“Go out there and go for broke”: senior women and promotion in Education Queensland, Australia

Women find it difficult to achieve promotion into senior administration positions in education systems throughout the Western world. This paper reports on interviews with 23 women who are employed by Education Queensland (Australia). These women, who were all participants in a Women in Management course offered by the Queensland University of Technology, have been successful in being promoted into administrative positions in schools and school support centres. The focus of the paper is on why these women have gone for promotion and the successful strategies that they employed to achieve promotion. These strategies included “putting runs on the board”, being persistent, networking, managing in their own way and accessing appropriate professional development. The paper concludes with the warning that the culture of the central bureaucracy, however, is perceived as overwhelmingly male and this acts as a significant barrier to further career progress.