What is Folktale

An interesting inquiry is whether women leaders are desiring, dismissing, or being disqualified from senior leadership positions in the global K-20 educational academy. Why is there a leadership underrepresentation of those born female? It may be that women leaders have not been socialized in accordance with the male-centric leadership model; they are relatively outsiders who must forge new ways of leading. This chapter's author embarked on a small literature search of history to identify what is not new to us, but possibly forgotten – the experiences and lessons learned from women leaders who met challenges through their bold and effective leadership, as they forged paths for us. There is a feeling of belonging to the past, but not fully understanding it. There is a sense of having acquired a pressing but obscure responsibility, along with a peculiar female ancestry, for us to be the twenty-first century generation in a long line of uncommon women. The insights in this chapter are presented through a simple folktale, asking the question, Where is Walda?