Distributed Leadership and Its Role in Empowering Women to Educational Leadership Positions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

Abstract

The higher education sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the most important enabling sectors for Saudi women seeking leadership roles. However, there is still a gap in the leadership participation of women compared with men. Traditional leadership approaches have failed to meet the needs of women in the emerging field of Saudi women leadership. This lack of progress has been largely due to the traditional roles of men and women in Saudi culture which is highly dominated by men and male perspectives. Women have traditionally been seen as homemakers with the care of family their most important job. Women have been restricted by social and traditional beliefs that they were not capable of leadership simply because they were women. While the caring of family is still a highly significant role for women, Saudi Arabian (SA) society is changing with the introduction of new legislation. In 2016, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) issued a policy, Vision 2030, in which women’s roles in society were outlined to include women taking up more leadership positions, particularly in the education sectors. This policy promotes women's rights and empowerment by advocating for higher wages and expanding employment opportunities for women across various sectors (Shura Council, 2021). Women are being offered new opportunities to make a significant contribution to the growth of the nation. In these early days of change it is important to understand how these new responsibilities for women are both perceived and enacted by those directly affected. This research explores university staff perceptions of women leadership in a Saudi university (both female and male) as it continues to evolve in this new cultural, economic, and social paradigm. As an alternative leadership approach to the traditional hierarchical male-dominated approach, distributed leadership may give women opportunities to develop their leadership iii skills and empower them for higher positions. It appears from the writing of the KSA’s Vision 2030 policy that distributed leadership may be the preferred leadership approach for women to adopt, although it is not strictly mandated. There is a view put forward in the literature that female characteristics are more amenable to a distributed leadership approach which advocates for collaboration, cooperation, and the inclusion of a greater number of employees than is found in a traditional approach that generally has only one leader. As yet, however, there has been little research that explores whether distributed leadership is the preferred approach taken by women in higher education leadership roles. The aim of this qualitative case study research was to investigate the perceptions and practices of women leadership in higher education in Saudi Arabia and to identify enabling and inhibiting factors that impact on women in realising leadership positions. This study provides important insights to address the gap in this area of research and understanding. While the focus of the research was on distributed leadership, it should be acknowledged that the participants in the research worked at a partially segregated university, that is, a university run by men with a women’s university on the same campus. Within this segregation, the women’s university must refer all final executive decisions to men. However, in the women’s university, women leaders have the power and responsibility to make decisions. This kind of leadership is described in the literature as a hybrid leadership approach. While the university overall had taken a hybrid approach to leadership, the current research focused on the women’s university only to determine whether distributed leadership was enacted there and, if so, how this approach was viewed. Findings indicated that women enacted distributed leadership in the women’s university through their practices of supporting colleagues, encouraging involvement of all leaders and aspiring leaders, and by disseminating the belief that women were not only capable of leadership but that they should grasp all opportunities to become leaders. This research makes a significant contribution by demonstrating how distributed leadership is iv already embedded within a hybrid leadership approach in higher education in Saudi Arabia. It provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of distributed leadership in mixed-gender environments while shedding light on its limitations in gender-segregated settings.