LOOKING ABROAD
Women Lead for Learning Why gender balance in educational leadership matters
Lisa Everitt
Executive Staff Officer, ATA
SINCE ITS FOUNDING IN 1945, the United Nations has worked to pro- mote security, cooperation and human development across the globe. One of the UN’s important contributions is the 2015 adoption of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which set out a universal framework for peace and prosperity. Each year, progress toward these goals is documented through a series of reports. Among them is Women Lead for Learning , a 2025 publication of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring series, funded by a group of governments, multilateral
agencies and private foundations, in- cluding the Government of Canada. The report focuses on SDG 4—Quality Educa- tion—and highlights a striking reality: although women make up the majority of the world’s teachers, they remain signifi- cantly underrepresented in educational leadership. The report opens with an arresting statistic. Globally, there is a 20-per- centage-point gender gap in school leadership positions (UNESCO 2025, 5). This gap persists across diverse con- texts, from low-income nations to the
world’s wealthiest education systems, and remains true even in countries where girls’ access to education has improved. The findings underscore a critical point: gender parity in classrooms does not automatically translate to gender parity in leadership. UNEVEN GLOBAL PATTERNS The broader educational landscape helps explain these disparities. While boys and girls now enrol in primary education at similar rates worldwide, regional trends
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THE ALBERTA TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION
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