Female academic leadership in private higher education: gender dynamics and leadership effectiveness

1 Introduction

Female leaders in academic settings are frequently undervalued in their contributions despite operating in the 21st century (Northouse, 2021). Academic leadership encompasses the process of guiding and influencing faculty, staff, and students toward the achievement of an institution's vision, mission, and objectives (Northouse, 2021). Such a leadership framework comprises a range of responsibilities and practices that are mutually reinforcing rather than operating in isolation (Deng et al., 2022; Northouse, 2021).

There is substantial literature on women in academic leadership examining leadership styles, barriers to advancement, gender biases, and the impact of women leaders on organisational outcomes (Canavesi and Minelli, 2022; Lan et al., 2024b). This body of work is important for understanding the underrepresentation of women in senior academic positions and for developing strategies to promote gender equity in higher education (Berkovich and Eyal, 2021). Research has consistently identified that gender has significant effects on leadership style, with female-associated styles particularly transformational leadership linked to increased employee satisfaction, higher motivation, and improved organisational performance in academic contexts (Fauzi et al., 2024).

This perspective aims to highlight how leadership styles, gender dynamics, institutional environment, and external influences collectively shape the effectiveness, perceptions, and advancement of female leaders in academic settings. It draws on the authors’ unique experiences as female academic leaders at IMU University a private, healthcare-focused university in Malaysia and the observable outcomes of a leadership culture shaped by an explicitly inclusive founding vision. The analysis proceeds from review of the international literature, through a structured examination of leadership styles and their gender dimensions, to a situated account of female leadership at IMU University and concludes with a proposed framework for future research.

This article constitutes a narrative review of the literature on gender and academic leadership, supplemented by the authors’ reflexive institutional observations. The literature base was identified through searches of Google Scholar, PubMed, ERIC, and Scopus using the terms ‘female academic leadership,’ ‘gender and higher education,’ ‘women in leadership,’ ‘leadership styles and gender,’ and ‘Malaysian higher education,’ covering publications from 2010 to 2025. Studies were selected purposively for their relevance to the themes of leadership style, gender equity, and institutional culture in higher education contexts.

2 Theoretical background: leadership styles and gender dynamics

Leadership style theory provides a foundational framework for examining gender-differentiated approaches to authority, collaboration, and decision-making in academic settings (Baker, 2018). The following styles are most examined in the gender and educational leadership literature; each is considered in terms of its formal definition, its empirical associations with gender, and its observed expression within the institutional context of IMU University.

2.1 Transformational leadership

Transformational leaders are visionary and inspirational, encouraging innovation and creativity within their teams (Qu et al., 2015). A comprehensive meta-analysis by Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt and van Engen of gender differences and is associated with higher perceived effectiveness across organisational contexts (Eagly et al., 2003). At IMU University, the female top leaders encountered by the authors are characterised by inspiration drawn from their own outstanding achievements in their professional fields, innovation and creativity cultivated through the consistent challenge of working within resource constraints, and visionary adaptability in response to requirements from investors, professional bodies, and regulatory stakeholders.

2.2 Transactional leadership

Transactional leaders emphasise structure, routine, and established procedures, employing a system of rewards and penalties within a defined chain of command (Lan et al., 2024b). In the authors’ institutional experience, this style is most commonly practised by female leaders operating at the middle level of management particularly those responsible for unit, departmental, or financial portfolios. The transactional orientation appears to emerge organically from the pressures of deadline compliance and cost-efficiency management inherent in the dual academic-corporate structure of a private higher education institution.

2.3 Servant leadership

Servant leaders prioritise the needs of their team members and institution above their own, with characteristics including empathy, active listening, commitment to the growth and wellbeing of others, and promotion of collaborative, inclusive environments (Canavesi and Minelli, 2022). Female leaders at IMU University who work closely with communities and lead community-engaged projects tend to adopt this approach. It is well-suited to environments demanding a balance between demonstrable outcomes and the sustained satisfaction of stakeholders at the frontline of service delivery (Kainde and Mandagi, 2023).

2.4 Democratic leadership

Democratic leaders involve team members in decision-making processes, ensuring that all voices are heard and valuing participation and collaboration across the group (Berkovich and Eyal, 2021). At IMU University, this style is more commonly observed among junior leaders and is not gender-specific particularly in contexts where a leader is managing peers at the same level of seniority. It reflects the institution's broader commitment to collegial and collaborative governance.

2.5 Autocratic and laissez-faire leadership

A 2024 systematic literature review on laissez-faire leadership in higher education institutions found significant relationships between this style and academic performance, faculty satisfaction, and innovation, while noting that its effectiveness is highly dependent on contextual factors including institutional culture (Lan et al., 2024a). Neither style is gender-specific in the authors’ institutional observation. Autocratic leadership is frequently adopted interchangeably with other styles during acute crises, while laissez-faire approaches are more common at the highest organisational levels where strategic autonomy is appropriate (Lan et al., 2024a).

2.6 Influential leadership

Influential leaders deploy personal charisma and persuasive capacity to inspire and energise followers through passion and enthusiasm, combined with strong communication skills (Katz-Navon et al., 2023; Mekonen et al., 2020). In the institutional context, this style is most visible in senior and well-established figures with prolific professional backgrounds. Like autocratic and laissez-faire styles, influential leadership is not gender-specific; its expression reflects individual biography and professional standing rather than gender identity (Lan et al., 2024a).

The leadership style framework used here has inherent limitations. Style typologies are descriptive rather than explanatory and do not account for the situational, cultural, and institutional factors that shape leadership behaviour (Swanwick and McKimm, 2017). Most style research has been conducted in Western organisational contexts and may not translate directly to Asian health professions education settings, where different hierarchical norms and cultural values shape leadership behaviour and its evaluation (Islam et al., 2022). In practice, boundaries between styles are fluid: effective academic leaders draw on multiple styles simultaneously depending on context, team composition, and institutional demands (Northouse, 2021).

2.7 Theoretical perspectives on gender and leadership

The leadership style framework presented above provides a useful descriptive vocabulary but does not constitute an explanatory account. Two theoretical traditions supply the conceptual grounding needed to interpret the observed patterns (Thien et al., 2025). Social role theory proposes that gender differences in leadership behaviour arise from internalised socially prescribed gender roles, making leadership effectiveness a function of the fit between gender role expectations and the perceived demands of the role in a specific institutional context (Eagly and Wood, 2012).

Intersectionality theory argues that gender operates in dynamic interaction with race, ethnicity, and institutional context (Crenshaw, 1989). In the Malaysian higher education context, where ethnic diversity is salient across the academic workforce, the leadership trajectories of female academics from different ethnic communities are likely to differ in ways that a gender-only analysis may obscure. Future empirical research on female leadership in Malaysian private universities should incorporate intersectional analytic frameworks (Koenig and Eagly, 2014).

3 The educational environment: gender and leadership in higher education

3.1 Global and regional patterns of underrepresentation

The underrepresentation of women in senior academic leadership positions is a well-documented global phenomenon. In Asian universities, the majority of the highest-ranking positions vice-chancellor, pro-vice-chancellor, treasurer, registrar, dean, and deputy dean continue to be held by men (Forestier, 2013). A report by Bothwell found that 18% of the world's leading universities were headed by a woman in a chief executive, vice-chancellor, or presidential role in the world's leading universities (Bothwell, 2017).

In Bangladesh, women remain absent from the highest levels of academic responsibility in both STEM and non-STEM disciplines (Kohtamäki et al., 2024). Japan reports 2.3% of women in academic leadership positions, while Kuwait and India each report approximately 3%, and Hong Kong reports no female vice-chancellors (Islam et al., 2022).

In contrast, European universities report 23.6% of women as heads of higher education institutions, the United States reports 33% of college and university presidents as women and the United Kingdom reports 29.6% of vice-chancellors as women with a continuing upward trend. These figures, while indicating meaningful progress in Western higher education contexts, remain well short of population parity (European Commission, 2021; Melidona et al., 2023; Universities UK, 2022).

The structural and cultural drivers of this underrepresentation are well established. O'Connor's analysis demonstrates the clustering of women in lower-level academic and administrative positions, with a pronounced attrition in female representation as seniority increases (O’Connor, 2020). The significant reasons identified across the literature include cultural and social factors, restrictive national policies, personal barriers, inadequate family support structures, limited institutional interest in female advancement, and formal organisational barriers (Giménez-Espert et al., 2025). Policy responses at both national and institutional levels are necessary to promote more diverse and inclusive leadership environments.

3.2 Evidence for female leadership effectiveness

Research consistently identifies leadership competencies among women that are particularly well-suited to health professions education: collegial relationship-building, cooperative learning, participative communication, and a relational rather than hierarchical orientation (Deng et al., 2022; Kohtamäki et al., 2024). These competencies align directly with the interprofessional, team-based values of health professions education (Giménez-Espert et al., 2025). A study of school principals in Turkey found no significant difference in management style effectiveness between genders, but teachers attributed distinct qualities to each female leaders valued for objectivity, dedication, and empathy; male leaders for frankness and regulatory compliance (Özcan et al., 2020).

3.3 Persistent challenges facing female academic leaders

Despite evidence of effectiveness, female academic leaders continue to face a set of well-documented structural and cultural challenges that recur consistently across international higher education literature. Sociocultural stereotypes constitute a primary barrier. Influenced by prevailing gendered cultural norms, female leaders sometimes resist or reject their leader identity in order not to contravene existing expectations, contributing to the phenomenon of the glass ceiling the invisible yet persistent barrier to female leadership advancement (Hilal et al., 2024; Zhao and Jones, 2017).

Structural barriers operate at the level of institutional policy and practice. Recruitment and promotion systems continue to advantage men in many higher education institutions, and in certain cultural contexts workplaces remain gender-segregated, compelling women to navigate discriminatory practices simply to maintain their professional positions (Abalkhail, 2017; Islam et al., 2022). Inadequate access to training, mentorship, and professional networks further disadvantages women seeking leadership roles, while asymmetric domestic responsibilities remain a primary constraint on female academics’ career advancement (Meza-Mejia et al., 2023; Nguyen, 2013). Organisational factors including temporary work arrangements, male-dominated informal networks, intimidation, pay disparities, and opaque appointment processes complete the cluster of barriers (Howe-Walsh and Turnbull, 2016).

4 Female academic leadership at IMU university: An institutional perspective

4.1 Institutional context

IMU University is a private, healthcare-focused higher education institution, co-founded in 1992 by both male and female figures, who together established the first private medical institution in Malaysia. The institution operates across two arms of leadership: academic and corporate. Academic leaders at IMU characteristically occupy a dual role ensuring academic quality, standards, and regulatory compliance on one hand, while managing human and financial resources in partnership with the corporate leadership structure on the other. This dual responsibility is more pronounced in the private university context than in public institutions, where academic and administrative functions are more structurally separated.

While a full empirical audit of leadership appointment data at IMU falls outside the scope of this perspective, the authors note that since its founding in 1992, female representation in senior leadership has grown from predominantly middle-management roles to include positions at every level of the formal hierarchy, including institutional governance. Future research should seek to quantify these patterns through formal appointment data, leadership effectiveness indicators, and staff satisfaction measures.

The composition of IMU's leadership team has incorporated a balance of genders, ethnicities, and nationalities since the institution's establishment. Selection for leadership roles has been explicitly based on professional credibility, demonstrated expertise, collaborative capacity, and institutional commitment not gender. Benchmarking with international collaborators from Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region has reinforced the institution's commitment to diversity and inclusion as a foundational principle of organisational culture.

4.2 Evolution of female leadership at IMU

When IMU was established in 1992, male leaders dominated strategic and key decision-making functions, while female leaders were concentrated primarily in middle-level management and operational roles. This early configuration reflected the broader gender leadership landscape in Malaysian higher education at the time. However, from the early 2000s onward, a progressive increase in female representation at senior levels became evident, with female figures increasingly occupying top positions and engaging substantively in institutional development and financial governance.

The evolution of academic leadership in health professions universities toward distributed, collaborative governance has created institutional conditions particularly congruent with female leadership competencies (Diefenbach and Sillince, 2011; Mendez and Busenbark, 2015). Where formal hierarchy decreases and relational, team-based structures increase, the communicative, cooperative, and mentoring strengths associated with female leadership become operationally central rather than merely culturally valued (Post, 2015).

A further structural factor contributing to female leadership representation at IMU is the composition of the academic workforce itself. Malaysian higher education statistics for 2021 indicate a substantially higher proportion of female academicians relative to male across the twenty Malaysian public universities (17,751 female vs. 12,629 male), a trend that extends into the private sector (Elhadary and Samat, 2023). The pipeline of qualified female academics available for leadership development is therefore expanding. However, representation of women in health professions education remains concentrated at middle management and junior faculty levels, with senior leadership equity remaining a persistent challenge (Richter et al., 2020).

4.3 Shared leadership as an enabling model

IMU promotes a model of shared leadership in which all individuals contribute through their unique knowledge and skills, working in collaborative partnership founded on mutual respect, trust, and accountability. Within this model, vertical leadership structures remain essential for strategic direction and institutional continuity, but distributed contributions across the organisation regardless of formal seniority are explicitly valued.

IMU University's explicit commitment to diversity and inclusion embedded not as a performative policy but as an operational practice since its founding in 1992 has created an enabling institutional environment in which female leadership competencies are recognised, valued, and rewarded. Since 1992, female representation in senior leadership at the institution has grown from predominantly middle-management concentration to include positions at every level of the formal hierarchy, including institutional governance. The authors’ collective observation is that this shared leadership culture has created conditions particularly conducive to female leadership effectiveness: female leaders at IMU demonstrate cooperative learning facilitation, participative communication, management of diverse interprofessional teams, and a relational rather than hierarchical orientation to leadership competencies that are contextually advantageous in health professions education and empirically associated with leadership success in functionally diverse academic environments (Mendez and Busenbark, 2015). Future research should seek to quantify these patterns through formal appointment data, leadership effectiveness indicators, and staff satisfaction measures to provide the empirical grounding that this Perspective can only sketch.

The education sector's inherent alignment with nurturing, student-centred values may also function as a self-selecting factor: the values required for effective academic leadership patience, empathy, mentorship, and collaborative problem-solving are consistent with the dispositional orientation of many women who choose careers in healthcare education. This alignment between institutional mission and individual leadership disposition may help explain the relative equity of female leadership representation observed at IMU compared to the broader sector.

5 Discussion

The evidence reviewed and the institutional perspective offered in this article converge on several conclusions that challenge dominant assumptions about female leadership in Asian higher education.

First, the persistent narrative that women are less effective as leaders in Asian academic settings is not supported by our observation in IMU University nor by the emerging cross-national literature. Female leaders at IMU have been observed by the authors to be effective across the full range of leadership levels a pattern consistent with, though not independently verified against, the international evidence on female leadership outcomes in academic settings from operational management to institutional governance over a period of more than three decades. This effectiveness is not an exception requiring explanation; it reflects the outcomes of deliberate institutional investment in inclusive leadership development, merit-based appointment, and a distributed model of shared governance.

Second, leadership style is a more nuanced and contextually determined variable than simple gender categorisation suggests. While transformational and servant leadership styles are more commonly associated with female leaders in the international literature, the authors’ institutional observation suggests that female leaders at IMU demonstrate considerable flexibility across the full spectrum of leadership styles transactional when managing resource-constrained environments, influential when advocating for institutional direction, and democratic when building consensus among peers. Gender predicts tendency, not repertoire.

Third, institutional culture is a more powerful determinant of female leadership advancement than national context alone. Despite operating within a Malaysian higher education system characterised by persistent gender inequity at senior levels, IMU's founding culture of inclusion, its dual-gender co-founding, its explicit merit-based appointment practice, and its international benchmarking have collectively produced a leadership environment that diverges significantly from the national pattern. This suggests that institutional agency the deliberate decisions made by leadership about culture, appointment, and development can meaningfully counter structural national-level gender inequity.

Fourth, the rising proportion of female academicians in Malaysian higher education represents a structural opportunity for sector-wide leadership equity. The pipeline of qualified, experienced female academics is growing; the challenge lies in translating workforce representation into senior leadership appointment through targeted development, mentorship, and removal of systemic appointment barriers (Mendez and Busenbark, 2015).

Grounded in the conceptual framework presented in Figure 1 and the evidence reviewed in this article, we propose the following hypotheses for empirical investigation in comparable health professions universities across the Malaysian and Southeast Asian higher education context.

5.1 Limitations

This Perspective is grounded in the authors’ personal experience as female academic leaders at a single private health professions university in Malaysia. While the institutional observations are contextualised within a comprehensive review of the international literature, the generalisability of the IMU model to other institutional types particularly public universities, research-intensive institutions, and non-healthcare disciplines cannot be assumed. The experiences reported are also perspectival rather than systematically collected: they represent qualitative, reflexive accounts rather than findings from a formal empirical study. Future research should seek to triangulate these observations with quantitative data on appointment patterns, leadership development participation, and leadership effectiveness outcomes across comparable institutions.

We also acknowledge that the institutional trajectory described in this article admits of alternative explanations beyond a culture of inclusive leadership. IMU's relative gender equity in leadership may partly reflect the composition of healthcare education workforces, which are disproportionately female at the practitioner level and therefore produce a larger pipeline of female candidates for academic and clinical leadership roles. The private institutional model characterised by greater managerial flexibility and less dependence on national civil service structures may also enable faster departure from historically male-dominated appointment patterns than public universities. These structural factors, rather than institutional culture alone, may account for some of the observed difference between IMU and the broader Malaysian higher education sector. Future research should attempt to disaggregate these explanatory pathways through comparative institutional analysis.

A further limitation that warrants explicit acknowledgement is the positionality of the authors. All three authors hold or have held leadership positions at IMU University the very institution whose leadership culture is evaluated favourably in this article. This insider positioning provides access to contextual knowledge, longitudinal observation, and institutional memory that external researchers would not possess, but also creates a risk of institutional advocacy and confirmation bias. The authors have sought to mitigate this by grounding all institutional claims in the international literature, by consistently framing institutional observations as perspectival accounts rather than empirical findings, by acknowledging the absence of independently collected evidence for effectiveness claims, and by proposing an agenda for external empirical investigation. Readers are invited to weigh the institutional account in this article accordingly.

6 Conclusion

This Perspective has examined female academic leadership at IMU University through the dual lenses of the international literature and the authors’ situated institutional experience. The evidence is consistent: female leaders are effective across the full range of academic leadership roles and styles, and the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior positions reflects structural, cultural, and systemic barriers rather than leadership capacity deficits.

The IMU model characterised by shared leadership, merit-based appointment, founding-level commitment to gender and ethnic diversity, and an organisational culture shaped by healthcare education values offers a generative example of what equitable academic leadership can look like in the Malaysian private higher education context. Future research should examine the extent to which this model is replicable across different institutional types, disciplines, and national contexts, with particular attention to the interaction between institutional culture and national policy environments.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Charity M. Dacey, Touro University, United States

Reviewed by: Leili Seifi, University of Birjand, Iran

Abdul Hanis Embong, University of Malaysia Terengganu, Malaysia

Atun Wardatun, Universitas Islam Negeri Mataram, Indonesia