- Title
- Learning to Lead : The social nature of women's development in sport leadership
- Creator
- Brown, Suzanne
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Thesis; PhD
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/97235
- Identifier
- vital:10158
- Abstract
- Despite the ubiquitous political and educational strategies aimed at redressing gender inequality in sport in Australia for the past 30 years, the number of women in sport in decision-making and leadership positions has remained low when compared to men. While a number of studies have explored women’s under-representation in sport leadership roles, there is limited understanding of how women practice sport leadership and how they develop as leaders. To address this gap in the literature, this study took a humanistic approach to account for, and consider, the nature of experience and the influence of context. This study sought to provide a more personal, nuanced, and socially situated understanding of how women practiced and learned to lead in sport. An interpretive qualitative research design framed by a social constructivist lens was used for this study to examine 23 women’s accounts of what constituted and framed their leadership practices, including how they learned leadership from their engagement in day-to-day social practices and life experiences over time. Data for this study were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with each of the participants over a period of two years. A multi-case study approach was used to analyse the data. It was found that the participants’ leadership practice featured distinctive feminine characteristics. However, for those participants at the elite level their approaches to leadership were characterised by interaction that seemed to be traditional masculine features of leadership with the participants’ “core” feminine approaches to leadership. The participants’ leadership practice focused on social interaction and relationship building underpinned by a strong sense of moral and ethical values. Key features included collaborative decision-making, taking a team-oriented approach, using open dialogue, valuing relationships and caring about others, and positive modelling. The model of authentic leadership offered a useful way of conceptualising how the participants’ approached their practice of leadership. An examination of the participants’ accounts of their experiences of the ways they learned their leadership highlighted that leadership development for these women was a relational and social process of learning over a lifelong journey that was influenced by individual, personal experience situated within larger socio-cultural contexts. The relational nature of the participants’ learning of leadership was fundamentally connected to, and drawn from their interactions and interplay within their day-to-day social practices and life experiences from their early childhood through to their adulthood. The findings of study revealed that a range of past and present experiences and social factors influenced and shaped the participants’ values and beliefs about their leadership practice such as the development of their awareness and self-belief in their ability, the value of relationship building, and development of strength of character associated with resilience. This study also identified the significance of the informal social nature of the development of leadership through the participants’ “lived” experiences but also recognised the importance of some formal learning in developing the human capital aspects of the participants’ leadership. Findings from this study have contributed to the relatively small body of literature concerned with the examination of leadership practice and learning leadership for women in a context of sport. This study has drawn attention to the different sets of relationships that women draw on to develop their leadership practice from a young age through to their adulthood, and has highlighted the multidimensional role of relational dynamics in the construction of leadership. This study has also illustrated the importance of experiential and situated learning that occurs during the formative years through to adulthood in terms of developing women’s social skills and social awareness. These findings have implications for the way in which women’s sport leadership practice is viewed and encourages a rethinking on how affirmative action policies address the leadership developed for women in sport in Australia.; Doctor of Philosophy
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Rights
- Copyright Suzanne Brown
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Sport leadership; Women; Gender inequality
- Full Text
- Thesis Supervisor
- Light, Richard
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