Making Visible the Invisible Strategies of Women’s Leadership in STEM

Women in leadership often strategically engage in what Gilligan coined as an ethic of care; this has been well-articulated over time, but it has been less frequently discussed as part of women’s leadership in schools of engineering, where masculinist and patriarchal values tend to dominate organizations. In this chapter, we draw on a mixed-methods study of women in a Research 1 (R1) school of engineering, using descriptive statistics, narrative inquiry, and thematic analysis to explore the impact of women’s leadership and mentoring. Our data illuminate the alignment of women’s leadership with intersectional, coalitional politics – moving beyond mere care and into a networked approach to support research and innovation for individuals and the collective. The goal is to make visible the invisible strategies undergirding the leadership of both large organizational units (like departments) as well as smaller organizational units (like lab groups), whose primary function is to build research programs.