Hozien, W. 2025. NY: Routledge. 214 PP.
Reviewed by Ann Margaret J. Themistocleous
Higher education in the United States stands at a pivotal crossroads. Institutions that were once secure in their mission now face an evolving landscape marked by uncertainty, transformation, and increasing complexity. College leaders are being called upon to steer their institutions through a new era—one shaped by demographic shifts, technological disruption, financial pressures, and fundamental questions about the relevance and return on investment of a traditional college degree. Strategies and Insights for Women Leaders in Higher Education by Wafa Hozien highlights that tomorrow’s female leaders in higher education must be seasoned professionals who bring not only strategic foresight but also resilience, emotional intelligence, and operational expertise to guide their institutions through this ongoing disruption.
To capture the lived experiences of female leaders, Hozien interviewed mid-level administrators at the dean level or higher, aged 40 to 75. By integrating real-world examples, case studies, and an intersectional lens, Hozien provides an insightful and data-driven analysis that equips aspiring female leaders with strategies to navigate and influence the complex landscape of higher education leadership. I found the added context from a current leader, embedded in each chapter, helpful. Their real-life experiences helped to clarify the context of the strategies selected as well as why they were being recommended. The author presents these strategies and insights to help female leaders in higher education integrate them into their careers and strengthen their success.
Chapter 1: Charting Your Course
In the first chapter of Strategies and Insights for Women Leaders in Higher Education, Hozien explores the challenges and opportunities that women, particularly minority women, face in higher education leadership. While the number of female leaders has increased over the years, the majority of leadership positions in academia are still held by white males. Women leaders must navigate systemic barriers while addressing new post-COVID-19 challenges, including declining enrollments, budget constraints, emerging technologies, and the ongoing push for diversity. Hozien also highlights a significant shift on the horizon: the retirement of many baby boomer leaders in higher education, which presents new opportunities for female administrators to advance.
Chapter 2: Crafting Your Leadership Identity: Unleashing Your Personal Brand Power
The second chapter emphasizes that hard work alone is insufficient for women to succeed in leadership roles in academia. Hozien highlights the challenges many women face in self-promotion, often downplaying their own achievements while acknowledging others’ success. To counter this, she advocates for intentional self-reflection and seeking peer feedback to shape their leadership persona and to develop a personal brand. To accomplish this, she recommends using the ACT method by Schaat (2019), which encourages women to showcase their authenticity, credibility, and trustworthiness as leaders. Additionally, Hozien stresses the importance of shedding the need to be universally liked, as effective leadership often requires making difficult decisions that may not always be popular. She also underscores the power of leveraging social media and professional networks to enhance visibility and advance career goals. Hozien suggests that female leaders take charge of their career path and plan ahead.
Chapter 3: Shattering Glass Ceilings and Avoiding Glass Cliffs
This chapter explores the systemic barriers that impede women’s progress in academic leadership. It delves into the challenges posed by the glass ceiling, which prevents women from reaching top leadership roles, and the glass cliff, where women are often placed in precarious leadership positions during times of crisis. She emphasizes the need for women to take control of their career trajectories by intentionally cultivating their leadership identities, seeking supportive professional networks, and advocating for themselves in institutional settings. To break glass ceilings, Hozien suggests that female leaders increase their visibility at work and within their institutions. She also emphasizes the importance of understanding organizational culture and unwritten rules to navigate the workplace effectively. Women are encouraged to cultivate supportive and strategic relationships with senior management, seek mentors, and engage coaches to support their professional development.
Chapter 4: Strength in Numbers: Harnessing Support Networks for Leadership Success
Chapter 4 explores the crucial role of support networks in advancing women’s leadership in higher education, emphasizing how exclusion from male-dominated circles often limits opportunities for promotion. She also acknowledges how race intersects with gender, with women from marginalized backgrounds facing additional barriers that make support networks even more essential. Hozien categorizes support networks into operational, developmental, and strategic groups. Operational networks provide practical assistance in balancing professional and personal responsibilities. Developmental networks consist of peers and colleagues who offer mutual support and professional development. Strategic networks include mentors and influential figures who advocate for career advancement. She illustrates how women leaders rely on a combination of mentors, coaches, family, and even paid consultants to navigate challenges.
Chapter 5: Empowering the Next Generation: Exploring the Benefits of Mentorship and Sponsorship
In Chapter 5, the author explores the roles that mentorship and sponsorship play in fostering women’s leadership within academia. She also discusses the unique challenges faced by women, particularly those from minority backgrounds, in accessing such relationships. Through her case studies, Hozien illustrates how these relationships can lead to greater representation and success for women in higher education leadership roles. The chapter provides actionable strategies for establishing and nurturing mentorship and sponsorship relationships, empowering current and aspiring female leaders to proactively seek and leverage these relationships. By doing so, women can enhance their professional trajectories and contribute to a more inclusive and equitable academic environment. The author emphasizes that these relationships have an ebb and flow and are not intended to be hierarchical or overly structured.
Chapter 6: Finding Equilibrium: Addressing Work-Life Balance and Well-Being for Leadership Success
In this chapter, the author addresses work-life balance and its impact on the success of women in academia. The chapter offers examples of how female leaders view burnout and how they achieve balance in life. First, the author explains that most universities expect female leaders to be available outside of work and be on call for most emergencies. Many times, this becomes harder for women to handle since they normally have additional responsibilities outside of work like child-rearing, taking care of their parents, and other gender specific responsibilities that typically fall to women. The chapter also focuses on how minority female populations acknowledge the compounded challenges they may encounter while facing race-related stressors, which can cause additional stress leading to burnout. The author emphasizes the importance of female leaders setting boundaries, prioritizing their tasks, and fostering a supportive network both within and outside the workplace.
Chapter 7: Bouncing Back Stronger: Harnessing Resilience in Healthy Ways
The author suggests that resilience is required of leaders in higher education today due to the constant flux and change they are tasked with managing. The need for leaders to take on challenging situations like budget cuts and regulatory changes requires leaders who have a process for handling stress in an appropriate manner. Resilient leaders can work with challenges and directly confront them. The chapter also addresses the challenges faced by minority women, acknowledging how both gender and race in leadership roles can be challenging due to institutional barriers and systemic biases prevalent in academia. She provides advice on developing a resilient mindset, including techniques such as reflective practice, seeking mentorship, and building supportive professional networks for female leaders.
Chapter 8: Visions of Change: Insider Tips on Transformational Strategies
Chapter 8 explores the complexities of implementing change within higher education institutions and the pivotal role of women leaders in driving transformation. The chapter highlights the slow-moving nature of change in academia, often hindered by institutional traditions, tenured faculty protections, and a general resistance to innovation unless driven by external forces. The COVID-19 pandemic is cited as a prime example of an external event that forced institutions to adapt rapidly, demonstrating both the challenges and opportunities associated with change. A significant theme in this chapter is the leadership style often adopted by women in higher education. Drawing on research by Cress and Hart (2009) and Bass (1999), the author notes that women leaders frequently engage in transformational leadership, fostering collaboration rather than enforcing top-down authoritarian change. Furthermore, the chapter emphasizes the importance of reflexivity in leadership. Effective leaders must continuously reevaluate their strategies, integrate new information, and adjust their approaches to ensure success.
Chapter 9: The Art of Negotiation: Methods of Troubleshooting and Triumphing
In Chapter 9, the author begins by addressing the systemic barriers that often hinder women’s negotiation efforts, such as implicit biases and institutional cultures resistant to change. She emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and preparation, encouraging women leaders to thoroughly understand their value propositions and the specific contexts of their institutions. This foundational knowledge empowers leaders to approach negotiations with confidence and clarity.
Hozien advocates for interest-based negotiation, in which understanding the underlying interests of all parties leads to mutually beneficial outcomes. She provides actionable advice on active listening, framing proposals effectively, and building alliances to strengthen negotiation positions. The chapter also highlights the role of emotional intelligence in negotiations, illustrating how empathy and self-regulation can be leveraged to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics.
Chapter 10: Long-Term Success: Sustainable Practices for Lasting Leadership Legacy
This chapter describes how women leaders in higher education can create enduring leadership legacies through sustainable, strategic, and inclusive practices. The chapter argues that long-term success requires not only managerial skills but also the ability to lead social transformation, institutional innovation, and cultural change. It emphasizes the unique strengths women bring to leadership—particularly commitment and collaboration—while also recognizing persistent gender biases, stereotype threats, and challenges they face. In addition to transformational leadership, the chapter introduces three essential capacities for modern academic leadership based upon Castillo and Trinh’s (2018) qualities for contemporary leaders: absorptive capacity (the ability to process and respond to fast-changing information), adaptive capacity (agility and openness to change), and generative capacity (innovating novel solutions for unprecedented challenges).
Chapter 11: Getting Ahead of the Curve: Anticipating Future Trends in Academic Leadership
The final chapter delves into the transformative role of coaching and mentoring in empowering women leaders in higher education. It recognizes the persistent gender disparities in leadership positions and the barriers women face—ranging from lack of access to informal networks to systemic biases. The chapter argues that coaching and mentoring are not merely support mechanisms but strategic interventions that foster resilience, clarify purpose, and build sustainable pathways for women to thrive in leadership. These relationships provide not only emotional support but also practical guidance that helps women navigate institutional politics, amplify their voices, and accelerate their impact. Importantly, the chapter advocates for a collective responsibility in fostering mentorship cultures. It emphasizes the power of intersectionality and the need for tailored approaches that recognize racial, cultural, and generational differences among women leaders.
Conclusion
This book is a reminder that higher educational leadership is not merely administrative—it is transformational. It requires a commitment to innovation, a willingness to challenge outdated models, and a capacity to balance mission-driven ideals with market realities. It reminds us that leaders must possess the agility to implement solutions that ensure institutional compliance, fiscal sustainability, academic quality, and long-term relevance—all while maintaining the trust of their communities and the integrity of their educational missions. The book reminds female leaders of the need to focus on a broad range of support networks to help build their career while also reminding leaders of the importance of balancing life with their career—something that all women leaders struggle with. As a female leader within higher education, I found the insights and strategies offered to be valuable tools that should be used during one’s career. Especially gaining support from a broad range of networks, including family and friends. Institutions that invest, develop their leaders, and hire those equipped to confront uncertainty with clarity and conviction—will be best positioned to not only survive but thrive in the years ahead.
References
Bass, B. M. 1999. Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 8(1): 9–32.
Castillo, E. A., and M. P. Trinh. 2018. Catalyzing capacity: Absorptive, adaptive, and generative leadership. Journal of Organizational Change Management. 32(2): 356–376.
Cress, C. M., and J. Hart. 2009. Playing soccer on the football field: The persistence of gender inequities for women faculty. Equity & Excellence in Education. 42(4): 473–488.About the Authors
Ann-Margaret J. Themistocleous, Ph.D., is a Senior International Officer at Anderson University as well as an international education consultant. Her expertise is leading internationalization efforts within higher education. Her research interests include leadership within international education, higher education leadership, global learning outcomes, international student recruitment, and international student services.
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