Gender Equality Perceptions of Women's Leadership: A Case Study in an Islamic Education Leadership Class

Abstract

Women’s leadership remains a contested issue within Islamic educational institutions, where its legitimacy is frequently debated through both religious and socio-cultural lenses. Students of Islamic education leadership are strategic actors because the gender attitudes they form during their studies are likely to shape their future leadership practice. This study aims to examine the perception of third-semester students enrolled in the Islamic Education Leadership course at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta toward women’s leadership from a gender-equality perspective. A concurrent (convergent) triangulation mixed-methods design was employed, in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously from the same participants, analyzed in parallel, and merged during interpretation. Data were collected from 54 of 97 students (55.6%) through a structured questionnaire containing closed-ended items (quantitative strand) and open-ended items, observation, and interviews (qualitative strand), with validity maintained through both methodological and data triangulation. The quantitative strand, analyzed descriptively and with the Fisher–Freeman–Halton exact test, showed that 74.1% of students supported women’s leadership, 25.9% were neutral, and none rejected it, placing overall acceptance in the “good” category (71–85%); acceptance additionally varied significantly across the three classes (Fisher–Freeman–Halton exact test, p = .007). The qualitative strand, analyzed through thematic coding, found that competence-based reasoning (46.3%) and Islamic normative legitimacy (48.1%) were the most frequently articulated grounds for acceptance. Merging both strands revealed that several “neutral” participants articulated substantively supportive, competence-based reasoning, indicating a latent acceptance that the quantitative label alone did not capture. The study concludes that exposure to Islamic educational-leadership coursework is associated with a generally equitable perception of women’s leadership, offering a basis for strengthening gender-responsive leadership education.