Overworked and Undervalued: Examining Teacher Leadership through a Gendered Lens

The Illinois State Board of Education recognizes the expansion of formal teacher leadership roles as a potential solution to low recruitment and high turnover in the teacher workforce. In a traditionally flat profession, teacher leadership roles create differentiated career pathways through which educators can experience professional growth and engage with leadership responsibilities, often while remaining in the classroom. Despite resounding research demonstrating differences in how teachers of different genders experience their careers and glaring gender inequities in the teacher workforce, the implications of teacher leadership for teachers of different genders are not yet understood. My research seeks to fill this gap in the literature, using qualitative interviews with teachers in an Illinois high school district to examine teacher leadership through a gendered lens. I find that unlike administrative leadership, teacher leadership successfully appeals to women teachers. Because teacher leadership is not valued as highly as administrative leadership, however, teacher leadership roles lead to the overwork of women teachers and reinforce the unequal valuation of "womens work" in schools.