It was a treat to listen to the stories and reflections; brilliant women articulating what WomenEd had done for, and meant to, them.

It brought back many personal #WomenEd highlights - going to London for the first Unconference, speaking at the 2019 Unconference in my hometown of Sheffield and meeting amazing women through local and national networks.

A key theme for the women in attendance at these events is often community and inspiration and how both strengthen their resolve to apply for leadership roles (& to be 10% braver). 

I particularly enjoyed a session I attended about 'boast b*tches' and the service we can do for our fellow women simply by boasting to others about their achievements. I loved this and try to do this as often as I can: 'Do you know X, she is brilliant at y etc'.

But part of our mission to support women into leadership is more tangible too. It comes back to the question 'why not lead?'

For my Masters in Educational Leadership, I explored the journey of women into headship (specifically Secondary headship). We all know the statistics; a profession with more women in men but not proportionally represented in headship. I suppose I wanted to know that it was about more than childcare. I wanted to know if there were reasons that could be addressed and overcome.

The tentative conclusions were interesting and useful. 

Firstly, that senior colleagues acting as role models and mentors from as early as possible in a woman's career were key. This included the opportunity to talk to these mentors about aspirations (but at one's own pace). 

Another strong theme was the importance of helping aspirant women to build up a wide knowledge base of school life and leadership to give them confidence when applying for promotion. 

Finally, my research found that opportunities to 'try out' leadership roles in an 'acting' capacity are often very useful to aspirant women leaders.

This started me on a mission to run programmes for local women who were interested in school leadership. I acquired money and grants from various sources, targeted different cohorts (sometimes specifically focused on headship but more often on attaining any leadership position) and worked with four different but equally brilliant course co-leaders.

As I write 'Leading Women' cohort 5 is running for women in our Trust (that spans Sheffield and Derbyshire). 

Like all the other programmes I have written and run, it is built around three pillars inspired by my research - knowledge, skills and inspiration. The aim is to overcome some of the barriers that women face by providing local role models, a placement in another school and some useful core leadership knowledge and skills. 

The programme is also partly co-designed with the participants. The core offer has stayed pretty much the same, but I have always asked the participants to decide what leadership knowledge they would most like to have a 'taught' session about.

In the early incarnations it was data, in others it has been school finance, and the current cohort have asked for a session on HR. In their 'taught' session all participants will be asked to ask all their questions in a supportive setting where no question is silly.

I know there are almost certainly lots of similar programmes running all over the country. But if Covid or life or something else stalled a similar endeavour in your area it would be my pleasure to tell you more about 'Leading Women' and share what I have.

I am determined to turn 'why not lead?' into an invitation rather than a sad question with an even sadder answer.

Biography

Claire Tasker is a history teacher and Executive Headteacher in a MAT in Sheffield. She has been teaching since 1997 and has had a range leadership roles in 5 different schools including Assistant Head, Deputy Head, Co-Head, Headteacher and Executive Headteacher.