Currently, we cannot answer very sophisticated questions about women in the superintendency in New York State. A comprehensive data base, maintained over time, will help. We will become better equipped to remedy the problem of women's underrepresentation as we more fully understand the scope of women's experience in the superintendency. After nearly two decades of attention to the underrepresentation of women in school administration, it is still difficult to systematically and accurately track the number of women in school administration.
Some states have partial data, a few have none, and some have complete information.
This is not sloppy scholarship by researchers, but rather the lack of a reliable, uniform nationwide data base that let's us know just how many women are school administrators and at what levels. The superintendency is a special category. Extant databases on the superintendency are flawed. These are not friendly times for members of historically underrepresented groups. Monitoring and enforcement of existing equity and equal opportunity employment policies have been fragmented and intermittent.