Breaking into the All-Male Club: Female Professors of Educational Administration (SUNY series in Women in Education)

Women professors of educational administration share their personal stories of being female firsts.

Winner of the 2011 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association

These are the inspiring and illuminating stories of women professors who first broke into the exclusive, all-male academic club of educational administration. Women of this pioneering generation tell how they overcame daunting challenges, traumas, the naiveté of others, sexual harassment, and retaliation, as well as how they encountered unexpected kindness and support along the way. Their difficult paths, complex choices, and triumphs are revealed through the experiences of the first black woman professor in educational administration, a fight to the death for tenure, a genteel southerner's confrontation with the aloof North, and a brash northerner's survival of the cultural complexities of the South. These stories speak not simply to women, but to all trailblazers in the workplace, and to those still facing discrimination and relegated to outsider status.

Norma T. Mertz is Professor of Higher Education Administration at the University of Tennessee and coeditor (with Vincent A. Anfara Jr.) of Theoretical Frameworks in Qualitative Research.