Learning from the Outsider Within: Five Women's Discourses within the Culture of the High School Principal.

The methods of resistance and acceptance used by five female high school principals in negotiating within the predominantly male principalship culture are examined in this paper. Data were derived from analysis of the women's discourse. The paper examines cultural assumptions of feminine and masculine and critiques the positivist approaches to bureaucratic leadership. It argues that within the prevalent culture of the high school principal, women are invisible, marginalized stereotypes. Two principals denied their gender differences in order to achieve equality with men in the bureaucratic educational system. Three principals were aware of their marginalization but did not identify organizational patriarchy as the cause. They did not perceive a connection with each other by which to resist assimilation. The paper argues that women need to question organizational arrangements, to ask who defined them and who benefits from them, to engage in collective deconstruction of bureaucratic discourse, and to examine how power and gender are linked. (Contains eight references.) (LMI)