Across many time zones, three continents, and three countries, by engaging with many languages, religions, classes, and cultural contexts in an active war zone, a post-genocidal society, and a nation struggling to support the human rights of asylum-seekers and indigenous persons amidst an undercurrent of xenophobia, I have conducted investigations since 2007 that seek to interrogate the progress, successes, and challenges that women in educational leadership face in the 21st century. This presentation offers three, principal lenses for viewing the work. First, I examine similarities and differences that women leaders of Afghanistan, Costa Rica, and Rwanda confront daily and the challenges their nations face in gaining congruence between espoused values, beliefs, and policies and praxis regarding gender and women’s leadership in civil society. Second, I explicate an emerging theoretical perspective that seeks to understand the unique intersection of gender and its impact on leading in educational settings internationally. This perspective is an amalgam of theories fundamentally grounded in perspectives of cultural capital from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Third, I provide considerations for leaders and policymakers of civil society and education to authentically reify women’s ways of leading. In the best of circumstances prior to the international health pandemic, the world was experiencing an all-time decline in poverty. The gains in poverty eradication, more education for girls and greater equity for women have been demolished since 2020. Vast, increased global poverty looms well into the 2030s and women and girls will suffer the brunt of the fallout. When girls are not educated and women under- or unemployed, all civil society suffers. If culture is reproduced through education, then to directly address the sociocultural capital of girls and women, we must commit to education. It is the means through which girls and women attain authentic cultural capital.

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