‘Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability’: The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, middle-class educated gentlewomen in Ireland had established positions of authority and leadership in the relatively new professions of education and nursing. Acting in the roles of lady principals and lady superintendents, respectively, in education and nursing, many of these women had themselves participated in the social reform movements that led to the establishment of their new professions in the late nineteenth century. This paper critically analyses the roles played by these two distinct but socially related groups of Irish women, who were prominent in the early development of the social practices of education and nursing. The lady principals and lady superintendents entered the public domain as women with supervisory managerial roles, a fact that was in and of itself significant in late Victorian and early Edwardian society. In these roles, they expanded the boundaries of woman's role, provided role models for other women to follow, and forged networks of support for women. While the performance of their respective roles was mediated by public expectations and by extant gender relationships, they negotiated their way through the constraints of their new public space to achieve their aims of advancing their respective professions.

Kadin Yöneti̇ci̇ler İçi̇n Farkli Kültürlerde Kalip Yargilr Ve Engeller

“…Contrary to previous years, sharp increase have been appeared about women leaders between the years of 2004-2010 most of which were co relational such as conflict and role discontinuity between principalship and teaching, parental and professional role conflict, job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in their career, more task baseddetailed researches of women leaders' superior position such as premature departure of genders, classroom and discipline management from a gender perspective, shared leadership practices, secondary head teachers' views over time, male role models, the entire appointments process, incongruence level within the masculine discourse, and ethnographic, cultural and indigenous studies such as socio-cultural systems of educational leadership, indigenous women leaders to authenticate and legitimate leadership realities in the cultural spaces, religio-spirituality of black principals. These are different from earlier studies which were more general topics simply underlining the cause of women minority in management role from feminist perspective (Chan, 2004;Krüger, Eck and Vermeulen, 2005;Loder and Spillane, 2005;Leathwood, 2005;Çelikten, 2005;Bradbury and Gunter, 2006;Oplatka and Atias, 2007;Court, 2007;Ducklin and Ozga, 2007;Priola, 2007;Thompson, 2007;Bradbury, 2007;Fealy and Harford, 2007;Coleman, 2007;Cushman, 2008;Oplatka and Mimon, 2008;Grummell, Devine, and Lynch, 2009;Isaac, Behar-Horenstein and Koro-Ljungberg, 2009;Neale and Özkanlı, 2010;Sperandio, 2011;Shah, 2010;Fitzgerald, 2010;White, 2010;Coronel, Moreno and Carrasco, 2010;Sherman and Beaty, 2010;Fuller, 2010;Witherspoon and Taylor, 2010;Strachan, Akao, Kilavanwa, and Warsal, 2010).…”

“…Limited numbers of the studies conducted quantitatively (Prichard and Deem, 1999;Krüger, Eck and Vermeulen, 2005;Cushman, 2008;Sperandio, 2011) while testing their hypothesis. Thirty-five of the studies conducted qualitative interview methods except one of which applied a biography of the influential women who had pushed forward a renovation in the history (Fealy and Harford, 2007). They mostly used a case study design and largely in depth qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, and observations with semi-structured and open-ended questions.…”

“…Today it has confronted with controversial and dialogic consideration shaped by popular and wide spread paradigms. While it was asserted that patriarchal and feudal societal structure is the basic factor that fosters masculinity more management roles over females, modern paradigms, possible threat from the new managerialism (Leonard, 1998:75;Bown, 1999;Fealy and Harford, 2007) and popular thoughts have also played as legitimization for gendered stereotypes (Fitzgerald, 2010). This is because men have been preferred more than women for leadership position traditionally (Krüger, Eck and Vermeulen, 2005:250).…”

The emergence of a national policy on teacher education in Ireland

“…In keeping with prevailing views regarding the role of education to socialise males and females into their appropriate social role, the curriculum offered was gendered. 32 While male teachers were exposed to the rudiments of trigonometry, navigation and land surveying, female teachers were instructed in needlework, household economy and dairy management. 33 The gendered nature of the curriculum in the training establishments mirrored the gendered curriculum within the national schools, the national system effectively institutionalising the dominant ideology regarding the subordinate role and function of women in Irish society.…”

Guest Editorial: Nursing history and the articulation of power

“…While some nurses frequently enjoyed real success as powerbrokers themselves, they only did so as long as they were seen to stay in their ‘proper place’, in a female domain that was both ‘scaffolded and validated by medical, religious and evolutionary arguments’ (Fealy & Harford 2007: 273), and ascribed as being by its very nature located outside the real loci of power.…”