Women in school leadership roles: a case study of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China

Abstract

This thesis investigates female leaders’ career trajectories to principalship in Chinese government schools in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China. It specifically focuses on factors that facilitate and inhibit female leaders’ career advancement to principalship, and the ongoing challenges they faced in their current leadership positions and strategies they used to address those challenges, by targeting female principals and female vice principals in the six government schools. It is a qualitative case study and data are collected from 40 in-depth interviews, triangulated by observations and document analysis.

This study draws on role congruity theory, social identity theory and self-categorization theory to form a theoretical framework to guide data collection, analysis and interpretation. The findings suggests that increasingly deconstructed gender power relations are key to female leaders’ career advancement and traditional role definition is key to their career barriers. In their current leadership positions, male template leadership is key to the challenges they face, while women power is the strategy for them to address challenge from teachers. Based on findings on facilitators, barriers and challenges, a theoretical model is proposed to investigate female leadership in Chinese government school settings.

Being the first English language-based study to investigate female leaders’ trajectories to principalship in Chinese school settings and a pioneer study of using an alternative theoretical framework to guide the investigation, this thesis claims a great contribution to the field of female leadership in theories and practices. It also provides frame of reference and useful implications for policy makers, practitioners and women themselves.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	Ashley Ng (Supervisor) & Tony Bush (Supervisor)