When Baroness Alexandra Freeman became Principal of Hertford College last month, she did not initially realise she was the first woman to hold the role. It was a detail that, she says, came as a surprise, given that Hertford had begun admitting women in 1974, amongst the earliest of the formerly all-male colleges to do so. The significance of this fact has emerged gradually since. At one of her first gaudy dinners, she hosted some of the college’s first female students, including its first female JCR President. “I was really surprised how much it meant to them to have a female Principal”, she reflects. “More than one said that they had wondered whether it would happen in their lifetime.”

That sense of something both long overdue and yet only newly realised runs through Oxford’s recent shift in college leadership. Women now make up 47% of Heads of House, a figure that would have been difficult to imagine even a generation ago, and the University itself is led by a female Vice-Chancellor. At a glance, the change appears to be substantial. But it isn’t evenly distributed. 13 colleges have never had a female Head. Nine current Heads are the first women to hold their roles. And among the Permanent Private Halls, there has yet to be a single female Head. The result is a pattern that feels less like a clean transition into the modern day but rather a series of staggered steps, shaped by the histories of the individual institutions. 

Timelines and trends 

The emergence of women in senior college leadership is, in many ways, a recent phenomenon, best understood by considering the long individual institutional histories of each college. Women’s colleges have, unsurprisingly, a long history of women in senior leadership roles from their founding, with male heads historically the exception rather than the norm. St Anne’s and St Hilda’s, for example, have both only ever had one male Principal. Lady Margaret Hall’s first male Principal, Duncan Stewart, took the position the same year that the college became co-educational.

In most other colleges, however, many of the first female Heads were only appointed towards the end of the 2010s, with 13 colleges appointing their first female Heads since 2015, as though the University as a whole is, belatedly, catching up with itself. While most male colleges started to admit women in the 1970s, changes in gender inclusivity have been gradual, often just layered onto existing structures. Colleges admitted women as students, gradually appointed women as fellows, and at last saw these changes reflected at the level of leadership. The delay between these stages can’t be ignored and highlights just how much historical influences and entrenched norms still shape colleges today. This can also help explain why colleges like Hertford, early adopters of co-education, have nonetheless only recently appointed their first female Heads. 

But this acceleration hasn’t produced uniformity. Some colleges, such as Mansfield, have moved quickly, appointing multiple female Heads in succession. Others have yet to appoint one at all. Despite being amongst the first male colleges to go co-ed, Wadham has never been led by a woman. Brasenose and Jesus have only just appointed women as their Heads of House, both of whom will take up their roles later this year.

The persistence of the ‘first woman’ phenomenon is revealing. These appointments are often framed as milestones; celebrated by colleges as markers of progress that signal a break with the past. But they also point to how long that break has taken, and how dependent it remains on the particular trajectories of individual colleges.

Yet these appointments also reflect larger trends within the university culture. The fact that the initial appointment of women to these roles is clustered, for instance, suggests that many colleges may be attempting to keep pace with one another. The growth in leadership inclusivity during the late 2010s also means that many of the first female Heads of House faced the additional challenge of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Dinah Rose, President of Magdalen College, described as “tough for everyone” regardless of gender.

These changes also illustrate broader societal trends in women’s professional leadership in academia and beyond. These changes have also resulted in the way in which women hold themselves in positions of power. Rose noticed these shifts firsthand: “In earlier years, [women] often adopted a rather stiff and formal persona, perhaps compensating for some anxiety about whether they’d be accepted in their role. It is a joy to me now to be friends with a number of senior women who are funny, irreverent and relaxed, as well as being brilliant and accomplished. It seems to me that they own the space of leadership in a way that was more difficult for an earlier generation.”

The appointment 

These patterns are shaped, in part, by how Heads of House are selected. Most rely on internal elections among fellows, others on appointment processes involving the University Council, and in certain cases – most notably at Christ Church – the position is decided by an external authority. The Dean of Christ Church is appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Prime Minister. 

In theory, the internal election approach is a more democratic form of governance, but in practice, it can often reproduce the existing imbalances which have become deeply embedded within higher education. Fellows – often the group responsible for electing Heads – remain disproportionately male in many colleges. At Balliol, for example, whose first female Master, Dame Helen Ghosh, took up the post in April 2018 and remains in the role today, less than a quarter of fellows are women. Similarly, at Jesus College, whose first female principal will assume the role this August, less than a third of the Governing Body are women. Where leadership is determined internally, it is perhaps unsurprising that outcomes tend to reflect these underlying demographics.

This is not necessarily the result of explicit bias. Instead, it is perhaps better understood as a form of pipeline inequality, where imbalances in representation at junior levels accumulate, resulting in a lack of diversity in senior leadership. Academic career progression, fellowship appointments, and informal networks all play a role in shaping this pipeline. In many cases, these dynamics are subtle: the product of long-standing imbalances, uneven progression rates, and the weight often placed on particular forms of academic experience or institutional familiarity.

The result is a landscape in which progress depends less on overarching institutional reform than on the internal dynamics of individual colleges. Even where colleges attempted to widen the field, appointments remain shaped by internal culture as much as formal criteria. As Helen King, Principal of St Anne’s, notes, each college brings its own “personality and values and history” to the process, with governing bodies weighing candidates differently depending on what they see as most important at a given moment. Whilst search processes – often outsourced to headhunting agencies – may begin with a broad pool, decisions are ultimately made within comparatively small groups, drawing on shared understandings – both explicit and implicit – of what leadership should look like.

King is cautious about drawing firm conclusions from this, emphasising the complexity of the system itself. Fellows, she says, approach these decisions with a strong sense of responsibility, weighing a range of factors. “Different fellows put different weights on different things”, she explains – whether that is academic record, leadership experience, or the ability to represent the college’s identity. But that breadth of consideration also means that no single factor – including diversity – is ever likely to be decisive on its own. 

What’s in a name?

Language offers another window into these dynamics. Across Oxford, the titles given to Heads of House vary widely: from Warden to Provost, Master to Principal, and President to Dean. Whilst these distinctions often appear superficial and ceremonial, they reflect deeper histories of authority and institutional identity.

Older colleges tend to retain titles such as ‘Warden’ or ‘Provost’ whilst newer or reformed colleges have tended to adopt terms like ‘Principal’ or ‘President’. The variety of Oxford college titles is particularly notable, as 20 of the 31 colleges at Cambridge use the term ‘Master’ to describe the Head of the college. The only college in the Oxbridge system to use a title that is gendered feminine is Girton College at Cambridge, which has used the title ‘Mistress’ since the college was founded in 1869.

Issues of language extend beyond titles themselves. In some college statutes, such as those of Keble College, the Head is still referred to using explicitly male pronouns. Elsewhere, especially amongst former women’s colleges, the reverse pattern is clear with female pronouns regularly used as the default in these governance documents. While subtle, the use of gendered pronouns may change the way students and faculty of colleges understand how accessible leadership pathways may be to them.

At the same time, it is also notable that simply having more gender-inclusive titles does not always correlate to actual gender inclusivity in appointments. For instance, of the eleven colleges that have never appointed female Heads, only one uses the gendered title of ‘Master’. At Cambridge, where the term ‘Master’ is used much more often, there also does not seem to be a significant practical connection between the gender of the title and the gender of the title holder. This is not to suggest that the title of leadership roles is unimportant, but it does appear that, in practice, the gendering of a title may not limit the gender of the appointee.

Lived experience

These historical contexts can often be highly significant in determining the experience of current-day female Heads – although the wider picture remains more nuanced. Freeman notes that even before taking up her role, she had “already heard stories” of discrimination within the university. Rose, in comparison, suggested that leading a college represents, in some respects, a “refreshing change” from other institutional environments, noting particularly her previous experience as a barrister in which she was “conscious of the need to establish my credibility in court in ways that men don’t have to”.

Professor Lady Sue Black, President of St John’s College, described Oxford as “a good standard for other institutions” as women have many roles in senior leadership within colleges and across the university. However, Oxford lags slightly behind Cambridge, where only 5 out of the 31 colleges have never had a female Head, about 16%. Rose also noted that her position as a female Head of a formerly all-male college puts her in “some striking situations” such as when she “presid[ed] over an all-male gaudy of alumni who matriculated before the College became co-educational in 1979. On at least one occasion, I was the only woman in Hall, apart from members of the choir and the serving staff”.

An ongoing process

Viewed in isolation, the rise in female Heads of House suggests meaningful progress – compared to even just a decade ago, the landscape has changed significantly. Fundamentally, women are no longer the exceptions with college leadership in the way that they once were. And yet, the persistence of the ‘first woman’ phenomenon points to a process that’s still largely incomplete, with around a quarter of colleges having never appointed a woman as Head. Oxford also has yet to appoint a female Chancellor – a reminder that some of its most visible positions of authority remain shaped by tradition.

This unevenness is also visible beyond gender. Whilst the number of women in leadership has increased, progress across other forms of representation, such as ethnicity and religion, remains limited. Baroness Valerie Amos became the first-ever Black head of an Oxford college upon her appointment as Master of University College in September 2020. She remains the only Black Head of House to have ever led an Oxford college.

At the same time, the positive changes in the inclusion of female Heads speak to what Professor Dame Julia Black, Warden at Nuffield College, describes as a “transformed” landscape for women in leadership roles. Speaking about the entirety of her professional career in academia, Black also emphasised that the shifts in inclusion are also highly intentional: “This change hasn’t happened by accident, however, but is the result of a concerted effort by an extraordinary number of people in multiple sectors over a long period of time. So it’s essential to keep supporting women to be successful leaders.”