We live in a time when women are taking their rightful place in leadership across all sectors, and education is no exception. Yet, despite progress, one truth lingers: we do not fully know how to value or enjoy the contributions of women leaders in education. We admire them, we acknowledge them, but often we fall short of deeply understanding the richness they bring and the challenges they face.
This uncertainty is not weakness; it is an opportunity. By admitting that we do not fully know how, we open the door to discovery discovering new ways of honoring, supporting, and celebrating women’s leadership in education.
We Do Not Know How to See the Full Story
History often tells us the names of kings, ministers, and male reformers who built systems of learning, but it leaves out the countless women who shaped classrooms, nurtured students, and founded schools against impossible odds. Women like Savitribai Phule, who opened schools for girls in India despite fierce resistance, or Mary McLeod Bethune, who fought for education for African American children in the U.S.
We value their achievements today, but do we truly know how to honor the generations of struggle behind them? We often celebrate women’s leadership only when it is visible and prominent, forgetting that much of it was invisible, undervalued, or erased. To learn how is to reclaim these hidden stories and place them at the center of our collective memory.
We Do Not Know How to Balance Recognition
When women rise to leadership, they are often measured against standards designed by and for men. Their empathy is mistaken for softness, their collaboration for indecision. We applaud their success but hesitate to redefine what leadership means.
Do we know how to value leadership that is not about control but about community? Do we know how to celebrate the joy of classrooms where empathy is as powerful as authority?
Perhaps we do not but this is precisely why we must learn. To value women leaders is to unlearn narrow definitions of leadership and embrace models that put people before power.
We Do Not Know How to Support Innovation
Women leaders in education are driving innovation advocating for inclusive curricula, integrating digital learning, and breaking barriers in STEM education for girls. Yet their efforts are often underfunded, underreported, or dismissed as secondary.
We say we want innovation, but do we know how to create structures that allow their ideas to thrive? Do we know how to give them the platforms, resources, and recognition their vision deserves?
Until we learn, much of their innovation risks being celebrated only after the fact, instead of nurtured in real time.
We Do Not Know How to Break Barriers Together
The barriers women face in education leadership gender bias, unequal pay, lack of representation in top roles are well documented. But often, we leave the burden of breaking those barriers on women themselves.
Do we know how to share the responsibility? Do we know how to build allyship that is active, not symbolic? To value women leaders is not only to celebrate their resilience but to question why resilience is required in the first place. Enjoying their leadership means ensuring they do not always have to fight simply to lead.
We Do Not Know How to Amplify Mentorship
Women leaders are mentors by nature and by choice. They lift others as they rise, creating pathways for younger women and men alike. But how often do we pause to measure and celebrate mentorship as leadership?
Do we know how to see the invisible threads of influence they weave across generations? Do we know how to build systems that honor the quiet but powerful impact of guidance and encouragement?
Perhaps not yet. But by learning how, we can value mentorship as much as milestones and enjoy the long-lasting ripple effects it creates.
How We Can Begin to Learn
If we do not know how, then we must start learning. That learning begins with humility and continues through action:
- Listening more deeply to women leaders’ stories and experiences.
- Redefining success to honor empathy, inclusion, and collaboration as strengths.
- Creating platforms where women’s innovations are funded, tested, and celebrated.
- Sharing responsibility for dismantling barriers rather than leaving it to women alone.
- Celebrating mentorship as a central, not secondary, form of leadership.
In learning how to value and enjoy women’s leadership, we not only uplift them we enrich education for all.
Enjoying What We Do Not Fully Know
Enjoyment often comes from surprise, from experiencing something we did not expect. Women leaders bring new ways of seeing and doing education ways that challenge traditions but also invite communities into deeper joy.
We may not fully know how to enjoy this yet. We may still hesitate, still undervalue, still overlook. But if we lean into curiosity instead of certainty, we can discover the joy of classrooms redefined by empathy, policies reshaped by inclusivity, and futures imagined by leaders who refuse to be bound by old molds.
Conclusion: From Not Knowing to Becoming
We do not fully know how to value and enjoy women leaders in education but that is not the end of the story. It is the beginning. Acknowledging what we do not know pushes us to listen, to unlearn, to celebrate differently, and to build structures that reflect justice as well as knowledge.
The want for women leaders is clear; the challenge is learning how to honor it. In this journey, uncertainty is not a weakness it is an invitation. And by accepting that invitation, we open ourselves to a richer, more inclusive, and more joyful future of education, led by women whose contributions we are only just beginning to value as they deserve.
