Women Leaders’ Experiences at a Kuwaiti Higher Education Institution: Exploring the Leadership Labyrinth
Abstract
The leadership labyrinth is a metaphor to illustrate the ups and downs women workers face on their journey to leadership. This study aims to discover the nature of leadership labyrinths as experienced by Kuwaiti women leaders within a Kuwaiti higher education institution. A narrative approach rooted in the tenets of qualitative inquiry was used. To gather data, field notes, and semi-structured interviews with three women leaders were conducted at the selected institution. Despite the limited number of participants, their narratives offer valuable insights. Findings show that the Kuwaiti women leaders’ experiences in the selected context are shaped by four main thematic domains: personal inner journeys, family support system, organizational dynamics, and societal fabrics. Two major concepts in the women leaders’ narratives appeared significantly and played a central impact on the analysis. The first, which is a societal factor, is the power of connections or as socially called Wasta. The second, which is an organizational factor, is the notion of Sea, which is metaphorically used to symbolize the unknown world of the leadership labyrinth and possibly signify the high levels of uncertainty within the organization. This study contributes to the existing discussion on women’s leadership calls for further examination into the experiences of women leaders and recommends creating a merit-based work environment that nurtures women’s leadership potential and provides equitable opportunities with clearly announced criteria in leadership selection and advancement.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.24.1.6
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