Women representation and participation in organizational leadership in public schools of Kabarnet Zone, Baringo County, Kenya

Abstract

Gender responsive initiatives, such as gender equity advocacy campaigns and studies have been carried out to minimize gender inequality but with little success. The study sought to determine women representation and participation in organizational leadership. It had to find out the stakeholders‟ views on women leadership, establish why women do not take up leadership positions, assess the benefits of gender equity and establish what would enhance a gender equity culture. The study is set to benefit women aspiring to be leaders as they would be able to identify the constraints involved and work out ways and means to overcome them upon which this study shall provide in its findings. The transformational leadership theory guided the study. To collect data, a survey design was chosen, used questionnaire and an interview schedule which were validated by research experts and their reliability of 0.75 established using Pearson's moment correlation test in a pilot study. From a target population of 660 community representatives and teachers, a sample size of 30% (200) was drawn and stratified, purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used. To analyze the collected data, descriptive and inferential qualitative and quantitative techniques were used. After the analysis, the study‟s findings were that there were fewer women in leadership positions as compared to men, the stakeholders‟ perceptions on women leadership were that women can make leaders and they were solely responsible for installing leaders whether men or women, though women leadership qualities are complimentary to men‟s. From the findings the recommendations were that the stakeholders should ensure that during recruitment or deployment to leadership positions, women are given an equal chance or use the affirmative action to the letter, women should cultivate their self-esteem to be able to compete with men for leadership positions and the executive leaders and other policy makers should be visionary and capture as many gender equity positive benefits to remain afloat. Lastly the study gave a further study on the comparative study of gender level of leadership performance in organizations.