"Jag utgår ifrån mig själv, inte som kvinna eller som icke-man" : Upplevelser av kvinnligt ledarskap inom skolans värld

Sammanfattning: The principal profession has historically been a male-dominated profession. However, as women entered the industry and became the majority, both salary and status decreased. With that, the responsibility and the amount of work tasks increased to the principal’s role. In the past, studies around female leadership have been focused on the woman in a minority position within a male-dominated industry. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore how women in a female-dominated industry experience their leadership in relation to their professional role. This has been done with a qualitative study that was carried out using semi-structured interviews, where seven female principals in Uppsala were interviewed about their experiences regarding what it is like to be a female leader in a female-dominated industry. The study was based on an inductive approach where the goal was to be able to present a result based on the empirical data collected through the interviews. Yvonne Hirdman's theories on gender structures and gender contracts was used as the main theory to analyze the results, but also how power is interpreted through theories by Wahl et al. and Kanter. To structurize the result and analysis, a thematic analysis was used. Contrary to what previous leadership research has presented, the results showed that gender has little or no significance when it comes to how the women experienced their leadership and the situation they were in. According to the women in the study, the important parts of their leadership was creating good relationships with their co-workers and involving them in the activities to run the school together. The major parts that were highlighted in their leadership styles, was clarity in their leadership as well as transparency. The resistance and difficulties that could be an effect of the fact that they are female leaders were by the informants as likely to be referred to personal and individual reasons, as to reasons of being women.