore the relationships between gender, career ambition, and the emergence of executive leadership. In Bureaucratic Ambition, Teodoro (2011) shows that public administration career systems shape bureaucrats’ ambitions, political behavior, and management strategies. But career systems are not neutral conduits of talent: administrators are more likely to pursue advancement when career systems favor them. This research proposes that women and men respond to gendered public career systems. Using national and state-level data on public school managers, we find marked gender disparities in the career paths that lead educators from the classroom to the superintendent post. Specifically, we find that female …