Gender and leadership styles in single‐sex academic institutions

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between gender and female leadership styles in a single‐sex academic institution in Saudi Arabia. Design/methodology/approach Essentially, a qualitative research approach that utilised a single case‐study methodology was adopted. As part of this research, seven in‐depth semi‐structured interviews were conducted with senior managers of the all‐women's Saudi academic institution. Findings Evidence suggests that the interviewed female leaders of Manar College are inclined to adopt stereotypical attributes of feminine qualities of leadership. They also tend to prefer a democratic, interpersonally‐oriented and transformational style rather than autocratic, task‐oriented or transactional style of leadership. In essence their leadership styles seem to agree – to a large extent – with the mainstream view on women's ways of leading. Research limitations/implications Despite the depth and richness of collected data, this research – as with all case studies – suffers from a limited ability to generalise the findings due to small sample size. It could thus be of interest for future quantitative‐based research to test the findings and propositions of this research on a representative set of single‐sex academic institutions in order to determine whether their leaders are trapped in stereotyped visions of leadership. Originality/value Various studies have examined the relationship between gender and leadership styles in educational establishments. In this regard, the paper argues the need and relevance of considering single‐sex academic institutions, a perspective that has not yet received sufficient attention in the educational leadership literature.