A study of the relationship between sex-role identification and characteristics attributed to an effective administrator among black and white women school administrators

• Main Author: Webb, Hattie Driver
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: W&M ScholarWorks 1984
• Subjects: Educational Administration and Supervision; Race and Ethnicity; Women's Studies
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539791825; https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4578&context=etd

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine if race is an influencing factor in the way women school administrators described themselves or in the way they perceived an effective administrator. The researcher examined the effects of race on sex-role identity and examined the relationship between sex-role identity and perceptions of an effective administrator in terms of sex-role characteristics among black and white women school administrators.;Method. A sample of 105 black and 129 white female school administrators from eight urban school divisions was selected to complete the Bem Sex Role Inventory either for themselves or for an effective administrator. Half of the administrators in each racial group were asked to describe themselves and half were asked to describe an effective administrator. Results from a 76 percent mail return were subjected to analysis. It was hypothesized that self-perceptions of female administrators are influenced by race as are their perceptions of an effective administrator.;Results. Results of analysis of variance showed that black and white women administrators' perceptions of self are not significantly different, though black women tended to score higher on the masculinity scale. Both black and white women described the effective administrator as unlike themselves in terms of feminine traits. In terms of masculine traits white women administrators described an effective administrator unlike the way they described themselves, though there was no difference between self-scores and effective-administrator scores for black women administrators. as hypothesized, results of cross tabulation analysis indicated a significant relationship between race and sex-role with proportionately more black than white women administrators classified as androgynous, and proportionately more white than black women classified as feminine. Results indicated that black and white women administrators overwhelmingly perceive an effective administrator as masculine. When controlling for age, there was a greater percentage of both black and white women administrators classified as androgynous in the under 50 age group as opposed to 50 and over, with no significant relationship found between sex-role and race in either age group. A discriminant analysis showed that a number of items in the Bem Inventory were effective in determining the race of the individual who completed the instrument. Implications for future research were discussed.