Communicating Women’s Leadership in Higher Education: A Gendered Perspective on Visibility, Voice, and Recognized Authority
Greater media visibility of women university leaders does not necessarily ensure equivalent recognition of their professional expertise, decision-making authority, or public voice. This conceptual article develops an integrative framework for examining how women’s leadership is communicated in higher education through a gender-sensitive lens. Drawing on an interpretive synthesis of scholarship on gendered organizations, role congruity, framing, feminist discourse analysis, and dialogic public relations, the article distinguishes three analytically separate phenomena: media visibility, representations of authority, and audiences’ recognition of authority. It proposes the Gendered Leadership Image-Communication Framework (GLICF), which connects five communicative stages with four dimensions for analyzing messages. Its central contribution is to articulate the visibility-authority gap: prominent representation does not necessarily convey a leader’s substantive agency or generate public recognition of her authority. Four theoretical propositions specify potentially testable relationships and their contextual qualifications. As a conceptual contribution rather than an empirical investigation, the framework should be treated as a research agenda whose assumptions require testing through content analysis, audience research, and experimental designs.