Only she wasn’t.

But before the day was over, that innocent mistake reached the ears of Lee’s supervisor in her West Virginia district. Lee had just taken on the challenge of consolidating two struggling schools serving high-need students, and her boss was less than congratulatory. 

“She told me there was no way that I could handle those expectations if I had a baby,” Lee remembered. After that encounter, she never considered having another child for fear she would be overlooked for promotions. “It is a regret I carry,” she acknowledged.

Sixteen years later, Lee is a deputy superintendent in Beaufort, South Carolina, and jokes with her now-22-year-old son that it’s his fault he’s an only child. But her story demonstrates what many women give up to advance in the education sector. In a new , three-fourths of women superintendents and other top female district and state leaders said they make sacrifices that men in the same jobs don’t have to endure. 

Julia Rafal-Baer, founder and CEO of Women Leading Ed, which conducted the survey, called the results “a reality check.”

“Across the country, women are shaping the future of America’s schools. They’re making high-stakes decisions, driving results and shaping the future for tens of millions of students,” she said. But the survey, from leaders in 37 states, shows women are “second-guessed more, scrutinized for their style instead of their strategy, and expected to ‘overcome’ being women.”

The results, shared exclusively with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, also show that 86% of respondents feel expectations to dress, speak or behave a certain way because they are women in senior leadership positions — a 4 percentage point increase over last year. 

“No one will take you seriously with a ponytail. No one will take you seriously if you aren’t wearing a suit,” Candace Standberry-Robertson, executive director of system-wide programming for NOLA Public Schools in New Orleans, wrote. Sometimes casual attire is more appropriate for the tasks that come with her position, she said. “Who wants to be all dolled up and sweaty while delivering boxes of instructional materials to schools?”

Others said they’ve faced questions from hiring managers or school board members about balancing work and family life. One superintendent wrote that when interviewing for the top post in a small district, the school board president asked her: “How can you manage being a mom while being a campus leader? We have never hired a lady before.”

And sometimes they don’t, regardless of qualifications.

Over half of respondents said they’ve been passed over for leadership positions that later went to men, and over 70% of the women surveyed reported feeling pressure to earn a doctoral degree in order to be considered for a leadership position. show 45% of superintendents have a doctorate, with women more likely than men to earn the advanced degree.

“Female superintendent candidates won’t apply until they know they’re 110% ready, and male superintendent candidates apply when they’re like 55% ready,” said David Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association. There’s been progress in districts hiring more women over the past 20 years, but he added, “We need more female superintendents, hands down.”

Not a ‘great look’

Data shows that about in the top 500 districts are women, even though women make up of the teacher workforce — an imbalance that some leaders say robs young educators of strong role models. 

“The people actually doing the work are women, and the people telling them what to do are men,” said Julia Drake, an assistant superintendent in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, north of New York City. “I don’t think that’s a great look.”

Before Rafal-Baer founded Women Leading Ed in 2021, Drake attempted to figure out why bias against women was so pervasive in the field. She grew intrigued by the topic as a young principal in New York City. When her assistant principal went on maternity leave, Drake recalled, her male supervisor commented, “Don’t expect her to come back as productive as she was when she left.”

She focused her on the issue, compiling a sample of over 500 female leaders from 41 states. 

One top finding was that people viewed ambitious women in education as “bossy,” but ambitious men as strong-minded. Respondents also felt that staff members were less comfortable being supervised by women. 

“I think women are very capable, but also very empathetic and can really bring people together,” she said. “What is sometimes seen as weaknesses is actually a leadership asset.” 

Suits, heels, makeup

Examining this year’s data, Emily Hartnett, executive director of Women Leading Ed, pointed to differences in results by age. Leaders under 50 are more likely to say they delayed having children for the sake of their career. They also feel more pressure to conform to a certain image — 93% compared with 78% of leaders over 50. 

“I once had a supervisor encourage me to get my nails done,” one woman wrote.

Several said they are expected to wear suits, heels and makeup, even when male counterparts wore golf shirts and sneakers to work. 

“When I first started wearing my natural hair, I was told by a mentor that I should reconsider because where I was interviewing to be a principal may not accept ‘that much of my ethnicity,’ ” one district official said. “Of course, I wore my new afro to every interview.”

In response to a new question this year, more than half of the superintendent respondents said board members often second-guess their expertise or undercut their decisions.

One particular example sticks with Dana Arreola, who became superintendent of the Bessemer, Alabama, schools in 2023. The district was about to undertake an $8 million capital improvement project, with new roofs, paint and lighting at several schools. In advance of a presentation to the school board, she reviewed the bid process, fully vetted the architects and conducted a deep dive on facility needs.

But that wasn’t good enough. The members first wanted to hear from a state education official, who happened to be a man. 

“My male counterpart ultimately did a great job of reaffirming the information I had already presented,” she said. 

A year later, a few board members sent messages to say they initially underestimated her and that her hard work was paying off.  

“I began to question my own confidence,” Arreola said. “Receiving notes from my board members felt incredibly validating.”

“I accepted it, because I didn’t know any better,” said Tieu, who didn’t find encouragement from her own Vietnamese family either. “My father was like, ‘Oh, I’m so surprised that they selected you to be the principal.’ ”

A decade later, Tieu has not only been an assistant principal and principal, she’s now in charge of student support services for the Houston Independent School District — the eighth-largest school system in the U.S. But as an Asian woman and a single mother, she still feels pressure to prove herself in a male-dominated field.

“I spend double the time to make sure that everything I produce is 100% — nothing less,” she said.

The comment about Tieu’s height — and job prospects — is among the anecdotes district and state leaders shared as part of a first-of-its-kind of women serving in high-level school positions. Conducted by , a 300-member national network, the results show that despite ascending to senior roles in school systems and state departments, the vast majority of female leaders experience bias and think often about quitting. Over 80% of the 110 women who responded, from 27 states, said they feel they have to watch how they dress, speak and act because they are in the spotlight as senior leaders.

“I have found myself in high-powered meetings where men in leadership roles do not even look at me, but instead address my male colleagues,” said AngĂ©lica Infante-Green, Rhode Island education commissioner and a Women Leading Ed board member. “In a world where traditional notions of leadership have been predominantly shaped by men, there exists a profound need for diversity in representation.”

The survey, one expert said, comes at a time when districts could benefit from strengths many women bring to the table.

“Women who come up through this pipeline have often been elementary school principals and that sometimes precludes them from being selected as superintendents,” said Rachel White, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, assistant professor. She launched , a research center, last summer to improve data collection on school system leaders. It’s common, she said, for school boards to view high school principals, who are , as more authoritarian or to prefer someone with a background in finance. “The type of leadership we need right now around family and student engagement and curriculum and instruction — elementary school principals really get that right.” 

But many women leaders say they face a double standard. 

“When a man in leadership takes time to coach his child’s sports team, he is applauded,” Infante-Green said. “If I choose to attend my daughter’s dance recital over a meeting, I am judged much differently.”

One leader quoted in the report said she was told to wear a skirt instead of pants to a presentation so she didn’t “come off as intimidating.” , Hispanic and Asian-American women were even more likely to feel pressure related to their behavior — 55%, compared with 36% for white women. One Black leader’s colleagues said the way she greeted students with “What’s up” made them uncomfortable because she was “speaking Ebonics.”

Tieu, in Houston, said students are often surprised to see a minority woman, especially an Asian woman, in leadership. 

“I want to show these young ladies that there’s nothing wrong with having aspirations,” she said. “There are going to be moments in time when you have to overcome barriers, but be smart and learn from it.”

The survey results build on the conducted by ILO Group, a women-owned firm focused on education policy and leadership. Nationally, over 20% of the nation’s 500 largest school districts saw turnover at the top, according to the 2023 results. Among women, the rate was slightly higher — 26%.

The most recent analysis also showed that even with a modest increase in the number appointed to superintendent positions, women still represent less than a third of those leading school districts. Women, however, make up 80% of the teacher workforce and more than half of school principals. 

Julia Rafal-Baer, CEO of Women Leading Ed and ILO, called it a “glass cliff,” and said when women reach higher ranks, they“nearly universally experience bias that impacts their ability to do their job, how they feel about their work and their overall well-being.”

Sixty percent of women leaders said they think about quitting due to stress, and of those, three-quarters said they contemplate leaving on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Loren Widmer, director of student services for the Affton School District, outside St. Louis, left a neighboring system after unsuccessful efforts to advance into administration.

“I really felt like the only potential way to move ahead in that district was to be part of the good old boys club,” she said. “If you didn’t go to school there, play on the football team and come up through the ranks, there was no chance that you would progress.”

That became clear to her in 2017 when she was in line for an assistant principal job. The district offered her a 9 a.m. interview on a Friday, the same morning she was scheduled to have a C-section. She asked for an alternative time — even a virtual interview at noon the same day of her son’s birth — but the official turned her down. The position later went to a man.

‘Among all these men’

The new survey follows a that Rafal-Baer initiated on LinkedIn, asking women leaders to share some of the worst comments they’ve heard along their “professional journey.” Some of the nation’s top education leaders weighed in.

“A 
 colleague said (in front of the others), ‘You must be really proud to be the only woman among all these men,’ and then squeezed my shoulder a little longer than anyone needed,“ recalled Carolyne Quintana, a deputy chancellor for the New York City schools.

Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, shared a comment she heard as a new mom. 

“An older male colleague bitterly complained he wished he’d gotten a three-month vacation after I got back from a horrible, miserable, painful maternity leave,” she wrote. 

And Daylene Long, CEO of a STEM education company, posted that someone told her, “Being competitive is not an attractive trait in a woman.”

‘You don’t have to choose’

But some leaders also see signs of progress. 

In Affton, Widmer’s district, half of the top-level staff and four of the five principals are women. She thinks the support women feel contributes to the district’s stability. 

“You don’t have to choose between staying home with your sick kids or leading a department,” Widmer said. “You can do both.”

And in the early months of the pandemic, Infante-Green participated in daily with then-Gov. Gina Raimondo and Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, the former state health director. A mother even sent the commissioner a card with Superwoman on it as a thank you for inspiring her daughter. 

“In that moment, it dawned on me that our presence together at those news conferences was more than just symbolic; it was a powerful statement of solidarity and resilience,” she said. “It sent a positive message that in Rhode Island, leadership knows no gender boundaries.”