International Journal of Educational Management

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the relationship between gender and female leadership styles in a single-sex academic institution in Saudi Arabia.

Design/methodology/approach – Essentially, a qualitative research approach that utilised a single case-study methodology was adopted. As part of this research, seven in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers of the all-women's Saudi academic institution.

Findings – Evidence suggests that the interviewed female leaders of Manar College are inclined to adopt stereotypical attributes of feminine qualities of leadership. They also tend to prefer a democratic, interpersonally-oriented and transformational style rather than autocratic, task-oriented or transactional style of leadership. In essence their leadership styles seem to agree – to a large extent – with the mainstream view on women's ways of leading.

Research limitations/implications – Despite the depth and richness of collected data, this research – as with all case studies – suffers from a limited ability to generalise the findings due to small sample size. It could thus be of interest for future quantitative-based research to test the findings and propositions of this research on a representative set of single-sex academic institutions in order to determine whether their leaders are trapped in stereotyped visions of leadership.

Originality/value – Various studies have examined the relationship between gender and leadership styles in educational establishments. In this regard, the paper argues the need and relevance of considering single-sex academic institutions, a perspective that has not yet received sufficient attention in the educational leadership literature.