Women's success factors from leadership in higher education

In recent decades, considerable developments were performed about the presence of women in managerial positions. The surreys show that the presence of women in management fields was increased. The present article proceeds to identify success factors of women who experienced leadership in higher education. The used method is qualitative method, a kind of descriptive phenomenology and participants include educated women that took on key position in Iran universities. The sampling method was based on purpose and initiated by using snowball technique from important persons, and continued up to information saturation. At the end, the number of participants reached to eight person and data was collected by using profound interview. For data analysis, seven stage Collizzi method was used that the resultant findings included major seven components (other's positive attitudes, women's personality traits, women' personal attitudes, attitudes of society, leadership and management skills, family factors, free and academic environment) and 19 sub-components that each of them possessed other sub-components that amounted to 191 sub-components. In general, the findings of this study showed that women in higher education could promoted leadership and management skills and stabilize their position as a successful manager. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.