Gender and Leadership Differences: Reality or a Dilemma?

Gender is a wide spread issue in the world. Male domination and oppression, gender biasness, gender discrimination, and gender stereotypes are the main issues that are related to gender discussion. In developing countries gender is in the worst forms. In this context, this article aims to assess the gender differences in educational leadership in Nepal. For this, purposive sampling was used and two female principals from public and private schools each were taken as the sample. Intensive interviews were conducted with the principals and data were gathered. Discussions are based on literatures and two theories- radical feminism and symbolic interactionism. It is found that females had different experiences from the beginning of childhood and later these experiences had resulted different behaviour, working style and perspectives about self and about the world. These factors made females different than males. Because of gender discrimination and gender biased behaviour of the society female principals has to face many challenges and problems in their field. Keywords: feminism, symbolic interactionism, gender stereotype, safe-zone, oppression. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-1-1