459 Esguerra-Escarez Final Pub Ready.docx


VOLUME 43, 2024
ISSN 1093-7099

EDITORS: BEVERLY J. IRBY, NAHED ABDELRAHMAN, BRAD BIZZELL, AND JULIA BALLENGER
ASSISTANT EDITOR: JORDAN DONOP & KRISTINA HALL



Advancing Women in Leadership Vol. 43, 117-134, 2024
Available online at http://www.awlj.org/
ISSN 1093-7099

Full Length Research Paper

Leading in a Room Full of Boys: A Retrospective Interpretative
Phenomenological Analysis of the Leadership Experiences of Adolescent
Women as a Minority in a Coed Senior High School in the Philippines

Socorro Perpetual F. Esguerra-Escarez
Socorro Escarez: Lecturer, Ateneo de Manila University, sescarez@ateneo.edu

Accepted November 14th, 2024

This study explored the lived experiences of seven student leaders who belonged to the first three cohorts (2018, 2019, and
2020) of female transfer students in a private Catholic senior high school in Metro Manila after years of exclusive basic
education. Using retrospective IPA, participants were individually interviewed to analyze the meanings they ascribed to their
leadership experiences three to six years ago. Participants recalled their challenges, coping strategies, as well positive
experiences as student leaders. Following Willig’s steps in IPA, data analysis yielded the following key themes: Leadership as
(a) unsafe space (for women), (b) a response to systematized injustice, (c) adaptive resilience-building, (d) building social
support systems, (e) character-forming, and (f) purpose-driven. These themes were framed by the participants’ experience of
gender conflict and discrimination as a minority in their new school environment. Implications for research and practice are
discussed.

Keywords: gender, women minority, adolescent women leaders, leadership, leader emergence, leadership development, coeducation,
retrospective IPA, Philippines

The debate whether leaders are born or made has been a topic
of discussion for a long time. However, one cannot
overemphasize the importance of supportive social structures
that enable the development of leaders especially from a
young age. Past research has suggested that leadership is 30%
innate and 70% learned through significant life experiences
(Picklesimer, 2014). In their “Ready, Willing and Able”
conceptual framing of leadership development, Keating et al.
(2014) identified three key components from among multiple
factors that are involved in forming effective leaders:
Leadership Self-efficacy, Motivation to Lead, and Leadership
Skills. Besides these factors, an individual’s unique context is
also a crucial component of leadership learning and
development. Apart from families, schools undoubtedly
provide students opportunities for secondary socialization
processes that are crucial in navigating later experiences in life
as leaders in organizations. The growing emphasis on the
impact of student leadership on workplace leadership later in
life demands a deeper understanding of youth leadership and
the design of evidence-based leadership development
programs in schools. I have contributed to the literature on
young women’s leader emergence, the role of gender in their
leadership experiences and the optimal conditions that provide
support for the development of leadership among adolescents.

Coeducation and Gender Integration

Coeducation in schools has been considered beneficial to the
cause of gender integration and equality not only in terms of
basic access to education but also in terms of leadership

opportunities both for young men and women in schools. In
the Philippines, an early ethnographic study by Clark (2001)
of two high schools with an even distribution of sexes in an
urban and a rural setting revealed that Filipino boys and girls
enjoy equal opportunity in ascending to leadership roles in
schools. However, in examining their narratives of student
leadership, both boys and girls were found to consider girls to
be more of the political leaders in their schools. Apart from
excelling in academics and having lower dropout rates
compared to boys, girls were thought to be more dependable,
responsible and diligent in carrying out individual as well as
group tasks. They are almost always voted as class leaders
because of these traits. Talon et al. (2020) in their
phenomenological study on gender integration in a Filipino
public high school describes teachers’ efforts at gender
mainstreaming in their highly contextualized curriculum by
using and promoting localized and inclusive language and
practices, thereby strengthening the school’s gender
responsiveness in addressing discrimination in the classroom.
This has helped minimize the gender gap in their school with
such practices that promote gender equity and equal
opportunity.

The case is not always the same in foreign and local schools
that have transitioned from single sex to coeducational
classrooms. In 1993, Russell wrote about her experiences as a
female administrator brought into the transition management
team of an all-male academic institution in Boston, United
States when the school opened its doors to female students in
high school after 75 years. She conceded that it cannot be

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business as usual in navigating this kind of transition no
matter how prestigious an institution may be. For true
coeducation to exist, both genders must be together, heard
equally and valued equally. Russell identified a healthy school
culture as the optimal context for successful gender integration
in the classroom and provides several specific elements that
characterize a healthy school culture such as core values,
mandated shared leadership and a very clear discipline system.
Fabes et al. (2018) noted that decades of gender segregation in
schools has only enabled young men and women to learn more
about same-gender interactions, skills and expectations than
about the other, thereby allowing them to grow up in quite
distinct social environments which ultimately inform their
affect, behavior, and attitudes toward each other. They argued
that attitudes toward an unfamiliar group can improve through
increased social contact provided that groups enjoy equal
status, share common goals, and cooperate in the attainment of
shared goals within supportive social institutions. As peers,
they become agents of social influence to each other in many
ways.

Within the local setting, in his 2016 study, Villarin explored
the opportunities and challenges presented by coeducation in
his religious order’s school within the context of providing
quality Catholic education. He noted that the transition to
coeducation places greater demands on teaching faculty to
navigate gender dynamics and combat gender stereotypes and
biases that may arise. Racelis (2013), in her qualitative study
on the impact of coeducation on female students’ experiences
in the same Catholic school revealed that the school created a
challenging environment for female students because of its
perceived traditional gender role expectations. Female
students reported experiencing objectification from their male
peers and expectations to be subservient and nurturing. The
harassment they experienced from male students also made
them feel fearful and powerless. Her study further underscores
the need for schools to provide psychological safety and
supportive environments for women and to combat gender
biases and stereotypes.

Despite Russell’s American context, her experiences may help
provide insight into understanding the present study’s unique
setting where young Filipino women are a minority in a
former exclusive basic education institution for boys. Both the
Boston school and the study’s setting share similar
characteristics – that of having a long history in exclusive
education, and a strong tradition as an elite school. Alumni
(and college alumnae) of the local school setting supply a
strong leadership bench for private organizations as well as in
Philippine politics. There is value in examining leadership
emergence at a young age in this school setting, especially
now that the institution has begun the shift to coeducation in
senior high school.

Gender and Leadership Issues in Coeducation

Leadership education is a relatively new discipline,
particularly in understanding the various conditions in which
leadership learning happens (Guthrie & Jenkins, 2018).
Castillo et al. (2019) asserted that schools are mandated to
develop authentic and responsible student leaders not only in
view of gainful employment in their futures but also with the

objective of deepening the bench for future leaders of society.
Their research with junior high school students in the
Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Pakistan suggests that
school climate is the strongest predictor of leadership
development. However, Madsen and Andrade (2018)
addressed the issue of implicit gender bias which has been
generally excluded in many leadership development programs
for women. Implicit bias or unconscious or second-generation
bias has implications on the formation of women in
leadership. In particular, there is a need to have leadership
development program designers who are experts and
appropriately educated in gender studies. They asserted that
designers of such programs must be highly knowledgeable of
the conditions that provide contextualized coaching anchored
on the latest research in order to create a safe space for
leadership learning, especially for women. In the Philippines
where this study is situated, both the Philippine Commission
on Human Rights and the Department of Education emphasize
the strict implementation of DepEd’s Gender Responsive
Basic Education Policy (de Guia, 2022) by clarifying that
gender equity goes beyond equal access to education but
involves addressing gender-related issues in school that
impede learners’ personal growth due to a lack of
psychological safe space. While the Philippine Commission
on Women (2022) reported that the Philippines remains the
best performing Asian country at 19th place with an overall
score of 0.783 among 146 countries on the World Economic
Forum’s global gender equality index, this trend does not seem
to parallel the growth intended in the local research relevant to
young women’s leadership development; and more alarmingly,
this trend does not always translate to the experiences of
young women who find themselves a minority in unique social
contexts.

The case for context and climate as critical to female students’
leadership development has led to several qualitative inquiries
into their experiences mostly from a phenomenological lens or
other inductive methodologies. However, as mentioned earlier
in this paper, there seems to be a dearth in knowledge about
how adolescent female students who are a minority in a
male-dominated environment experience leadership in such a
highly contextualized setting. Hoyt and Kennedy (2008) used
grounded theory approach to explore changes experienced by
ten adolescent girls in a comprehensive feminist-based
leadership program. Consistent with studies on leader identity
among young women, the participants were initially found to
be traditional in their views of leadership, i.e. anchored on the
cis-male prototype’s qualities, and were therefore hesitant to
consider themselves leaders. Their views became more
inclusive after the program and they were observed to be more
confident and inspired to be leaders. They noted that being in
a program environment of mutual trust and respect helped
foster their confidence in themselves, along with experiencing
female leaders as role models and a better understanding of
multiple forms of leadership other than the traditional.

Most other studies, however, on female students’ leadership
experiences were conducted with older females as
participants. Haber-Curran (2013) via a phenomenological
case study in the United Kingdom explored the challenges and
successes of four undergraduate female college students in top

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leadership positions. Gathering data from one-on-one
interviews, focus group discussions and participant journals,
Haber-Curran suggested that success as a leader was perceived
by the women as externally focused, with greater importance
placed on the organizations they lead and on efforts at
nurturing members’ development and that striking a balance
between being a leader and being a friend was considered as a
primary challenge.

In a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews of eight
female Chinese student leaders in a male-dominated university
over an 11-month period of fieldwork, Zheng (2017) revealed
challenges experienced by the women on account of gender
role expectations in their Asian culture. While these women’s
personal achievements place them in an elite category of
students in the university, traditional role expectations related
to subservience and their sexuality hinder them from
embracing their self-identity as empowered leaders. As
Chinese society undergoes a gendered process of interaction,
these high-achieving women leaders in university experience
stress from their elite status and have sometimes been called
feminazis for seeking equity with men in a highly traditional
society.

Swai and Moses (2021) utilized a phenomenological
interpretative approach to explore the lived experiences of six
undergraduate female student leaders using the hexagonal and
motivation to lead theories as framework. The hexagon theory
in student leadership development underscores factors that
relate to the six elements of the (a) self, (b) family, (c) school,
(d) friends, (e) university, and (f) society as crucial to the
development of leadership in a young person through a change
in attitude, knowledge, skills and behavior. Results indicate
that female students take on leadership roles if they receive
approval and support from significant others. Leadership is
oriented by the family by allowing daughters the freedom and
power to make decisions. Teachers who demonstrate trust in
them and help build responsibility are also instrumental in
their leadership experiences. Religion was also found to help
in the development of their leader identity. Female student
leaders also manifested important leader attributes such as the
ability to lead, resolve conflict and make decisions.

In a comprehensive literature review on adolescent girls’
leadership formation, Eva et al.(2021) found five overarching
themes: (a) leader emergence, motivation, and identity, (b)
relationships with peers and adults, (c) varieties of leadership
development opportunities, (d) exercising agency in leadership
development programs, and (e) integration of leader
development into the school curriculum. Of these five themes,
it is worth noting that leader identity among young females is
strongly aligned with more collaborative and relational forms
of leadership, which ultimately becomes problematic, because
most adolescent leadership research tends to be focused on the
cis-male leadership prototype, highlighting more masculine
perceptions of leadership which become a barrier for girls in
perceiving themselves as leader material (Archard, 2012 as
cited in Eva et al., 2021). Hurtes (2002 as cited in Eva et al.,
2021) likewise observed that the social requirement to fit in
possibly contributes to the lack of leader identity development

among girls, given the standards set by the cis-male leader
prototype.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as Theoretical
Lens

Smith and Osborn (2007) described interpretative
phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a detailed examination of
personal experience and as an attempt to explain how a person
makes sense of one’s experiences in her personal and social
world. IPA is a dynamic process in research that allows the
researcher to walk in the participant’s shoes in order to
understand what life is like from the latter’s perspective.
Through a process of double hermeneutic, two stages of
interpretation take place, first from the participant’s making
sense of the experience and then from the researcher’s analysis
of the participant’s sense-making.

IPA is a qualitative research approach that is idiographic in
nature – it seeks to understand the unique subjective
experiences of individuals within a specific context, instead of
developing generalizable knowledge or theories. This
approach examines the lived experiences of individuals in a
nuanced and in-depth way, by focusing on the individual
experience and interpreting such data as opposed to starting
from a pre-existing theory or framework (Allan, 2008). As a
research tool, the idiographic nature of IPA is a powerful
means in understanding subjective experiences of individuals
and exploring the complexities and diversity of human
experience. Attention is likewise drawn to the social, cultural
and historical contexts that shape these experiences.
Shinebourne (2011) argued that “with its theoretical
underpinnings in phenomenology and hermeneutics and its
idiographic perspective, IPA offers a method that is congruent
with the existential-phenomenological paradigm and at the
same time can link existential-phenomenological research
with the wider research literature in psychology” (p. 16).
Although phenomenology is regarded as a philosophical
system of thought, its focus on the content of conscious
thought and the individual’s experience of the world lend itself
well to qualitative research methods in psychology and in the
social sciences in general (Willig, 2008). IPA is a
phenomenological method that recognizes the impossibility of
direct access into what Husserl (1931) regarded as individuals’
life worlds. As IPA explores individuals’ experiences from
their perspective and describes the meaning they ascribe to
their experiences, to a certain extent, it also represents the
researcher’s interpretation of such meaning-making owing to
his own world view. This is why reflexivity is paramount in
the researcher’s conduct of IPA. The use of IPA in the study
sought to gain an understanding of how the pioneering batches
of female student leaders in a predominantly male senior high
school view and experience their leadership experiences. The
aim was to gain insight into their thoughts and beliefs as
female student leaders in a unique context so that their
experiences may inform school policy in the future.

While the study is retrospective in approach, the methodology
used (IPA) differs from a narrative analysis in that the study
focused on how they made sense of their leadership
experiences by remembering. In a retrospective IPA, the focus
is not on how the story is told but how participants

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retrospectively (and reflectively) make meaning of past
experiences (Van Parys, et al., 2014). IPA research works best
with a fairly homogenous sample, in this case, a group of
participants who were all elected student leaders from among
the female minority in a newly coeducational Catholic senior
high school.

Research Questions

Through participants’ retrospective meaning-making, I sought
to answer the following questions:

1. What are the lived experiences of the first three cohorts
of female student leaders of a newly coeducational senior high
school?

a. What were their experiences like running for elective
positions?

b. What were their experiences like after being elected
student leaders?

2. How do the female student leaders make sense of their
experiences?

Methods

Design

In this study, I employed a qualitative research approach
through retrospective interpretative phenomenological
analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted
individually with the seven participants following an
introductory script and interview schedule.

Research Setting

Participants in this study were alumnae of a newly
coeducational senior high school in a Catholic university in
Metro Manila with a long history and tradition of exclusive
basic education for boys. Its founding religious organization
also runs several basic education and tertiary institutions in
different parts of the country, most of which are coeducational.
In the senior high school of their university in Metro Manila, a
formal student government exists as noted in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Representation of the Sanggunian organizational chart based on their official Facebook page (2020)

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My primary interest was in leadership experiences of young
women in a former exclusive private school for boys in the
first three years of transitioning to coeducation in senior high
school. Given enrollment constraints, the school was only able
to offer slots to female transfer students comprising one-third
of its new population, making the new female students a
sexual minority in their own environment. Republic Act No.
10533 which created the K-12 reform was seen by the
Catholic academic institution as an opportunity to make their
brand of quality education more accessible. Scholarship grants
were offered to the best female students transferring from
public schools. It is crucial to know that the school has had
nearly 160 years of history and tradition as an exclusive basic
education institution for boys from middle- to upper-class
families (with the exception of a few scholars) as this
background contextualizes the female students’ leadership
experiences.

Participants

Seven alumnae, aged 21 to 23 years old, volunteered to
participate in this study by responding to the researcher’s
recruitment advertisement on Facebook and Messenger. They
fit the two criteria set for participants: (a) they belonged to the
first three cohorts (2018, 2019 and 2020) of female transfer
students, and (b) they were in elective positions in the official
student government during their stay in senior high school. All
seven participants had both minor and major (elective)
leadership positions in the school in grades 11 and 12 as
depicted in Table 1.

Table 1

Participants’ Batch, Strand and Leadership Positions

Participant
Code

Batch Strand Minor
Elective
Position

Major
Elective
Position

Kay 2020 HUMSS1 ✔ ✔

Kim 2020 STEM2 ✔ ✔

Faye 2018 STEM ✔ ✔

Dawn 2019 HUMSS ✔ ✔

Ginny 2019 HUMSS ✔ ✔

Kelly 2018 HUMSS ✔ ✔

Greta 2018 HUMSS ✔ ✔

1 Humanities and Social Sciences strand
2 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics strand

Most of them started as elected class officers, usually as class
vice president or class president, or as elected officers of
important student councils or committees and recognized
organizations that had an impact on student life. Their elective
positions in grade 11 became the pipeline for higher offices in

the student government once they reached grade 12. However,
in terms of student organizations, a number of them who
expressed a feeling of a lack of control or voice in pre-existing
organizations (i.e., those that carried over from the university’s
exclusive junior high school) would create new organizations
and committees that better served their interests and
advocacies such as a student committee on gender equality.
Because of the length of time it took to process a proposal for
a new organization, these participants became more active as
founding leaders of new organizations in their 12th grade.
Nonetheless, all of them served under the Sanggunian or
Sanggu, the official student government of the school, as
elected student leaders in different capacities.

Data Collection

I took measures to ensure that ethical considerations in the
conduct of the present study were addressed, such as issues of
confidentiality, transparency, and minimizing risk to the
volunteer participants. While results of this study may become
available in the public domain, confidentiality of participants’
personal identities and circumstances were guaranteed, along
with the identities of persons and institutions that were
consequently mentioned by the participants in their interviews.

After research ethics clearance was secured for this study,
participants were recruited using purposive snowball sampling
via Facebook and Messenger invitations. Since I, as the
principal investigator, was a former guidance counselor in the
same institution when the prospective participants were still in
senior high school, the invitations were either sent directly or
through common acquaintances on the social media
applications. A copy of the recruitment invitation was likewise
uploaded on the private Facebook Group page “Sanggu
Females” (created in 2017) of which the target participants
and the researcher are members. Alumnae who reached out
were screened on two criteria: (a) members of batches 2018,
2019 or 2020, and (b) elected student leaders in either grade
11 or 12 (or both) in the school’s student government
(Sanggunian) or in any of the Sanggu councils.

Informed consent forms were sent to the interested volunteers
who returned (electronically) signed copies to the researcher
after ensuring that they understood the terms of their
participation in the study. The process of securing informed
consent ensured that participants understood what they were
agreeing to do and that they could withdraw at any time during
the period of the study should they decide not to participate
anymore, without fear of consequence. The informed consent
form detailed the instructions for the data gathering process so
that participants knew what to expect in the ensuing interview
sessions. The form also provided the link to the privacy policy
of Zoom for those who would choose an online interview.

Semi-structured interviews were individually conducted with
the seven participants on their leadership experiences in senior
high school following an introductory script and interview
schedule. The interview schedule was constructed with the
purpose of letting participants freely share and elaborate on
their own leadership stories as elected student leaders of their
batches. Questions enclosed in parentheses were intended as
follow-up questions in case the participant did not include the

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information needed in her initial reply. Participants’ consent to
record the interview sessions was obtained before the audio
recording began. Examples of these questions are the
following:

What was it like running for your leadership
position? What were your challenges? (How did you
handle these challenges?) What were the positive
aspects of it?

After you won the election, what were your
leadership experiences like? What were your
challenges? (How did you handle these challenges?)
What were the positive aspects of it?

None of the participants reported experiencing emotional
distress during the interviews. In terms of benefit to
participants, the study provided them an opportunity to let
their stories be heard, an experience that some of them
considered cathartic, agentic and liberating. Audio-recorded
interviews lasted from 30 minutes to an hour.

Data Analysis

Identifying Themes

Participants’ recorded interviews were transcribed by two
volunteer university scholars after signing a Non-Disclosure
Agreement. The transcripts were sent back to the researcher
who reviewed the transcriptions alongside the audio
recordings for approval. I asked both scholars if they would be
willing to work on the initial codes and emailed them a list of
steps orienting the transcribers on the coding process
according to Willig’s (2008) basic methodological procedures
of conducting (retrospective) interpretative phenomenological
analysis. Initially, both transcribers agreed to do initial coding
dividing the seven transcripts between the two of them while
the researcher began the initial coding for all seven. Working
separately, the researcher and the two scholars identified initial
themes and subthemes after iterative reading of each
transcript. However, after further clarifications were made via
email exchange, only one decided to complete this next step.
The remaining transcriber took upon the coding task of the
other transcriber.

The transcriber and I completed around three to four
re-readings of each transcript, adding initial themes or
subthemes previously left out and removing those that did not
directly answer the research questions. The whole process
involved taking initial notes and creating tentative themes (and
subthemes) for each transcript – the idiographic nature of IPA
requires that this initial process be descriptive and empathic. I
then compared my coding with those of the transcriber and
made decisions on the terms to use. Before finalizing the
themes and subthemes, transcripts, notes and initial themes
were then shown to an internal auditor – a fellow PhD
Leadership Studies student who has completed his own IPA

study and who was familiar with the context of the
participants’ leadership experiences for review and feedback.
I, having been a former counselor in the school setting, sought
the internal auditor’s expertise in order to ensure my
reflexivity in the identification of initial themes and
subthemes. Each of the seven participants also received a copy
of their own transcript with the notes and initial themes for
their feedback and additional clarifications where needed
(Disclaimer: Not all participants responded in a timely
manner, thereby losing the opportunity to amend or add to
their transcript’s themes). Involving the participants in the
review of distilled themes and subthemes was meant to ensure
transparency as well.

Clustering Themes and Integrating Cases

In the next stage, I structured the tentative themes into clusters
The clustered themes were shown to the internal auditor who
then approved the clustering. The auditor also reminded me to
ensure that the organized themes reflect only what was
actually said by the participants; hence, a summary table of the
clustered themes was produced with a few quotations that
illustrate or elaborate on certain themes that needed context.
The homogeneity of the sample allowed for the integration of
cases for specific interview questions while ensuring that the
idiographic nature of the inquiry into the lived leadership
experiences of each participant was respected and kept intact.
Following the double hermeneutic process of IPA, themes
were assigned to how participants interpreted their experiences
then the researcher provided interpretations of the meanings
participants ascribed to such experiences. Themes were further
explored and their relationships examined within each
transcript and then across transcripts. In constructing the
resulting narratives of the participants, presented quotes were
translated into English (actual interview data may be provided
upon request).

Results

I sought to examine the subjective experiences of seven
student leaders from the first three cohorts of female students
in a newly coeducational senior high school and the meanings
they ascribed to their unique and collective experiences as a
minority in their new school environment.

Figure 2 summarizes the key themes and subthemes in the
participants’ lived experiences of leadership grounded by their
unique context and motivations. From participants’ description
of their challenges, coping strategies, and positive
experiences, their lived leadership experiences may be
summarized through six main themes: Leadership as (a)
unsafe space (for women), (b) a response to systematized
injustice, (c) building social support systems, (d) adaptive
resilience-building, (e) character-forming, and (f)
purpose-driven. Subthemes are further discussed under each of
these key themes.

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Figure 2
Participants’ Lived Leadership Experiences

Leadership as an Unsafe Space (for Women)

This theme included 10 subthemes. Participants’ leadership
experiences from the period prior to elections until after they
won their leadership positions were marked by a lot of
difficulties and challenges. While some of these challenges
abated after they won in the elections, there were continuing
difficulties that the women have had to deal with and
overcome – making them feel that being a leader in their new
school environment was an unsafe space for women.

Culture Shock from Microaggressions

Participants expressed that they experienced culture shock
even before they made their intent to run public in grade 11.
One participant described the experience as “jarring” –
coming from high expectations of their new school
environment and then encountering problems with male
students within just a few months of being together. Incidents
of microaggressions such as being deliberately ignored during
meetings and being excluded from group activities on account
of gender were reported by participants. Microaggressions are
subtle everyday forms of discriminatory behavior or language
directed towards the women leaders such as a lack of
sensitivity to their experiences. Although these can be
unconscious on the part of the person exhibiting
microaggressions, such as implicit assumptions based on
gender stereotypes, these are harmful to the women – creating

a sense of inferiority and feelings of exclusion. They were
confused and disappointed. One participant narrated that she
did not believe gender discrimination to happen in real life
until she experienced it first hand in senior high school. In her
coeducational junior high school in Cebu which was run by
the same religious order, her gender had never been an issue.
As Kay narrated,

Oh my God this happens in real life like all this
discrimination happens in real life (and not only in)
movies or things that we read. So (there) I was
culture shocked by how much the men felt threatened
and how much not just threatened but how much they
would act out to women running (because) coming
(from) how our school went co-ed we were
(previously) all girls and then they started accepting
admissions for boys starting kinder/grade 1 so the
first batch of boys was grade 1 so we grew up
together.

While this was a sentiment shared by all participants, the
STEM students thought that the situation was not so bad in
their strand, because they had the highest number of female
transfer students – nearly half of the students in the STEM
strand were female. Kay belonged to the HUMSS strand and
the other HUMSS students among the sample indicated
sharing a collective feeling of frustration over how they were
perceived and treated by their male classmates, in particular,

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those who referred to themselves as “homegrowns”, i.e. those
who have been in the same school from preparatory level up to
junior high school.

Gender Conflict

The culture shock and its attendant negative emotions
generally resulted from the gender conflict that permeated the
school atmosphere after the opening of the newly
coeducational senior high school. Participants experienced
prejudice on account of their sex and their decision to aspire
for leadership positions in the new school appears to have
negatively impacted initial male-female friendships formed
within classes and strands. A participant (Greta) from HUMSS
narrated that her running mate for class president when she ran
for vice president in grade 11 would later lead the campaign
against her when she decided to run for strand representative
in grade 12. Her running mate lost to another male classmate
while she won for class vice president. When she decided to
run as strand representative unopposed in HUMSS, her former
running mate and his male friends actively campaigned for
students to abstain from voting instead. The curious thing
about this experience for the said participant was that she
could not imagine what the male students had in mind for their
strand governance should a failure of elections be declared.
Fortunately, she won by a relatively good margin over all the
abstain votes.

Participants also shared experiencing being stereotyped on
account of their gender, with certain gender roles expected of
them in carrying out classroom tasks especially during group
work. This has led to women in class work stepping up for
their male groupmates because they were expected to do the
work. Even within the official student government, female
officers and leaders had to take on more tasks. Dawn narrated,

So I was there to pick up the work… the strand
chairperson left behind and sometimes ignored on so
many levels, (stepping up on their behalf to do the
work), and sometimes other elected officers would
reach out to me when they had concerns because
sometimes the strand chairperson was (nowhere) so
they would go to me for other decision-making
choices, and then (what else…).

One participant (Kim) from the STEM strand noted a tendency
towards tokenism among her male STEM schoolmates despite
their show of support for her candidacy in the Sanggu. While
they were respectful and helpful, during the campaign, some
of them would reportedly tell schoolmates that they were
voting for the main male candidate for chair “and the girls”.
Tokenism in this context is a form of gender discrimination
that involves the practice of including women in activities but
merely for the sake of appearances, instead of sincere and
meaningful efforts towards gender equality. As Kim shared,

So majority of the positions had a female candidate
so for CSO it was me and then for ACO it was
[redacted] and for AthC it was [redacted]. And there
was a thing going on that people would say they were
going to vote for the leading male candidate ‘and the
girls’. That was like how they would phrase and there
was a freedom wall post saying that ‘Oh I keep

hearing people saying they’ll vote for this (male)
candidate and the girls’ and it was basically saying
that just because they’re girls doesn’t mean that they
can do the job or like they’re better which I think is
weird because I feel like the common sentiment or
like stereotypically people would think that guys are
better than girls but during this time there was this
campaign to be like ‘hey don’t just vote for the girls
because they’re girls’.

Bullying

Participants described the campaign period as “intense”,
engaging majority, if not all, of the student body in a historic
election of their new leaders. As the intensity progressed,
varying levels and forms of bullying were reportedly
experienced by the participants. These ranged from acts of
microaggressions such as being ignored during meetings or
being patronized in discussions, to becoming the topic of
Messenger chat groups created for the purpose of smear
campaign, to getting booed onstage during Miting de Avance,
to more overt acts of physical aggression or harassment. Dawn
recalled,

And then I would see (that) they would angry-react
my posts and then there was an incident (where) one
of the guys, (using a) paperball, ma’am, (sprayed
with) alcohol (then he would light it up and throw it
up in the air and I was always afraid he would throw
it in my direction so I reported it to my formator, ‘Sir,
I think [redacted] might burn me.’ I wasn’t sure if he
wanted to burn my hair) or what.

According to her, only then did her class moderator act on her
complaints.

Absence of Safe Spaces

When the participants were considering moving to the newly
coeducational senior high school, one of the drivers of their
decision was to experience inclusion. However, their initial
experience would be the opposite. The presence of a
pre-existing in-group comprised of males from the majority of
the student body became more pronounced when incidents of
gender conflict occurred in the first few months of school.
Participants felt excluded and alienated from this in-group and
they feared that as aspiring women leaders, they would not be
listened to. Along with these feelings of alienation, and owing
to their minority status as well, they did not feel they had safe
spaces. The microaggressions and bullying affected their
self-esteem, aggravated by a perceived lack of support from
some school authorities. Dawn illustrated this with her
experience:

And then when the guy went back to his friends, they
were all laughing, and then I knew it (like) a mocking
sort of laugh and then I was crying about it to my
friends. And then my formator was like ‘If you’re
uncomfortable with it, then why didn’t you just tell
them to stop?’ and then I was like ‘Sir, I did tell them
to stop but then that’s the way they reacted.’ So those
were just kind of the experiences (that were like)…
that sort of misogyny was normalized, I didn’t know

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if my safe space is being protected. I just knew that I
wasn’t being respected as a leader. I don’t know if I
was respected as a person (but) at the end of the day,
(I was able to ‘graduate’) from them.

Hyper-awareness of One’s Gender

Even after they had won in the elections, participants
continued to experience exclusion and alienation from the
pre-existing in-groups of male “homegrown” students of the
senior high school. As elected student leaders, while more
severe forms of bullying and harassment abated, the
microaggressions and bullying in the digital space continued.
These continuing incidents of gender conflict led participants
to feel hyper-aware of their being female, a fact that had
previously not been an issue for them in their previous
schools. Kay shared,

It’s so weird (that) for the first time in my life (it was
like) being a woman – I was so conscious of being a
woman and being a woman leader (also) – so (like)
from that election, (where) I think I was the only one
who won the position.

Leadership as a Response to Systematized Injustice

Systematized injustice is a pattern of injustices that are deeply
rooted in societal structures and are reinforced over time,
particularly in highly traditional institutions. Greta’s
interpersonal conflict with her former running mate which
spiraled into the “abstain movement” is one such example of
how years of tradition can solidify cultural norms among a
well-bonded group such as the “homegrown” male students.
While her conflict with her running mate quietly persisted
albeit as undercurrents in day-to-day school interactions, Greta
lamented the rise of groupthink among the male and female
students who were close to her running mate, and who judged
her on the basis of what was told to them about her. She was
disturbed that none of these students actually confronted her
about the issues being raised against her. In this experience,
she realized that some people would find gender
discrimination more acceptable publicly than admitting to a
personal grudge.

Normalized Gender Discrimination

It also did not help that a few school authorities were
perceived as complicit because of the seeming lack of
transparency in how complaints were handled in general.
Participants’ personal experiences of bringing their complaints
to school authorities were further marred by incidents of
trivializing, victim-blaming, and in cases where the culprits
were given disciplinary sanctions, they believed them to be
mere slaps-on-the-wrist. Greta was also disappointed by the
way her class moderator handled the situation with her former
running mate – instead of correcting his behavior and that of
his friends who were behind the “abstain movement”, it was
Greta whom he pulled aside to talk with.

Maybe the admin or the faculty could have done
something about it because they were aware of it eh
and I knew my class adviser was aware of it and
(there it was) he pulled me aside and talked to me
about it (sort of) telling me to not mind the naysayers

(because) he believes also in my capabilities.
Although I really felt like… especially since it also…
the opposers also came from our own class eh. I felt
like maybe it would have been better if directly (it
was addressed), rather than addressing me. Rather
than addressing me, I felt like he needed to address
them and call it out.

These personal experiences with school authorities seem to
have normalized gender discrimination in the eyes of
participants along with the perceived systematic
marginalization of their group as a minority.

Anger and Cognitive Dissonance

As student leaders of the school, the participants experienced a
build-up of feelings of anger from the continuing lack of safe
spaces for women, the cognitive dissonance they noted
between the senior high school’s progressive teachings and the
prevailing culture, and the feeling that they were unsupported
despite trying to do the right thing as leaders and as women.
Kay shared,

A lot of that anger from that time and from the
sentiments of… the first three batches was really a
lot… how we… a lot of the feelings that we shared –
we were the collateral damage of that system and
(there)... (was like) a lot of the pain, and even for
many it was trauma at that point, very traumatic. And
(there)... with that experience – and I think that's why
a lot of the women still hold that part of anger for the
senior high even with the good experiences and the
good (stuff) - in a way it really failed them -
(especially) the first few batches.

Systematic Marginalization

They also believed that their marginalization as female leaders
were mirroring the systematic marginalization of the female
transfer students in the school in general because of the
transferee quota set for women and their perceived hasty
preparations for the school’s transition to coeducation, given
its long history and tradition in exclusive education for men.
One participant shared how, to help “foster better
relationships” between the male and female students in class,
her class moderator paired them up in the classroom seat plan.
This forced socialization had the opposite effect instead, as
some females in the class (who comprised only one-third of
the section) felt uncomfortable with this arrangement.

Uneasy Compromise

Participants generally coped with their challenges by, at first,
arriving at a fragile compromise with the male students
(through their class moderators) of basic respect for
boundaries; but even this understanding felt like a sort of
forced accommodation of the undesirable situation at hand. As
Dawn said, by studying communication patterns with the male
students, she tried to pander to their interests.

For the guys, it was more of catering (or) appeal(ing)
to their interests because, (I’m the one who needed to
adjust)i, actually, (I don’t know anymore) if I’m
running ahead of myself but there were times when a

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lot of the guys won’t hesitate to point out to me (that
I’m an outsider), (that) I’m alienated from them, (that
I was just a hanger-on), here in [redacted], because I
do not belong. Because of that, and (because they
were the majority) and I needed their votes, I had to
pander to their interests, meet them at their level,
(like) use their humor with them, for them, against
them.

Leadership as Building Social Support Systems

The second theme includes four subthemes. Participants who
experienced the same negative treatment forged a strong bond
with each other within and across strands.

Trauma Bonding

Dawn called the phenomenon “trauma bonding”. Dawn’s
understanding of trauma bonding refers to the solidarity she
forged with other fellow women leaders who underwent
negative experiences in their leadership journey. In the context
of marginalized women, trauma bonding occurs when they are
forced to endure oppression, creating a sense of helplessness
in their situation. However, it should be noted that trauma
bonding is characterized by attachment to the oppressor which
is clearly not what Dawn was describing in her experience.
The women leaders’ collective experience of discrimination
was what brought them closer together, providing a much
needed support system in the midst of their challenges.

Expanded Social Circles

Running for leadership positions also helped expand their
social circles not only during the campaign period. Their
collective frustrations somehow also allied them with student
groups who also felt marginalized in a previously all-male
exclusive school. There was an uptick in community
awareness of LGBT issues and teachers began looking inward
to check for subconscious biases they may have been
harboring. Widening their social circles also enhanced
participants’ interpersonal and social skills not only with the
opposite sex but also with people in general who were
“outside their comfort zone”. As Faye explained,

(What I loved most) out of the experiences is I got to
really connect with different people – (there were)
instances (when we would meet) with our junior high
counterparts so we have activities together and well
(it was just so cool) to experience (because) it’s really
nice to think that you’re a part of a bigger thing.

Kim shared,

I think the life-giving parts were being able to – I
guess – getting to know the people outside my
classroom and outside the strand since a lot of the
homegrowns in my section – they were super willing
to help me and they were super kind enough to
introduce me to their friends who were from the
junior high school and who were from different
strands… When they announced that we had won
during the time, we all ran outside to the lobby and
looked for each other and we just hugged each other
and ‘Oh my gosh we finally did it!’. Yeah we really

ran and especially because me and the AthC
candidate, we were together, so we ran and we were
looking for the ACO candidate and then we found
her, it was like ‘Wow, finally!’ like all the…
everything was… that was like one of the most
memorable experiences.

Mentorship

Notable among the participants’ coping handles in their
leadership journey was the presence of facultymentors who
were highly sympathetic, empathic and supportive of them.
They made time to listen to their concerns and dispensed
valuable advice in navigating their problems. They were not
formal mentors in the sense that they were mandated to do this
task for the women but they were subject teachers, class
moderators, counselors and even office staff who cared
enough to listen. They also lauded their school mentors for
speaking up on their behalf. One of the core values of the
school is cura personalis alumnorum, roughly translated as
“care for the entire person”. High empathy faculty mentors,
both formal and informal, who placed high levels of trust in
their capabilities as female student leaders were deemed to
have shown them cura personalis in action. They also
mentioned long hours spent hanging out at the Sanggu office
or Office of Student Activities where they experienced
hands-on mentorship from the faculty formators and learned
the ropes vicariously from grade 12 student leaders. However,
one participant expressed that this kind of mentorship did not
happen to everyone – one had to have been working closely
with the faculty formators to benefit from their mentoring. As
Ginny explained,

The thing with the mentoring (was that) it didn’t
happen to everyone. (Sometimes you get mentored,
other times you have no one) – (so you’re just there
and) you just learn by looking. But there are others
that are more hands-on towards other people and
there were others who actually approached people (to
ask), Hi, how do you do this?

Heightened Social Support

Participants also expressed experiencing heightened levels of
social support not only from fellow females but also from
male schoolmates as well. They take pride in belonging to
what is considered the most inclusive school in the basic
education unit, where females are pioneering student leaders.
In the case of Greta, she felt heartened by the collective
pushback she witnessed from among fellow female (and some
male) students not only from HUMSS but from other strands
as well. She claims that the movement was a grassroots
initiative, something she noticed when her attention was called
when a hashtag with her name #IStandWith[Redacted] began
trending in their social media circles. Greta shared,

I was really touched when one of my close friends in
that class, she really went in front of the class like –
(remember the) homeroom period? – she stood up in
front of the class and told the class her plan (like) ‘Oh
this is what’s happening to [redacted] and this is my
idea, let’s support her through this and that’ and
(people stepped up to support me too) and then it was

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so nice... that also warmed my heart (because) it was
the first time someone stood up for me. Someone else
stood up for me.

Leadership as Adaptive Resilience-Building

The following two subthemes were found under the theme of
Leadership as Adaptive Resilience-Building: (a) adapting by
shifting focus and (b) assertivess as a leader.

Adapting by Shifting Focus

Greta’s experience of social support in the wake of the abstain
movement against her bolstered her spirit and motivated her to
shift her focus and energies on the schoolmates who appeared
neutral and quiet by reaching out to them and presenting her
leadership platform to them. She explained,

So what I really (just) did, I really just focused on the
people who were supporting me or neutral against
me. (I no longer…) – I didn’t exert effort anymore in
trying to please those people who… (my) mindset
(was) I’m just going to do the work, I’m going to do
my best for people who need, who need the
leadership… for the people who need their issues to
be addressed for.

Assertiveness as a Leader

Some participants coped by cultivating and projecting a strong
(leader) image. Ginny shared,

I guess it was when – sorry for the trigger warning –
it was when there were already news of sexual
harassments and we just know how those rumors,
also not even the rumors, (when I already knew of
cases being filed, I said, shucks, it’s not enough to be
tough) – (I needed to be tougher, show them you
can’t be messed with). Because that was one of the
things that I think was the reason why I’d like to
think I got out of [redacted] unscathed was because I
had to build up more walls (so I could be more
assertive and not easily intimidated). And I think that
was also one of the lesser reasons why I joined
Sanggu was because when they know that you’re like
established as a leader here like in the [redacted],
(they know they can’t touch you).

In coping with their continuing challenges as elected leaders
of the school, the participants maintained the peace through a
fragile compromise with the male students who opposed them.
They also continued to focus on reaching out to the student
body to rally support for their programs. The small collective
pushback they started during the campaign and election season
snowballed into a more intentional and concerted effort to
create new mechanisms in school to create safe spaces,
educate the community on gender issues, and officially call
out undesirable behavior whenever situations warranted it.
One of the new student committees formed by batch 2018
advocated for safe spaces and gender equity. Succeeding
batches of female leaders began organizing talks on women
empowerment and gender issues, inviting speakers like
Senator Risa Hontiveros, networking with the gender hubs of
the college within the university and in a neighboring

academic institution known for their feminist orientation. In
the two school years that followed, student-led committees
would also embark on their own #MeToo movement, LGBT
Pride activities, and put up physical freedom walls for
expression for women and men alike.

Participants’ leadership journey in their senior high school
was also marked by positive experiences that they considered
helpful to their experiences of leadership later on in college
and, for batch 2018, in navigating the world of work after
graduation. Foremost of these experiences is the value of
assertiveness and standing up for oneself. Participants look at
their senior high school leadership experiences as their
socio-political awakening, first, as they struggled with
acceptance, inclusion and recognition in a new school
environment, and later on as their leadership opportunities
exposed them to social realities outside of school and beyond
their immediate communities. From recognizing the need to
act on complaints within the school in order to correct
undesirable behavior, they realized the need as well to speak
out on social injustices they witnessed in the larger context of
society. As Kay shared,

I have such a deep love for the senior high (because)
of the opportunities to lead especially how it shaped
me as a leader – I mean it gave me a lot of
opportunity to serve not just the community but like
the community outside of [redacted] so (it was like)
in senior high it was my sociopolitical awakening (as
well) - being able to be part of campaigns bigger than
the senior high school.

As student leaders they also saw the value of sustaining
grassroots movements that push back against unjust attitudes
and practices by highlighting empowering practices and
mechanisms. They were also successful in setting clear
boundaries in school to engender mutual respect and improved
communication.

Leadership as Character-Forming

Gaining Deeper Insight on Gender Bias

As they attempted to make light of the disappointing
experiences they were having as new students aspiring to be
leaders, they took a hard look at gender differences that
accounted for problems in communication and interaction with
the male “homegrown” students. Along with this came the
realization and acceptance that it was impossible to be liked
and accepted by everyone, no matter how widely they tried to
reach out. These moments of introspection allowed them to
gain a deeper insight not only into gender differences but also
helped them make meaning out of their personal and collective
experiences. As Kay shared,

(I needed to)… the language that I am
communicating with had to be different when I’m
talking to guys. Talking to girls – because with girls,
it’s just easy to just flow in the conversation because
we come from same context.

Participants expressed gaining a deeper understanding of
gender bias as primarily a function of ego formation
influenced by family upbringing, and other environmental

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factors such as the impact of peers’ attitudes, sociopolitical
actors in the larger milieu, social media, and global trends of
intolerance and hate. With this understanding comes the
realization that antagonizing males in their senior high school
was not a solution. From batch 2018 to 2020, it is worth
noting that the younger cohorts have significantly noted an
improvement in gender relations in the senior high school,
with institutionalized mechanisms that address gender conflict
and discrimination such as gender sensitivity workshops in
school. Kelly explained,

Ah okay, (so this should be the) consideration, (your)
understanding and of course, (and) self-expression –
your communication with others just to achieve (a)
certain level of inclusivity where no one would
ideally be left behind . And also you wanted to – I
wanted to consider (too) the personal experiences
(because) I couldn’t really fault the homegrown boys
for being like that 100%; (because) their environment
has been tolerating them to be like that (and so it
became quite) internalized. (Another thing), I think
another factor (was) a language barrier in a way.

Enhanced Personality Traits and Leadership Skills

Participants likewise shared that their personality traits and
skills were greatly enhanced by their leadership experiences in
senior high school. Working with highly diverse and talented
individuals including those they met outside of their comfort
zones greatly benefitted their leadership skills. Ginny
explained,

It was like something you could try to establish – it
was a very blank slate. So the leadership that was
being defined here - something you could explore and
something that you could also trailblaze with. And so
that was something that I was really interested to look
into - like how does the [redacted] actually form
leaders and how do we actually inculcate that and
how do we encourage our students. And I was like
very encouraged, and I think it was also the
environment, especially when I was in Grade 12
wherein I really wanted to continue on with the
Sanggunian and why I wanted to take up on
leadership roles.

They enjoyed making connections with different people and
the experience taught them to be more open and flexible. They
also found that as leaders, they gravitated towards the more
collaborative, relational style given the initial experiences of
challenges they had and the need to reach out to more people
beyond one’s comfort zone. Nonetheless, it remained clear to
them that their proper performance of their leadership roles
and responsibilities to all their constituents took precedence
over mere popularity.

Leadership as Purpose-Driven

Shared Values

Their leadership experiences in senior high school also
brought them closer to what the school stood for – a stronger
service orientation. The varied opportunities they had to
exercise leadership to serve their school and community gave

them greater creative freedom to conceptualize and execute
programs that supported the school’s advocacies. The school’s
vision and mission have always been clear in their minds and
despite the challenges they encountered being a minority in
the new senior high school, they believed that the school’s
character formation thrust aligned with their personal values.
Participants described it as a deep love for their school, flaws
and all, or a strong school spirit that was defining of their
experiences and identities as women leaders. As Ginny
explained,

I love how [redacted] teaches its students like how to
become student leaders? Like I always tell this to my
former moderators here whenever I come back here,
it was here that I learned the hard skills, the soft
skills, how to really be better at project management,
how to deal with people, but more so how to
empower also. But also I think at the very core, was
how to embody empathy like towards your
constituents, towards the people that you’re working
with. It was here when I actually learned how it
means to become a better leader. Like I’ve always
had a concept of what a leader was but it became
more tangible, it became more realistic, it became
more structured here in [redacted] and I’d like to
think that even if I entered in a blank slate of
[redacted], it was– despite it, I learned so many
things that up to this day, I still carry (them) over to
where I am already right now.

Discussion

Gender and Leadership Development

The arrival of the first batches of female students in senior
high school was instrumental in the school community’s
unraveling of deeply held, albeit subconscious, biases about
gender and people who do not belong to in-groups or
dominant groups. Both students and teaching staff have had to
take a pause and ask where all this prejudice was coming
from, in a 21st century coeducational senior high school in a
university known for its liberal education and progressive
teachings in its curricula. As participants recalled their
leadership challenges and retrospectively ascribed meanings to
their experiences, they came to the conclusion that the
prejudice was not entirely the male students’ fault (although it
is extremely important that the male students still
acknowledge and be made answerable for their own
undesirable behaviors, i.e. bullying and harassment, gender
discrimination, and similar gender-based acts of aggression).

It is now important to ask how does this form of gender bias
develop? In an early study by Liwag et al. (1998) on
child-rearing practices and gender socialization in the
Philippines, their review of 131 related studies confirm the
role of family as the primary venue for gender socialization of
Filipino children from early childhood to young adulthood.
Parental attitudes are influenced first by an expressed
preference for either a son or a daughter for different reasons.
Fathers preferred sons for their firstborn children and
daughters were preferred for their perceived value in
household chores. Daughters are raised to be responsible

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because they shared in their mothers’ role of nurturance and
household management. Parental expectations of their
children’s traits have also been found to be gendered in that
daughters are expected to be modest and obedient while sons
are expected to be intelligent and sociable. Parents’ career
aspirations for their children are also differentiated by the
latter’s gender. While Filipino parents in general aspire for all
their children to finish higher education, when confronted with
limited finances and opportunities, the tendency was to
prioritize their male children over the females because of the
expected role of men to become breadwinners in the future.

In a comparative study done by Kreitz-Sandberg (2007) on
gender and schooling between Japanese and Filipino schools,
she cited a local study conducted by Miriam College’s WAGI
(Women and Gender Institute) in 2004 where a sample of
sixth-graders from Filipino households were asked to identify
if certain activities were for “boys only”, for “girls only”, or
for “both girls and boys”. While eighty (80) percent of the
Filipino sixth-graders assigned parenting, decision making and
leadership roles to both sexes, half of them assigned
household management tasks to females, such as cooking,
washing and marketing. In the classroom, the WAGI study
noted that teachers also tended to give gender-specific
instructions to students. Teaching materials also tended to
depict male students in more active roles while female
students are associated with domestic tasks. Nonetheless,
Kreitz-Sandberg notes that subjective choices for gender
expression and identity were less conservative among Filipino
children compared to their Japanese counterparts. Language is
seen as facilitative of this because compared to Japanese, the
Filipino language, such as its pronouns, is not gender-specific.
While the participants in the WAGI study belong to a different
demographic than the male and female students of the senior
high school research setting, their study provides an insight
into how Filipino children assimilate gender stereotypes at
home and in school, and come to perform gendered roles in
both environments.

In contrast, a study on British households by Borrell-Porta et
al. (2018) examined what they termed as the “Mighty Girl
Effect” which basically argues that parents who have
daughters tend to become more accepting of less traditional
gender roles even if they held gender stereotypes prior to the
birth of a daughter. Nonetheless, parenting styles across
cultures have still yielded evidence on gendered expectations
of male and female children. In Ulferts’ (2020) working paper
for the OECD entitledWhy parenting matters for children in
the 21st century: An evidence-based framework for
understanding parenting and its impact on child development,
maternal and paternal roles remain gendered despite the shift

in recent years on how gender is construed. Parents’ gender
roles thereby impact the way they raise boys and girls across
different cultures. Children’s gender also affected the way they
are parented, with parents tending to be more authoritarian
with boys, and more authoritative with girls. Zheng’s (2017)
qualitative study on young Chinese women’s leadership
experiences in an elite university also revealed cultural factors
that caused the women stress and impeded their identity as
empowered leaders on account of being female. These studies
underscore the crucial influence of perceptions, attitudes and
behaviors of an individual’s significant adults (such as parents
and teachers) within a particular societal context on
engendering implicit or second-generation biases which
ultimately inform individuals’ behavior towards the opposite
sex.

Data from participants’ interviews also highlight the important
role their families played in their decision to seek leadership
roles in school. Most of them credit their family upbringing
and their role models for having the character and personality
to lead. As Ginny explained, her parents raised her to be
strong in the sense that her leadership personality was
structured that way. One other participant shared that her
parents were student activists during Martial Law and are still
involved in social development work. She believes she was
raised by her parents to be socially aware, involved and to
aspire for social justice. Kay’s leadership experiences are
framed by her experience of a strongly matriarchal family,
where women are naturally considered leaders and decision
makers. She quoted a cousin who described them as
“firecracker women”. For Kelly, being the eldest somehow
preordained her to take the lead in many things, owing to
parental expectations as well as to her own expectations of the
self as a responsible eldest child. Kelly also shared that her
family is a family of extroverts, and she owes her facility in
making friends and connecting with people to the social skills
she was exposed to in her family.

Themes that emerged from the individual interview data and
case integration support Keating et al.’s (2014) conceptual
framing of how leaders (and leadership) are formed as well as
Swai and Moses’ (2021) hexagonal model of leadership
emergence. However, for this particular study, “school” and
“university” have been combined as representing one and the
same academic institution characterized by deeply held
traditions and a pre-existing culture. The researcher has added
crucial elements under each factor based on the study’s
resulting data. Figure 3 combines the theoretical conceptions
of Keating and her colleagues with that of Swai and Moses on
the factors involved in young women’s leader emergence.

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Figure 3

Young Women’s Leader Emergence (Adapted from Keating, et al., 2014 and Swai & Moses, 2021

Participants in the study all began their leadership journeys in
the senior high school with high levels of self-efficacy and a
strong perception of the self as a leader. As pioneering batches
of female students in senior high school, they saw themselves
as trailblazers, and assuming a leadership role in this new
school environment was almost predestined for them. It also
helped that they possessed a very positive self-image and were
fairly confident in their abilities and leadership skills.
Participants also sought validation and empowerment in their
pursuit of leadership. As a minority comprising only one-third
of the school population, they needed to be seen, and heard,
and their value and contribution acknowledged by the
community.

It is worth recalling that Keating and her colleagues explored
student leaders’ perception of their abilities while undergoing
an elective leadership course in college and noted that a
pathway to leadership effectiveness starts with building
confidence and seeing oneself as a leader. Leadership
readiness is further bolstered by a genuine desire to serve as a
primary motivator. While other drivers of the pursuit of
leadership may have contributed to the participants’ decision
to seek leadership roles such as the support of their friends and

families, the perception that they possess the personality and
character of a leader and that they are willing to fulfill their
leadership roles seem to be the main drivers in their pursuit of
leadership. Their leadership skills which were fruits of prior
leadership experiences in junior high school prepared them for
the more challenging demands of leadership in senior high
school.

Eva et al.’s (2021) comprehensive review of literature on
young women’s leadership development likewise points to
adolescent girls’ leader emergence, motivation and identity as
a prevailing theme in related studies. The participants’ desire
to solve problems in the new school environment and to
represent women as a minority were likewise drivers of their
decision to lead. The challenges encountered by the
participants in their leadership journey likewise provide a
context that can potentially provide conditions in which
transformational leadership could emerge. The female
students’ collective leadership experiences rocked the senior
high school boat, thrived on conflict and engaged fellow
students who snapped out of their groupthink and apathy to
help effect small but significant changes in people’s attitudes
and institutions’ ways of proceeding. Burns (1978) described

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transformational leadership as a challenge to the status quo,
and a process whereby leaders and followers help each other
create valuable, positive changes in individuals and systems.
While these changes do not happen overnight, the participants’
leadership experiences and the lessons learned from these
experiences may serve as a catalyst towards lasting
transformational changes for the school community.

Unique Context, Challenging Climate

The participants’ leadership experiences, while generally
echoing women’s struggles in many parts of the world,
happened within a very unique context of suddenly becoming
part of a minority in a private Catholic school with many years
of history and tradition as a boys’ school. Because of the
limited admission slots for women in grade 11, they comprised
roughly 30 to 35 percent of the grade level population. Batch
2018 likewise had the sole distinction of sharing the new
campus building with the last all-male batch of the senior high
school in grade 12. The admission quota was perceived by the
participants as systematic marginalization which did not help
their adjustment to their new environment. Ay Kay explained,
“So systematically, unless that quota is removed, women will
always be the minority.”

Given the rigorous screening process of transfer students for
admission to the school, coupled with a preferential cutoff
score for the male applicants from the university’s feeder
(junior high) school, the female students who joined the newly
coeducational senior high school were the best of their class,
considered elite, academics-wise and in terms of co-curricular
achievements. About a third of the female students were also
top students from public schools who were granted
scholarships. This contextualizes why Kay described the men
in her batch as feeling “threatened”. As in the case of Russell’s
(1993) experience of transitioning to coeducation in her
Boston school, the women “brought with them a forthright
seriousness of academic purpose that had been missing from
some of the all-male classrooms” (p. 12).

Learning is said to be influenced by the quality and character
of one’s school life. School climate has also been found to be a
strong predictor of leadership development (Loukas, 2007;
Castillo et al., 2019). While participants did not categorically
state that the climate in their new school environment was
unwelcoming, most of them shared that their experiences with
some of their male schoolmates made them feel like they still
needed to prove that they belonged there. As a minority, and
as conflicts with the male students escalated, their need for
psychological safety and support became highlighted.
According to the NSCC (National School Climate Center at
Ramapo for Children, 2022), in assessing school climate, five
key areas need to be looked into: (a) safety, (b) interpersonal
relations, (c) social media, (d) teaching / learning, and (e)
institutional environment. However, amidst participants’
challenges in the matter of school climate, they still expressed
a strong sense of connectedness to the school despite their
negative leadership experiences, and through their own
initiatives and the support of sympathetic members of the
school community they took it upon themselves to ensure safe
spaces by creating formal mechanisms that provided
protective aid to students who felt marginalized and unsafe.

Limitations and Implications for Research

A major limitation in this study pertains to the uniqueness of
its context in that it does not represent the experience of other
schools in the Philippines, particularly of public senior high
schools where male and female populations are nearly equal.
A possible implication for further research would be to look
into young women’s leader emergence and leadership
experiences in other contexts – such as in private and public,
urban and rural schools, where male and female students are
equal in number, or where female students outnumber males.
It would be interesting to explore how various contexts and
school cultures impact young women’s leadership experiences.
Local studies conducted in various contexts on the topic would
provide a deeper appreciation of the wealth of this
phenomenon about gender and leadership.

This study also did not include the impact of the shift
to online schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic on student
leadership particularly for batch 2020 and succeeding cohorts.
In a future study, it might be interesting to explore how
practices and processes related to choosing student leaders
may have influenced female students’ experiences of doing
primarily online campaigns, participating in online elections,
and remote leadership.

Implications for Practice

Earlier in this paper, it has been noted that the issue of
subconscious gender bias is generally excluded as a
consideration for designing and developing leadership
programs for women (and men) (Madsen and Andrade, 2018).
Considering the unique participant sample in this study, a
co-constructed leader formation and leadership development
program between the intended beneficiaries and education
experts highly familiar with gender studies is recommended.
As shown in this study, internalized or implicit gender bias
among students and other members of the school community
has had implications on the formation and experiences of
female student leaders. A gender-fair leadership development
program would need to be evidence-based while remaining
faithful to the core values of the senior high school.

Summary

This retrospective IPA was concerned with the lived
leadership experiences of seven women who belonged to the
first three batches (2018, 2019, and 2020) of a newly
coeducational senior high school in a Filipino, Catholic basic
education institution. Due to a transferee admission quota, the
women belonged to a minority, comprising about one-third of
the student population. Their lived experiences of leadership
as pioneering female leaders in the former exclusive school for
boys are summarized into the following key themes:
Leadership as (a) unsafe space (for women), (b) a response to
systematized injustice, (c) adaptive resilience-building, (d)
building social support systems, (e) character-forming, and (f)
purpose-driven.

Reflexivity

The researcher is a former head counselor in the research
setting and had over two decades of teaching and counseling
experience in the all-male high school of the university before

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its shift to coeducation in compliance with the country’s K-12
reform. On the last school year of the research period, the
researcher was appointed as the school’s first female assistant
principal for student affairs and formation. The researcher
made an effort to completely dissociate from and step out of
these past roles as she listened to the participants, read and
reread each interview transcript, conferred with the hired
transcriptionists and initial coders, identified themes,
subthemes and consulted with an internal auditor – a fellow
PhD in Leadership Studies major who has completed an IPA
study – before abstracting participants’ ascribed meanings into
a coherent structure. Having stepped out of the institution
officially in 2020 facilitated this process.

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