Abstract
Previous studies found that countries with female presidents and other agencies with women leaders were recognized as more effective and tend to perform better than men during COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, a qualitative study was conducted to determine the demographic profiles, challenges and metaphors of the leadership styles of female school heads based on their lived experiences during pandemic. This study made use of thematic analysis to generalize and analyze the verbal expressions of the respondents and systematic metaphor to identify and establish metaphorical concepts. The respondents were purposively selected based on school size category. The instrument used is a survey questionnaire with open-ended questions and a face-to-face and virtual interview was conducted to gather responses. Based on the data gathered, the leadership styles that dominantly emerged during pandemic is a mixture of democratic and transformational leaders. The challenges that the female school heads faced during pandemic involves personnel, financial and time management. Consequently, as an assigned metaphor, female school heads were compared into six species of butterfly. Furthermore, Maternal instinct leadership style theory was developed wherein it asserts that women leaders are naturally born leaders wherein the maternal love and care are innate in women while assuming full authority and responsibility to their subordinates. However, based on the noted gaps, this study recommends further related researches on women and men’s leadership styles to arrive other metaphorical concepts of leadership.
