INTRODUCTION: COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEADERSHIP: PERSPECTIVES OF WOMEN AS PRESIDENTS

For many years, I pursued the role of a university professor, a great fortune for me, a reward for loving to read. Moreover, my emphasis, women in leadership roles and administration, gave me anopportunity to research women's ways of leading. In work at the University of Texas with John Roueche, I began to examine the modest gain women were making in that most egalitarian institution, the community college. It occurred to me as it did to others in university research (Twombly, Amey, Sagaria, Townshend, Pancrazio, Duvall, Desjardiens, Moore, Keim) that women's leadership needed a boost. Not content to paint a dismal picture, several thinkers began to examine what efforts and successes guided women's leadership. Most of us had been seriously affected by an insightful new discourse on women led by Gilligan (1982). In a Different Voiced; was a beacon for research, allowing women the privilege of saying there is more than one yardstick for measuring moral responsibility. Women,Gilligan stated,arrived at their responsibilities through care and concern,a different way from the path of justice men focused on.