Obligation and Ambition: Responsibilities of Women in Leadership Education

Abstract Book of the 8th Global Conference on Women's Studies

Year: 2026

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Obligation and Ambition: Responsibilities of Women in Leadership Education

Alexa Palilla

ABSTRACT:

Leadership as a construct has long been situated within institutional and societal expectations, often intersecting with the lived realities of women pursuing terminal degrees. Women navigating doctoral-level leadership programs carry disproportionate responsibilities, balancing professional, familial, and academic obligations while striving toward credibility and achievement in male-dominated spaces. To capture these complexities, this study employed narrative inquiry, guided by feminist principles that center women’s voices and lived experiences as sources of knowledge. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2023 with women who successfully earned terminal degrees (EdDs or PhDs) in leadership. Participants were identified through purposive and snowball sampling, and data were analyzed using the progressive-regressive narrative approach (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Among five emergent themes, this paper highlights one: the responsibilities of women. Findings reveal that societal and generational responsibilities function not only as burdens but also as formative and resilient forces, shaping perseverance and reframing leadership credibility. Women’s success stories are thus understood as acts of resistance to gendered expectations, from which responsibility emerges as both a barrier and a catalyst for empowerment, ambition, and social change. By centering women’s voices, this study contributes to women’s educational theory, underscoring the ways obligation and ambition intersect in the pursuit of terminal degrees in leadership.

Keywords: Gender Expectations; Leadership Education; Narrative Inquiry; Terminal Degree; Women In Academia