'But what do we know about women? review of key themes and silences in feminist scholarship for women academic leaders'

Feminist critiques of leadership research have made major contributions to our understanding of the highly gendered nature of leadership within a variety of organisations including the compulsory education sector. Similar insights have been applied to universities and reveal the deeply masculinist nature of its leadership. This article reviews some of the key findings of this latter body of feminist leadership literature, drawing in particular upon Anglophone research in the area. It maps some of the fundamental factors which have led to the continuation of inequities in terms of women's representation at senior levels within academe. It then seeks to interrogate this phenomenon further, through an examination of the scholarship in the less researched area of Indigenous, minority ethnic and black women's experiences of academia and leadership. It argues that for the latter groups of women, there are significant absences and marginalities in the literature, specifically in terms of a disregard by much of the (white) feminist scholarship to the ethnic diversity which exists between different groups of female academic leaders and the material impact of these differences upon women's leadership. It concludeswith suggestions of ways in which white feminist leadership scholarship and potentially practice, may move forward in this area.