|
Women Leading Across the Continents
Typically, every other year since 2009, I have attended an international conference with a network called Women Leading Education Across Continents (WLE). In 2007, Dr. Helen Sobehart, then an Associate Provost and Academic Vice President at Duquesne University, but soon-to-be-named first female President of Cardinal Stritch University, recognized that while there were numerous networks and organizations supporting educational leadership globally, none focused specifically on research about women leading education.
Thus, was born WLE, whose first conference was held in Rome in 2007 at one of Duquesne University’s several overseas campuses. Women who researched women in leadership worldwide convened from all seven continents. (Liv Arnesen and Ann Bancroft represented Antarctica!)
I learned about WLE two years later following my second trip to Afghanistan, where I investigated women in educational leadership and met with men and women across the country during several precariously dangerous years following the first ousting of the Taliban. WLE would be meeting in Augsburg, Germany, not far from Munich in Bavaria.
The conference, which Universität Augsburg hosted in 2009, undoubtedly changed the trajectory and impact of my international research. No longer was I floating around the planet alone, conducting studies on women in leadership with no grounding, no collaboration. I now had a consortium of women and men whose commitment was also to my field of inquiry and who welcomed me to research, present, and publish my work either individually or in partnership with them.
After Augsburg, I did not miss a conference: the University of Thessaly hosted us in Volos, Greece in 2011; University of Education, Winneba in Apam, Ghana in 2013; University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand in 2015; Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2017; and University of Nottingham in Nottingham, England in 2019.
I have had the privilege of attending each one of these conferences and of presenting my studies on women in leadership from countries as far-reaching as Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, and Rwanda. Each presentation has resulted in new studies, new presentations, and new publications, expanding the global reach of my work far beyond anything I could have imagined. Additionally, I have taken with me to the conferences many doctoral students over the years whose interest is women in leadership and who represent the next generation of practitioners in PK-12 and higher education teacher-scholars.
The global pandemic interrupted our plans to meet in Philippines in 2021, but we were able to reschedule for this late July 2023, where Adventist University of Philippines in Silang, Cavite hosted us. Scholars from six continents presented their work. (While Liv and Ann still support WLE, they were unable to make this conference.)
At this conference, amidst sweltering, monsoon-style rainy days, I noted a different presentational style from past conferences. While it is not atypical for qualitative investigators to begin a talk with a portrait of themselves—in research terminology referred to as “positionality”—regarding their studies, each of us began our work this way. The power of positionality statements is that it situates the investigator in the context of their research—their assumptions, their backgrounds, their prejudices. It is something I have begun to write and present even in my quantitative investigations in the past two years, lest anyone think there is any true objectivity in any sort of epistemology or methodology.
When my time came on the fourth day of the conference to present my research on Pakistani women in educational leadership, I shared my positionality. I had three words on the slide:
Mother, Mentor, Muse
I began with a slide that featured a photo of my oldest daughter, Anna, and me in Moscow while I was conducting my dissertation research on Russian educational philosophy during the death throes of the Soviet Union.
Mother
I have the privilege of working in a lot of countries. This photo is of me wearing my “shapka” [hat in Russian] and of my oldest daughter, Anna, who is now an international lawyer living in London, and we are in Moscow in 1991 during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mentor
When I was in my early 20s, I entered leadership roles in the PK-12 system and found that women twice my age would come to me and ask for my support and my help. This I found to be incredibly humbling to be considered a mentor at such a young age—that someone thought I had something to offer them.
Muse
I’ve often said that if I have a gravestone, it will say,
“She was a muse to many.”
There is a poem by Rumi that says in part,
“The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.”
In my life I have had the privilege of offering doors that are open to many people to walk through. It is an invitation, not a requirement. I am fortunate to be able to open doors for other people and to also help them to see their greatness.
In each of us we have greatness. We each come with so many gifts to offer.
This is part of who I am and what I do in the world.
While I did not spend my entire career as a researcher because of my “first career” as a PK-12 teacher and educational leader, unquestionably, my rise as a scholar has been due to the shoulders of giants on whose work my own rests. I honor two of these women who founded WLE here:
· Dr. Helen Sobehart, who welcomed me to WLE Augsburg in 2009, has since retired, and became a close friend and is still a mentor today.
· Dr. Linda Lyman, who passed away just one year ago this month, first profiled my work in one of her five books, Shaping Social Justice Leadership, shortly after I attended WLE Volos in 2011.
Most of us California State University professors and leaders in schools or colleges of education hail from the PK-12 field. We spent time as teachers, counselors, and/or school leaders before we entered higher education. It is one of the unique qualities and strengths of a CSUCI educator: we understand the work to be done because we lived it before we taught it. It is part of our positionalities.
As I begin my second year as Dean of our School of Education, I extend my profound thanks to each of you who challenged, inspired, and supported me in 2022-2023. We each stand on the shoulders of greatness and we each have the privilege to continue the work.
Looking forward,
Elizabeth C. Orozco Reilly
Elizabeth C. Orozco Reilly
| 
