Semester of Graduation
Spring 2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Transnational Black Women's Leadership
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Dr. Jesse Benjamin
Second Advisor
Dr. Seneca Vaught
Third Advisor
Dr. Anisah Bagasrah
Abstract
Over the past twenty-five years, the presence of women in leadership roles has increased in the United States and across the globe (Pew Research Center, 2023; UN Women, 2023). During this same period, leadership scholarship has continued to rely heavily on paradigms that emerged from the study of male leaders in profit-driven organizations, military structures and political institutions. These traditions established assumptions about how authority is exercised and whose practices became foundational to leadership theory. As women assume positional power, resistance to their authority has surfaced across political contexts, revealing conflict between leadership scholarship and practice. The leadership identities taking shape do not fully align with entrenched, male-dominated paradigms with Black women leaders facing significant challenge.
Black women's leadership emerges within layered contexts of culture, organizational legacy, and postcolonial political systems, moving across community life to institutional governance. Though theories like intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) explain layered oppressions, leadership theory remains only modestly shaped by their contributions.
This dissertation examines the leadership discourse of Portia Simpson-Miller and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf through narrative and critical discourse analysis of official speeches. The speeches are analyzed as discursive sites through which authority and leadership is constructed, and policy development agendas are communicated.
The analysis reveals a broader paradigm a multimodal leadership architecture that is familiar and recognized across family, community, organizational, and state structures. By examining leadership through the discourse and governing practices of Black women in high office, this study expands how leadership in general is defined and interpreted within contemporary scholarship.
Included in
African Studies Commons, Global Studies Commons, International and Intercultural Communication Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, Other International and Area Studies Commons