IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cmj/journl/y2026i1p7-15.html

Women’s Leadership in Higher Education: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

Author

Listed:
  • Mehdi Amin Boukredimi

    (Doctoral School of Management and Business, Faculty of Engineering, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary)

  • Andrea Emese Matkó

    (Doctoral School of Management and Business, Faculty of Engineering, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary)

Abstract

This study explores women’s leadership in higher education through a synthesis of research on leadership trends, organizational challenges, and institutional op-portunities influencing progression into senior academic and administrative roles. A PRISMA-based systematic review was conducted using peer-reviewed studies identified through academic databases, with search terms related to aca-demic leadership and higher education management. After screening and apply-ing inclusion criteria, the selected studies were analyzed using thematic synthe-sis. The findings indicate increasing scholarly attention to women’s leadership in higher education, alongside persistent management-related challenges, including constrained leadership pipelines, promotion systems focused on academic output, centralized governance structures, workload imbalance, and limited leadership development opportunities. The review also identifies institutional practices that support leadership progression, such as mentorship, succession planning, leader-ship training programs, and transparent evaluation systems. This study contrib-utes to the higher education management literature by integrating leadership trends, organizational challenges, and leadership development practices within a single analytical perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehdi Amin Boukredimi & Andrea Emese Matkó, 2026. "Women’s Leadership in Higher Education: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities," CrossCultural Management Journal, Fundația Română pentru Inteligența Afacerii, Editorial Department, vol. 28(1), pages 7-15, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmj:journl:y:2026:i:1:p:7-15
    DOI: 10.70147/c28715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://seaopenresearch.eu/Journals/articles/CMJ2026_I1_1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://cmj.seaopenresearch.eu/articles/cmj-xxviii-1-1.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.70147/c28715?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cmj:journl:y:2026:i:1:p:7-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Serghie Dan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://seaopenresearch.eu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.