The Missing Middle in the Leadership Continuum: Voices of women deputy principals in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Current scholarship reveals that women in educational leadership face persisting challenges regarding school leadership. This paper examined the experiences of women deputy principals whose roles shift to oblivion within the school leadership continuum. The aim was to investigate how women deputy principals cope with the challenge of obscurity of their position within the school leadership hierarchy. We used role ambiguity theory as a framework. Role ambiguity occurs when employees have insufficient information to perform their jobs adequately or when performance evaluation methods are unclear. This paper argues that deputy principals are part of the school management team, however, their role as managers seems intangible and indefinable as the school principal and the departmental head are present to manage the school and the curriculum implementation, respectively. Underpinned by the interpretive paradigm, this qualitative paper used the phenomenological narrative inquiry as a research design, and through the narratives of the women, the paper focused on their lived experiences as deputy principals in schools. Data were analysed thematically. Findings revealed that participants faced different types of gender stereotyping, role ambiguity and felt invisible in their roles as women deputy principals. This paper recommends confronting patriarchal attitudes that infiltrate the school system, implementing capacity building through conducting seminars, workshops, and awareness programs, and revising policy to ensure that job descriptions are clearly defined, thereby avoiding ambiguities.