When Whangārei woman Te Aomihia Taua-Glassie first started teaching, there weren’t many leaders in the profession who looked like her.
“We had to find other people in the wider community to look up to, to guide us,” the leader of learning te reo Māori at Tikipunga High School said.
“I wouldn’t want young people to go through what I have gone through.”
Taua-Glassie, 48, is the Māori vice-president at the Post Primary Teachers’ Association Te Wehengarua (PPTA) which released a report on Monday highlighting the barriers wāhine Māori educators face to becoming and thriving as leaders.
Me aro ki te hā o Hine-ahu-one Wāhine Māori in Leadership surveyed 348 wāhine Māori working in secondary schools across Aotearoa. Of the respondents, 32 were from kaupapa Māori schools and 316 were from English-medium schools.
Taua-Glassie said the research findings resonated with her strongly.
“While on one hand, it’s reassuring to know that I am not alone in terms of what I experience as a wāhine Māori leader, on the other hand, the findings show that our rangatahi are being deprived of many wonderful potential wāhine Māori leaders.”
The report identified a lack of support, concerns about work-life balance, feeling overworked and lack of confidence were challenges wāhine Māori leaders and those aspiring to lead had to deal with.
Not seeing other wāhine Māori in leadership roles was another barrier.
Shanna Rope (Tūhourangi, Ngāti Wāhiao, and Ngā Pōtiki a Tamapahore), 32, is the head of languages and te reo Māori curriculum leader at One Tree Hill College in Auckland.
“Being Māori, being a woman, we haven’t been treated the greatest. Sometimes when things come up in the media or in society, coming into kura is a bit tough,” she said.
“You carry the weight of that situation, whatever it might be, and you feel like you’re carrying the weight for every wahine Māori.”
The report found wāhine Māori faced a “cultural taxation”, which means, beyond their regular duties, they took on other cultural roles and responsibilities.
“The amount of mahi that I’ve done in my career… offering professional development to staff, offering my time, offering support for our ākonga [students] at school,” Rope said.
“For a lot of wāhine Māori, we do those things out of aroha because we know that if we don’t do those things… no one else is gonna do it.”
The report recommended setting up mentoring programmes, support networks and apprenticeships for aspiring leaders, along with professional development wānanga, courses and hui.
“I think it’s important to have support for wāhine Māori in leadership positions or in general, because we carry so much, and there’s only so much you can carry before you start dropping plates,” Rope said.
“If I had some strong Māori support in my early career, I may have felt a bit more secure within myself.”
Rope said being the only Māori teacher at a school can be difficult.
“It can be quite suffocating being the only Māori teacher or the only female Māori teacher,” she said. “You kind of get into a space where you feel like you’re getting taken advantage of.
“If you get us all together, we can kind of support each other, because quite honestly, not many people understand what it’s like to be wāhine Māori unless you are wāhine Māori, especially in these leadership spaces.”
Education Minister Jan Tinetti said it was important that wāhine Māori leaders and teachers in kura and schools are supported.
“I look forward to working actively with the PPTA and their members on changes to enable this to happen,” she said.
National education spokeswoman Erica Stanford said she wants to support and grow more leaders in education across the board.
“It is important that our education leaders come from a range of backgrounds, so they are reflective of New Zealand and the diverse communities they serve,” she said.
TOP deputy leader Natalia Albert said the recommendations of the report were a good start, but didn’t address the real issue.
“The three key informal and invisible barriers to entry to leadership for Māori wahine within any institutions are victimisation, infantilising and institutional betrayal seen with the use of the internal complaint process against discrimination,” she said.
“I would make sure that there are measures in place to identify and manage how the informal and invisible barriers are being addressed within the retention, attraction and promotion of wāhine Māori staff, as well as implement the recommendations of the report.”
ACT’s education spokesperson Chris Baillie said ACT would allow principals to introduce a reward system for teachers.
“If a school determined that it would benefit from providing further professional learning and development opportunities to foster the growth of wāhine Māori in leadership positions, the Teaching Excellence Reward Fund would serve as an economic tool to encourage wāhine Māori teachers’ professional growth in order to deliver for the needs of their school,” he said.
Green health spokesman Teanau Tuiono said leadership pathways for wāhine Māori need to be resourced to support their aspirations and the party supported the report’s recommendations.
“Listening to Māori, and wāhine Māori in the sector is going to be crucial if we are to set our rangatahi up for life in Aotearoa,” he said.
