Southampton Education School Seminar Explores Women’s Leadership in Global Higher Education
On Tuesday 17th of March, Southampton Education School hosted a hybrid seminar as part of its seminar series, bringing together international perspectives on gender and educational leadership.
The event welcomed Professor Liz Jackson (University of Hong Kong) for a discussion based on insights from her recent work on women’s leadership and gender in education. The seminar offered a critical examination of whether gender still matters in education globally, challenging assumptions that gender equity has already been achieved in educational spaces.
Co-led by Dr Taehee Choi, the discussion also featured findings from the SEAMEO–British Council funded project, Promoting Women Leadership in Cambodian Higher Education: Challenges and Future Directions.
The seminar created an important dialogue between broader international scholarship on gender and context-specific evidence from Cambodia. While global narratives often suggest that education has become an equitable space due to women’s numerical participation, the talk highlighted a more complex reality: representation does not necessarily translate into leadership equity.
Drawing on findings from the Cambodian project, there is evidence showing that women in Cambodian higher education continue to face interconnected barriers that operate across multiple levels, including:
Internalised self-doubt and constrained leadership confidence
Gendered expectations surrounding caregiving and family responsibilities
Informal institutional cultures shaped by male-dominated leadership norms
Limited transparency in recruitment and promotion processes
Weak institutional accountability for implementing gender equity policies
These findings reinforce a central message of the seminar: gender remains a critical analytical lens for understanding leadership inequalities in education, both globally and locally.
Rather than documenting barriers alone, the project proposes practical reform pathways through the Cambodia Women’s Leadership Intervention Model (CWLIM). Grounded in empirical evidence and the Gender at Work framework, the model outlines coordinated strategies across four dimensions:
Individual empowerment: Strengthening confidence, voice, mentoring, and leadership identity.
Institutional culture change: Challenging informal norms and building allyship.
Access and capability development: Expanding equitable opportunities for leadership preparation.
Governance and accountability: Embedding transparent systems, monitoring, and institutional responsibility.
The seminar highlighted the value of connecting theoretical scholarship with applied research to address persistent gender disparities in educational leadership.
By placing Cambodian higher education within wider global debates on gender and power, the discussion offered both scholarly insight and practical pathways for reform.
The event forms part of the project’s broader dissemination efforts to ensure that research findings inform institutional dialogue, policy development, and sustainable change across higher education systems.
The talk is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qcxtg8rE2I
