For most of my life, I’ve believed the cliché that we shouldn’t cry over spilled milk. But what if that spilled milk just cost me an opportunity for a future job or promotion?
Earlier this year, I was traveling for a conference with education leaders. I was six months post-partum, and this was the first real opportunity I had in nearly a year to focus on myself and my career. I packed my pump pack and plotted out my schedule to ensure I could keep a supply of breast milk for my six-month-old without missing a beat at the conference. During one break, I sprinted back to my hotel room to pump and knew I’d be cutting it close to get back to the conference floor to network with my colleagues before the plenary.
I had it down to the minute: Seven minutes from the conference floor to my room, 45 seconds to prepare the pump, 22 minutes to pump, 30 seconds to cap and store the milk, 90 seconds to clean up, seven minutes back to the conference floor.
Somewhere during that sprint, I nearly spilled an entire bottle and my first thought was, “I’m not going to be at the table for introductions.”
How gender disparity persists
Women leaders must overcome countless and seemingly endless barriers, and they’re forced to make sacrifices or weigh options that men are never asked to consider. It is frustrating that as a culture we have become so accepting of that fate. It’s even more frustrating—and frankly, alarming—when we see that fate play out in a field like education.
Women make up the vast majority of America’s education workforce. In fact, 77% of teachers are women, 57% of principals are women, and a majority of undergraduates pursuing a degree in education are women.
But, according to ILO Group’s latest Superintendent Research Project report, only three out of 10 of the nation’s largest school districts are run by women. As a nation, we can’t look at data like that and not ask, “what have we done wrong?”
The gender disparity between education leadership and the rest of the industry’s workforce has metastasized because the systems in place were built for and by men. Over decades of time, the networks and connections that male leaders have built amongst themselves have created insular pipelines for leaders.
ILO Data Releases
More findings from the ILO Group’s Superintendent Research Project:
- Initial Data Release showed that “in the 154 districts that have completed their transitions: 70% of newly appointed superintendents have been men,” further widening the gender gap in education leadership.
- Data Release Two shows that inequalities persist in hiring and pay equity for women superintendents.
- Data Release Three shows that nearly half the nation’s largest school districts turned over and this churn has increased 46% when comparing the two years before the pandemic began versus the two years after. The turnover is historically high and disproportionately impacts women.
As an aspiring women leader, I’ve struggled to create a network that is already built in for my male counterparts and often find myself choosing to stay at my desk focused on a specific deadline or task, rather than prioritizing the investment I know many of my male colleagues are making in building their professional networks.
Like any insular system with stagnant legacy leadership, the policies and practices that have been baked into the educational culture have not evolved to allow for a new image of leadership to emerge, let alone thrive. But if districts and school boards are as committed to hiring, promoting, and recruiting diverse talent, they need to confront the barriers and obstacles that prevent underrepresented leaders from climbing a leadership ladder.
Districts need to have written policies in place that offer new moms the same flexibility that new dads get to need to stay fully committed to their career advancement, and we need to remind ourselves that equity and equality do not mean the same thing. Providing new moms with safe, private access to a pumping room is an easy reform that an industry dominated by women employees would seemingly embrace, but many districts struggle to provide even this bare minimum service.
The most innovative and most equitable districts on gender disparity are creating policies that offer adequate childcare, allow for more flexible work hours, provide mentoring and networking, foster a family-first culture and verbalize explicitly that women are supported.
Why women leaders leave
For these policies to have an impact, they need to be available to all women in the organization. As importantly, district leaders—especially male leaders—have a responsibility to invest time and energy to create a culture where moms can take advantage of these flexible policies without discrimination or judgment.
Discipline dive: Students brawl, teacher attacked and elderly bus driver punched
The ILO Group report found that nearly 50% of the country’s school districts have had a change in leadership since the start of the pandemic. Nearly 40% of the districts that have changed leaders were led by women, and those women were replaced by men more than 70% of the time. We must give consideration that many of those women chose to leave leadership roles because of a culture that judges women for leading as women.
I didn’t cry over spilled milk at my conference. I made it back in time to reconnect with leaders I had met several years earlier, and I was able to make new connections with peers from other districts. But I was exhausted when I returned home from counting the minutes it took to pump and store milk and scheduling my supposed free time with the efficiency of a NASA launch.
The following week, several of my colleagues went to a networking reception with other leaders and executives in our local business community. As they left, I closed my office door, turned on my breast pump, and went through a pile of work that was waiting for me from the time I spent at the conference.
