The aim of this paper is to investigate the discursive construction of Swedish school leadership in a gender perspective. Which discursive rules frame the way men and women leaders speak about school leadership and act as leaders? From which subject positions do they make sense of what it means to be a good school leader? Are these constructions coded by gender, and if so, in what way? There is a large number of international studies of school leadership (Leithwood &Hallinger 2003). Most of these studies are normative, but in the late 1990s studies were made about how school leaders themselves regarded their leadership. Despite on all these knowledge on school leadership it is difficult to pin down what it means to be a good leader. In this perspective school leadership can be seen as multiple and contextually bounded. Compared to the existing large number of studies of school leadership, very few have applied a gender perspective. My research interest concerns the meanings connected to school leadership in different discourses and one important aim is to analyse these meanings from a gender perspective ( e.g. Franzén 2005, 2006) Theoretically I draw on feminist poststructuralist theory ( Foucault 1993; Butler 1990; Davies 2000).Central to post-structural theory are discourse, subjectivity and power. Meanings of word, for example the term “school leadership”, are determined by discourses, which in their turn also governs what is possible to say or do.

The approach in this study is qualitative because this makes it possible to get a deeper understanding of the meanings attached to the concept of school leadership. The respondents’ answers are regarded as parts of the discursive construction of school leadership. Four male and four female school leaders representing eight primary and secondary schools were interviewed. Furthermore, interviews were carried out with in total nine female and seven male teachers. Discourse analysis has been used as an analytic tool (e.g. Laclau & Mouffe 1985, Wheterell& Taylor & Yates2001). The interviews and the analytical work proceeded side by side for a quite long time, and the analysis was carried out step by step. The discursive subject positions that I identified are chiselled out from the meanings arising from talk with school leaders and teachers about leadership

When school leaders and teachers talk about meanings imbedded in the concept school leadership, three main subject positions have been identified: the supporter, the manager and the pedagogical leader. Both male and female school leaders construct themselves as leaders in rather similar ways. Women do not repeat the supporter position more often than men, and men do not position themselves as managers more frequently than women. However, gender discourses seem to affect the way teachers construct school leadership, as male leaders who act as supporters are sometimes positioned as deviant. Instead, especially female teachers expect their male leader to act as a manager. Furthermore, the female teachers construct female school leaders as supporters to a higher extent than the male teachers. Stereotypical views of female and male leadership that flourish in society might affect the way teachers construct school leadership. This leads to consequences for men and women leaders.