Can Gender Affect Principalship? Lessons from Research in the North West Region of Cameroon

Over the years, despite the fact that women constitute two-third of the teaching corps in Cameroon, there has existed gender bias in the appointment of secondary school principals. Today, there is awareness amongst politicians, women scholars and pressure groups alike, that the trend of anomie has to be reversed. The objectives of this paper were to determine if gender affects appointment into principalship; to examine if a significant difference exists in the management of personnel based on leaders’ gender; to ascertain the performance of schools based on gender of the leader; and to find out if significant differences exist in supervision of instructions between male and female principals. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. A sample of 252 respondents from twelve secondary schools in Bamenda Metropolis was chosen using the stratified, purposive and convenient sampling techniques. The chi-square(x2) goodness-of-fit test was used to verify the four (04) hypotheses at a 0.05 alpha level. Findings revealed that gender affected the appointment of principals; male principals manage personnel better than female principals; schools managed by male principals performed better in official examinations than schools managed by female principals and male principals performed better in supervision of instruction activities.