Gender, ethnicity, and school principalship in Israel: Comparing two organizational cultures

Based on the social closure perspective, this study examines the intersection of women and minorities in school leadership positions and argues that organizational culture is related to the exclusion of women and minorities from high-rank positions. This argument is tested by an estimation of the likelihood of minority women, minority men, non-minority women and non-minority men holding school principal positions in two different educational systems in Israel: the Jewish state secular and state religious schools. These two systems have distinct forms of organizational culture. The research data are based on a survey of teaching staff conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2000 (n = 25 769). Several multinomial analyses were conducted in each educational sector. Different patterns of gender/ethnic stratification were found in each educational sector. Gender proved to exert a stronger effect than ethnicity. However, ethnicity differences were greater among women than among men. These patterns were more prominent in state religious education than in state secular education. The findings support the claim that organizational culture serves as a mechanism that mediates ascriptive inequality and shapes the patterns of stratification by gender and ethnic differences.