The Attitudes of Turkish Teachers toward Female Managers

Gender equality in the workplace and social life has been argued especially since industrialization. Despite the belief that the education profession is suitable for women, the education sector has been one of the most discussed sectors due to the low number of female managers. Doubtless, gender stereotypes and attitudes toward women contribute to these inequalities. This research aimed to examine the attitudes, which may be an important part of this inequality, of teachers towards female principals. The universe of the research is consisted of the teachers and administrators at public schools in Adana's districts (Seyhan, Cukurova, Yuregir, and Saricam) province where women held an administrative position in the 2015-2016 academic year. The sample consisted of 818 teachers and administrators. A descriptive survey method was used to conduct the research. Attitudes toward Women Managers Scale were used to collect data. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was applied to analyze the data. For descriptive statistics, frequency, percent, average and standard deviation were used. For the statistical analysis T-Test and ANOVA tests were applied. As a result of the data analysis; significant differences between the groups according to gender, age groups, status and, level of the schools were found.


Introduction
Because of the historical experiences of females in the educational sector, as well as traditional societal views on female gender roles, teaching is one of the most preferred professions by females in Turkey. Due to especially the flexible working conditions, teaching profession is considered suitable for women. Many statistics have proved that situation. For example, in the 2016-2017 academic year, 58.28% of the total 1.027.377 teachers in the Turkish education system were women (Turkish Ministry of National Education [TMNE], 2017), and in 2016 also the number of female students in education faculties was 1.7 times higher than male students (Erginer & Saklan, 2016). Although women have intense participation in the education sector, as in other sectors the number of female managers is less than that of men (Unal, 2003). Although more than 50,0% of teachers in Turkish education system are women, the proportion of female administrators of schools is only 7.9% (Tok & Yalcin, 2017), and only 16.7% in 2016 for all sectors in 2016 (Turkish Statistical Institute [TSI], 2019).
Although there have been active employment policies, which came about due to the candidate status and the cooperation with the European Union (EU), the women labor force of and gender equality for women in Turkey are not empowered enough yet. For instance, in 2016 the literacy rate of Turkish men is 5 times higher than women, their employment rate is twice as good as women while they earning more than women at all educational levels (Akbas & Korkmaz, 2017), and some jobs are not preferred by males due to societal beliefs about those jobs, which are thought appropriate to women (Ulutas, 2009). But this situation is not a problem just in Turkey, according to Gannon and others (2005) even in the EU countries women can earn 11-39% lesser than males (Cited as DGSW, 2014). The report of International Labor Organization [ILO] (ILO, 2016) stated that Turkish women devote their times to unpaid works, as like child caring, more than three times men. Also, there is a forceful gap between the participation of females and males in the labor force in many countries. The evaluation in 2016 by The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) showed that women`s participation in the labor force in Turkey (36%) was the second-worst global rank, which was 56% on average, after Indian (Cited as Akgeyik, 2016). In the same year this rate was 32,5%, and the employed rate was 28% (TSI, 2018). As well as those statistics, the campaigns of schooling for girls, statistics about women murders, and the low proportion of women in senior positions may also show the exact picture of gender inequality in Turkish society (Akbas & Korkmaz, 2017).
We believe that, the gender equality and the development of women's rights are one of the most important signs of the democratic development of societies. As an important part of democratic culture, we need to understand and change the attitudes toward women. The present study focuses to determine the attitudes of teachers, who comprise one of the well-educated groups of Turkish society, toward women managers. We think that teachers´ attitudes, ideologies, and beliefs may affect the students directly, even impact the society and culture indirectly. For the next generations, which tend to avoid stereotypes and gender inequalities, we need teachers, who have not negative stereotypes and beliefs about genders. Although this present study does not focus on gender stereotypes directly, in the next section few theories about gender, and gender stereotypes are discussed to understand the women's status in the societies.

Women's Status in Life, Work, and Management
The concept of gender defines biological differences as well as social inequality between women and men, while the concept of sex is just used to define the biological differences between both. Gender is concerned with social expectations from sexes, and those expectations have determined the gender roles and stereotypes in societies (Mihalcova, Pruzinsky, & Gontkovicova, 2015). The gender stereotype can be an important concept to understand women´s status in professional life and organizations. Fiske and Stevens (1993) have emphasized that gender stereotypes define to desirable and expectable traits, roles and behaviors for sexes, and these stereotypes are based on traditional gender roles as like the domestic activities for women and for men bread-winning for (Cited as Rudman & Phelan, 2008), and especially in the labor force, the societal expectations lead to empower those stereotypes (Hoyt, 2012). Although discrimination in workplace is a disadvantage for both sexes, especially if the job is deemed appropriate for the opposite sex, there are more barriers and discriminations for women when compared with men (Hoyt, 2012). Even if changes are observed with the influence of the feminist movements such as increasing the women managers proportion from 18% in 1972 to 45% in 2002 in the USA (Melero, 2011), the unfavorable attitudes toward them persist (Elsesser & Lever, 2011), and due to the existing obstacles in working life we cannot say the ideal equality is possible yet (Melero, 2011).
There are various theories to explain the disadvantages of women in the workplace. One of the common and famous approaches is a "gender-centered perspective" (GCP). According to this perspective, the limited representation of women in the upper level of organizations is the outcome of females` internal features such as inappropriate traits, cognitions, and behaviors. A woman`s character conflicts with the necessities of upper-level status in an organization. The "organization-structure perspective" (OSP) explains this situation with organization structure rather than the individual and internal traits of females. This perspective emphasizes that a woman`s position in an organization structure opportunity can explain why a woman cannot raise the top level of this organization. For example, child-care responsibilities affect women`s positions and revise their status through unfavorable status in the workplace (Gatrell, 2013). On the other hand, Metz (2011) emphasized the responsibilities at home are not the primary reason of the adversities in women`s working life, on the contrary, the unwelcome and the discriminative atmospheres in organizations are the most important reason for them. Gender-Organization-System (GOS) approach is the third perspective, which explains the women`s managerial position problems in an organization. This perspective emphasizes that gender and organizational structure might shape women`s organizational behaviors. According to this approach, an organization lives in a society with particular cultural values, histories, ideologies, and stereotypes, which affect the roles and behaviors of men and women and even affect the internal structures of an organization (Fagenson, 1990). Also, the members of an organization may determine their reactions and behaviors according to the limitations of this organization´s culture (Stamarski & Hing, 2015). Differentially from other perspectives, GOS focuses on both the social and personal factors in organizations. While we have been evaluating the attitudes of teachers, we have focused on some personal factors of teachers, which are based on the societal, ideological and historical parts of the societies. In the next section, we will discuss the sociocultural and external causes on attitudes to understand the impacts of those factors on human personality, but for that we need to GOS approach, that is the best way to reflect our beliefs about gender inequality in the labor force, and to explain macro factors, which impact the organizations´ climate and gender attitudes, such as ideology, religion, history, policies of states, etc.
Under the assumptions of GOS, we can understand the political re-establishment of organizations in Turkey in the recent four decades. After the 1980 military coup many policies and practices have built the Islamist, nationalist and conservative ideology (Akyuz, 2017;Polat & Basmaci, 2017), after the 24th January Decisions both the military and civil governments (Sen, 2005) have applied the liberal and capitalist economic policies (Turkoz, 2016) to convert the organizations and labor market dynamics. The impact of the Islamic ideology and the rising of conservativism has impacted women employment`s upward movement (Negiz & Yemen, 2011), and the attendance of females to the labor force has not been fast and high as like the males especially in urban (Toksoz, 2016). The results of the TSI`s (2009) study has shown the gap between the women employment rates in rural areas (31.4%) and urban areas (17.3%), and the report of The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT) in 2013 (Cited as Davutoglu, 2015) showed this situation in the official documents.
At the earlier times of the Justice and Development Party´s (JDP) governments, some developments in the Turkish legislation were seen to curb gender inequality relatively under the effects of the relationship with the EU, (Toksoz, 2016). But after 2007 the woman perception of the government has been changed through the conservative policies (Altuntas & Demirkanoglu, 2017), and the woman policy of the government, it can be defined as neoliberalconservative patriarchy under the views of Cosar and Yegenoglu (2011), has described the women only within the families and for unregistered jobs (Cited as Toksoz, 2016), and as a concrete reflection of those policies the woman concept was removed from the name of Ministry of Woman and Social Policies in 2011, which had to improve gender equality (Toksoz, 2016).
In the present research, the researchers focus on the attitudes of teachers, who are the members and actors in an educational organization, toward their women managers to understand the social, attitudinal and behavioral reflections of them, when working with a woman manager? We believe that the dynamics of an organization and the acts of the members in this organization are not independent of the general perceptions and attitudes of societies. Also, we think that, if there is inequality in an organization and/or in a sector, it might be explained with ideological and social background of that inequity.
Before industrialization, most of the women were working only at home or for unpaid jobs. With the onset of industrialization women began to be an important part of the labor force, although they are accepted for lower status (Hoyt, 2012) and earning less and working in negative conditions (Idris, Hong & Mansor, 2012).
The report of ILO (2016) has statistically shown that women participate lesser in managerial positions than men in all countries except Columbia, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia, although there are no gender differences in the definitions of management and managers. Some cultural researches have been proved the gender stereotypes are one of the major barriers hindering women`s entry into management positions (Schein, 2007). Elsesser and Lever (2011) suggested that women may try to emulate masculine roles and leadership styles to try to remove these barriers and inequalities. Due to these management characteristics, which are dominated by patriarchy, women have to put forth more effort and energy, while climbing up to upper steps of their careers (Mihalcova et al., 2015), managerial gender stereotypes will be diminished through these efforts and struggles (Schein, 2007).
Mostly, the definitions of management deal with the management as a process to design an environment and other dynamics to accomplish selected targets efficiently by the individuals (Koontz & Weihrich, 1990). Hitt, Black, and Porter (2012) have also focused the organizations, and defined the management as " is the process of assembling and using sets of resources in a goal-directed manner to accomplish tasks in an organization, and manager refers to anyone who has designated responsibilities for carrying out managerial activities" (italics are original from resource). We agree with those definitions and believe the management is an art to organize appropriate resources and dynamics to access the targets of organizations and groups. Also, we think, education management is different from other management concepts, due to the aims and outcomes of its activities. Educational management performs that within educational goals, and with those goals, it may affect all dynamics of society. To achieve the educational goals, policies, strategies, and action plans should be established (Amanchukwu, Stanley, & Ololube, 2015). Rosenbuch (1997) emphasized the differences of school managers from managers in other sectors, and also stated that they should work with children and adults, and should be collegiality (Cited as Huber, 2004). Most of the sectors use human capital in the management process to produce new goods, but education management uses various resources to produce new humanity. With this perspective, we may expect more positive gender perceptions from teachers. A meta-analysis study by Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell and Ristikari (2011) has supported our expectation about gender in the education sector, and they found stereotypes are lesser masculine in educational organizations than in other sectors.

Attitude and It`s Impacts
Due to the dominance of behaviorism on psychology field, attitude was not seen as an acceptable area by researchers, until a publication in 1929 by Thurstone which was entitled "Attitudes can be measured" (Cited as Reid, 2015). The first attitude scaling method was developed by Thurstone (1928) and used to detect a person`s views against a psychological object. In the later, researchers asked the participants questions such as "good or bad", "liking or disliking", "desirable or undesirable" and "favor or oppose" to learn their attitudes (Cited as Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000).
After Thurstone´s publication a lot of definitions and researches have been done in the attitude area. One of the most accepted definitions about attitude is built by Eagly and Chaiken`s (1993), and they have defined the attitude as "is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor" (italics are original from the book of authors). Islam and Nasira (2016) defined the attitude as: "good or bad beliefs about something. It is a tendency to behave toward the object or to avoid from that". According to Green (1953), attitude is a hypothetical variable rather than an instant observable, but can be identified by individuals because of build hypothetically (Cited as Islam & Nasira). Under the views in literature, in present study we define the attitude as "nonverbal and/or verbal perceptions and tendencies (Eagly & Chaiken), evaluative judgments (Crano & Prislin, 2006, p. 347), emotional, psychological or social reactions (Ajzen, 1993). Those are based on past experiences and pressures of others (Albarracin, Johnson, Zanna & Kumkale, 2005), and might be affected by macro factors such as culture, religion, financial system, and have mutual impacts with behaviors and beliefs (Albarracin et al., 2005), which might be persistent in the time and resistant to change (Prislin & Crano, 2008). According to Campbell (1963), social attitudes are based on the experience of individuals and to guide one`s future behavior (Cited as Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000). Islam and Nasira (2016) explained those past experiences as environmental factors and conditions for individuals and they emphasized that attitudes can occur within the personal development of individuals. As another approach, that Fishbein´s approach which is based on the thoughts of Peak, Carlson, and Rosenberg, individuals´ evaluations or attitudes against a certain feature of an object can be understood with their "accessible beliefs". The concepts of "object" and "attribute" are valuable in this approach, because they refer to the discriminable aspects of the individuals` worlds (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000).
With the effects of Green`s (1954) views, Schuman and Johnson (1976) suggested three types of distinctions on the attitude concept. The first suggestion on attitude is categorized with two parts such as, "elicited verbal attitudes", which refer responses to questionnaires or direct measurement procedures, researches have used this category in the present study, and "spontaneous verbal attitudes "that is the expression of the views to friends or other listeners in daily life. The second distinction is based on visibility and psychometric indicators of attitudes and the attitudes are named as "latent" or "true". The third distinction focuses on the content and the response style of attitude. According to this distinguishing, attitude is "a rubric", that to cover virtually all non-factual responses".
Oraif (2007) suggested a hierarchical analysis between "knowledge" and "worldview", and in her view, knowledge feeds the beliefs, beliefs build up to attitudes, and they create values, all of them establish the "worldviews" of individuals (cited as Reid, 2015). Attitude towards behavior and perceived normative expectations may affect an intention and consequently, psycho-social factors can shape the behaviors (Schuman & Johnson, 1976). The general and traditional belief about attitudes is that, attitudes are built by accessing knowledge from memory and to build global evaluations with this (Fabrigar, McDonald & Wegener, 2005). Fishbein (2000) assumed that, attitudes are based on the existing beliefs about the object, but any differentiation in the accessible beliefs can lead to a change in attitudes about that object (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000).
According to Jost et al. (2008), the ideologies of individuals determine their attitudes, behaviors, and decisions in various situations. Nearly in all cultures, masculine roles are dominant, and these are preferred by especially the conservative ideologies (Cited as Hoyt, 2012). Research by Hoyt (2012) showed that the reactions of employers toward women candidates vary according to ideology. Especially conservative decision-makers show more negative attitudes toward female candidates. The low proportion of women in management positions is related to the attitudes of society (Islam & Nasira, 2016). Sidanius and Pratto (1999) defended that, the "status quo often supports the inequality", and the superior groups tend to protect their superior status and positions, while the subordinate groups are remaining or losing their positions (Cited as Simmons, Duffy, & Alfraih, 2012). The opinions of those authors may explain the lower status of women in the labor force, and also, may help us to understand the attitudes toward genders or other social structures.
In the present study, while we are exploring the attitudes toward women managers, we will focus on some factors, which have the potentials to affect the beliefs of participants to understand the real attitudes of teachers in the Turkish school system. We believe that the lower ratio of women managers in the school management status of the Turkish education sector is not caused by the personal factors of women; in contrast, we think that it depends on attitudes and perceptions of individuals in this sector and also in society. We also believe that the decisions and practices of politicians and decision-makers are affected by the attitudes of individuals as well as the international neoliberal pressures and policies. But in the present study, we focus just on some micro factors such as gender, age, school levels and school types, not to macro factors like ideologies, religions, and policies, etc.

Materials and Methods
This research is descriptive research to appropriate the general screening model and aims to evaluate the attitudes toward women administrators in schools of the TMNE.

Question(s) of the study
Our main question is that "whether there are any differences in the teachers' attitudes toward women administrators according to various variables?". To find the answer to the question we set some sub-questions at below.
1. Does the gender of the Turkish teachers make any differences in the attitudes toward women managers? 2. Are there any differences in the Turkish teachers` attitudes toward women managers, according to their age?
3. Do the school types of teachers make any differences in the attitudes toward women managers? 4. Are there any differences in the teachers` attitudes according to the school level?

Limitations of Research
This research was conducted in the 2015-2016 academic year in Turkey. The data obtained from the study are limited to schools in Adana, and the participants were selected on the basis of volunteering and according to the purpose sampling method.

Universe and Sample
For this research, public and private schools, which are managed by women principals, were determined and selected in Adana, the 4th biggest city in Turkey. In total, 51 public and 36 private schools were managing by women principals in the research process. Researchers reached the teachers in these schools and applied the research tool to this target group. There were 1593 teachers in those 51 public schools and 450 teachers in the 36 private schools in Adana. The study was composed of 2043 teachers. Researchers selected 845 teachers from both types of schools with the purposive sampling model. This sample was 40% of the total teacher population in schools, which were managed by women administrators in Adana city. Research tool were applied to the sample group, but 27 forms were not used in the statistical process due to a lack of data. The study was finished with 818 teachers` data as a sample, and some of the information about the sample is shown below (Table 1).

Data Analysis
The SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Science) 20.0 packet program was used to reach the results. Firstly, the normality assessment has done by researchers. According to the results of the normality test (Table 2) the sample is not normally distributed, and nor homogeneous (0,087 and ,960), but in the literature these findings are accepted in the normal range for parametric tests. According to George and Mallery (2010) the values of skewness and kurtosis can be accepted which are between +2,00 and -2,00, while Tabachnick and Fidell (2013) have suggested that, those values could be between +1,5 and -1,5. The reliability of research toll for our sample was found appropriate (0,944) because George and Mallery (2010) classified the Cronbach's Alpha values bigger than ,900 as perfect (Table 3). After carrying out reliability and normality tests to compare the groups, independent two samples t-test and one-way ANOVA analysis, and to find the source of the significances The Post-Hoc Scheffe test were applied as statistical analyses. All analyses are shown from Table 1 to Table 9 below.

Research tool
In this research two tools were applied to participants. A questionnaire was prepared by researchers to reach the personal information of the teachers in target schools, and the second tool was a standardized tool to reach the attitudes of teachers.

Attitudes toward Women Managers (ATWoM)
Attitudes toward Women Managers (ATWoM) are an instrument to detect the attitudes of individuals toward "women managers". This instrument was developed by Aycan et al. in 2012. Data was collected from Turkish employees and junior-senior undergraduates to develop this instrument. The first version of ATWoM was comprised of 36 positive and 32 negative items and a total of 68 items. After a pilot study and psychometric analyses, the number of items was reduced to 27 (14 items are negative and 13 positive). The minimum score is 27 points and the maximum score is 135. The psychometric results of ATWoM were found to be reliable and valid. The Internal consistency of the whole scale was .91 for employees and .90 for students. Three factors, namely "Task Role Behaviors", which is comprised by 14 items (Cronbach's Alpha= .91), "Relational Role Behaviors" consisting of 9 items (Cronbach's Alpha = .90), and "Work Ethic of Women Managers" consisting of 4 items (Cronbach's Alpha = .70), were found. This Likert type scale ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). High scores on the scale reflect of responders' positive attitudes toward women managers (Aycan, Bayazit, Berkman & Borotav, 2012). In the present study, Cronbach's Alpha was .944 for the sample, and it was accepted an appropriate tool to our sample.

Findings / Results
In this section, the statistical results of the research will be shown. At below firstly we will show the sub-dimensions´ and total scores of the sample according to their sex, and the institution´s status (public or private) with independent sample T-test, and then the one-way ANOVA results of age groups and school levels of participants. We have calculated the "Hedge`s g" values as effect size method to decide that, whether "p" values are appropriate or not to our analyses. Hedge`s g calculation is an appropriate method for unequal sample sizes. According to our calculation for sexes of participants the Hedge g value has been found as middle (0,311) and for the types of institutions high (0,776). With the results of Hedge g value, "p" value in 95% confidence interval has been accepted an appropriate statistical value for our sample. Authors show all findings and relations of variables in tables from Table 4 to Table 9. In the table 4, there are statistical significances for all sub-dimensions of ATWoM. The "p" scores of Gender effects on Professional Working Behaviors (after here Factor I), Interpersonal Relationship (after here Factor II), Work Ethic (after here Factor III) and the Total Score are lesser than ,05 (t scores are respectively; -3,98; -3,38; -3,12 and -4,07).
According to these scores we have determined that, females` attitudes toward their women managers are more positive than their male colleagues` attitudes. The findings in Table 5 show us that, institutions´ status have effects on the attitudes of teachers toward female managers. The attitude scores of teachers from private schools are higher than their colleagues from public schools in total and all sub-dimensions. For all factors´ t-scores have been found respectively t= -7, 44; -8, 34 and -7, 28 and of total -8,77. According to those results, the attitudes toward female managers of teachers in private schools can be accepted more positive than teachers in public schools. In table 6, the statistical significances between the ages of participants and all sub-dimensions of research tool showed. The Scheffe Test was applied to determine the reasons of the significances between the groups (Table 7). Also, according to Table 6 there is a significance between groups in Factor I, there is no differences between groups (Table  7), but the results regarding with the attitude scores of 40-49 years old teachers are lesser than the both groups of 20-29 and, 30-39 years old teachers for Factor II (p scores: ,016 and ,021) and, Factor III (p scores: ,016 and ,037). In factor II´s results show us 40-49 years old teachers' attitude scores are lesser than the teachers in both age groups 20-29 and 30-39 (respectively differences are; -4,27 and -3,24) while those gaps are respectively -1,63 and -1,16 in Factor III. With those findings, we can say that, the teachers at 40-49 years old show more negative attitudes toward women managers than their colleagues at 20-29 and 30-39 years old in our sample.   According to Table 8, the levels of the schools affect the teachers´ attitudes toward female school managers. The school level impacts statistically all factors (respectively F scores of factors are; 4,117; 7,447 and 3,335). The Scheffe analyses show that, teachers in pre-schools have higher attitude scores than the teachers from high schools in Factor I (difference: +4,88 point), for Factor II the participants from pre-schools` attitude scores toward female managers are higher than teachers from other school levels (differences between groups respectively: +5,43; +5,66 and +4,10). Although, a significance is seen between school levels of participants in Factor III in Table 8, according to Scheffe test result there is not any important differences between groups (Table 9).

Discussion and Conclusion
According to results of the attitude scores of our sample toward women managers in schools in Adana, we can say that, the all participants´ attitude scores are moderately high and in all sub-dimensions they are above the middle value. According to these values the teachers in that city have not negative attitudes toward their women principals and the idea of women administrators in the Turkish school system.
The female participants of our sample showed more positive attitudes toward women managers than their male colleagues in all sub-dimensions. In the study by Balqiu (2013), a similar result has been found. Balqiu (2013) showed that, males had more negative attitudes than females regarding the idea of working with female managers. Tatar and Emmanuel (2001) found that, female teachers have more egalitarian attitudes and perceptions about their students` sexes than male teachers. This study showed that, female teachers are more positive about the issues regarding gender. In a research on female teachers` attitudes by Asar and Celikten (2016) has been found that women were more positive on the dimensions of "professional operating characteristics" (Factor I), "interpersonal relationships" (Factor II), and "work ethic" (Factor III). Moreover, men's attitudes were not negative, just were not as positive as women's attitudes. Calik, Kosar, and Dagli (2012) have accepted gender as an important variable on attitudes toward women managers, and they found that female teachers´ attitudes are more positive than men teachers´ on all sub-dimensions.
In contrast to our findings, Celikten (2005) has found that male teachers are more receptive and have got more positive attitudes toward women managers than their female colleagues. The author has explained this result with traditional judicial and the reluctance of female subordinates about working with women managers. Similar to Celikten`s findings Imamoglu-Akman and Akman`s (2016) showed that, female teachers` perceptions were not positive against to samesex managers. These researchers emphasized that many negative words such as "jealous, capricious, fussy, vindictive and ruthless" about women managers were used by female teachers in the sample.
Differently from our study, in the study by Guney, Gohar, Kilic-Akinci and Akinci (2006), both sexes have shown negative attitudes toward female managers, and interestingly, the women participants showed more negative attitudes to women managers. Also, Elsesser and Lever (2011) found in their study, in which 60.470 individuals participated, just for a small part of the sample had not any gender preference for managers. Even though, there were no statistically significant, male managers were preferred more than 2 times than female managers.
Especially the impacts of GOS approach (O´Neil, Hopkins, 2015;Fagenson, 1990) and the description of Eagly and Chaiken`s (1993) on attitude, we believe that our findings regarding sexes of the participants might be outcomes of the similar experiences of females in the Turkish school system. Also, we think, the reactions of our sample toward female managers were not independent of their past experiences. The past experiences and environmental factors are effective in the development of gender attitudes according to both of the GOS approach and the connectionist model of attitudes. According to the connectionist model under the impacts of the experience attitudes occur quickly and holistically with partial stimulation input opposite the objects or situations (Fabrigar et al., 2005) because organism records automatically significance data (Glockner & Betsch, 2008), which are especially rewarded (Jordens & Van Overwalle, 2005), about the real-world and objects (Ajzen & Fishbein, 2000). According to those views, the attitudes of our sample might be developed in groups with rewarding and confirmations by group members, and the confirmed gender stereotypes might be recorded by individuals. Because of this process, women and men may have gained similar attitudes in their gender groups.
Whether it is a manager or a teacher, females can live similar experiences such as problems, professional experiences, and gender inequality in the school systems. These similarities may have positively influenced the attitudes of female teachers towards their same-sex managers in our sample. GOS emphasizes the organization shapes the behaviors of the participants, and we also think the experiences of female teachers shape their attitudes and perceptions about female colleagues. On the other side, males dominate organizations and create status-quos. These status-quos have strong impacts on their lives, careers and life experiences, which can be damaged by the high status and roles of their female colleagues in organizations. If males in an organization feel this situation is a possible risk for themselves, they might show more negative attitudes toward females even in all statuses. The reactions of male teachers in our sample may be regarding with the status-quos of them in their schools.
In our findings the teachers at private schools had more positive attitudes towards women managers when compared with teachers in public schools. Similarly, Asar and Celikten (2016) found that, female managers, who were assigned temporary, are evaluated more positively than permanent principals. In Turkey, teachers at public schools are working under the state guarantees and higher job security when compare with teachers who are working in private schools. In this regard, our finding and Asar and Celikten`s finding supports to each other. The status of schools may affect both the relations between the principals and teachers and, the climate of the schools. Relationships of the principals and teachers impact school climate (Price, 2012, p. 65), and the attitudes of teachers are affected by the school climate (Arikan, 2014), and the characteristics of principals (Kursunoglu & Tanriogen, 2009).
With the acts 1965/657 and 2011/652, that is the act of MTNE (Turkish Republic Official Newspaper, 2019), the managers of public schools are assigned by the government. These assignments may be affected by governments` political, cultural and ideological views, while the managers in private schools are assigned by the owners or boards of the schools, mostly according to their abilities and traits. Due to the confirmation of government the public-school managers might ignore the working climate and good relationships with their subordinates, in contrast that, the weak links with the government or any organization can create a positive climate between private-school principals and teachers. The weak bindings with governments may explain our significance finding on teachers´ attitudes according to the status of schools. We believe that the relatively weak connections with governments may less impact the personnel regimes of organizations ideologically, although the policies of governments affect the financial and general external policies of organizations.
On the other hand, the insufficient job guarantee may affect the attitudes and test reactions of teachers in private schools. The worries about the job and career may shape attitudes like other personal and organizational factors.
In this part, the characteristics of private schools in Turkey may be important to understand our views clearly. Differently, from most of the European countries, there are not standard foundations of private schools in Turkey. Although, usually the private schools may fund by churches or religious organizations in European countries, in Turkey mostly there are not any religious connections of the private schools, even if some schools are founded by Islamic organizations.
Our study also showed that, age is an important variable on the attitudes of teachers toward female managers for Factor II and Factor III. According to our research, participants aged between 40-49 years displayed more negative attitudes than the younger participants. Similar to our study, Tas (2017) showed in her study that younger teachers' perceptions are more positive than older teachers. Younger teachers did not see the gender as an obstacle for women managers. In contrast to our study, Calik and colleagues (2012) showed that, ages of participants do not have any impacts on the attitudes toward female managers.
Our findings may be related to the younger teachers` liberal attitudes. Young individuals might be lesser affected by traditional and conservative attitudes, and they can be open to new trends and ideas. Due to this, younger teachers can show more positive reactions to the woman manager idea. According to Chen and Choi (2008), the characteristics of the generations are shaped by social and historical conditions. The younger participants of our sample, who are younger than 40 years old are the members of y-generation, while the elders are the members of X-generation. The using and accessing the technology and digital tools may create differences between both generations. Dr. Barbara Iverson has defined the y-generation as "digital native", and the members of x-generation are "digital immigrants" (cited as Bohl, 2008). Generally, the members of y-generation are independent, high self-esteemed, and idealist (Chen & Choi, 2008), while the members of x-generation are defined as pessimist, cynical, individualist (Reisenwitz & Iyer, 2009), avoid collaboration (Berkup, 2014). With those classifications, we can say that the younger participants of our research, who are mostly the member of the y-generation, may be more modernist and liberal about genders and the management positions of women.
Additionally, our study showed that Turkish pre-school teachers' attitudes toward women principals are more positive than the primary, middle and high school teachers' attitudes on Factor I and Factor II. A study by Tatar and Emmanuel (2001) showed the gender perceptions of the elementary school teachers are more positive than the teachers in secondary schools. Cahill and Adams`s (1997) research showed that, the preschool teachers have not traditional gender perceptions generally. The finding of those researchers can help to understand the results of regarding with school levels in our study. Even our findings regarding the sexes of the teachers´ attitudes toward women managers in our sample, at above (Table 4) may explain the finding related to preschool teachers. In our sample, most of the preschool teachers were women as like the general preschool teachers population of the Turkish school system. In the years 2016-2017 just 5,74% of preschool teachers were male (TMNE, 2018). When we think women teachers´ attitudes toward female managers are more positive, the preschool teachers´ attitudes would be more positive than other grades teachers naturally, due to the dominance of women in the preschool teaching profession.
With these findings, we believe that our sample's attitudes towards female managers confirm GOS assumptions. All the reasons for these statistical meanings of our findings have been tried to be explained above with the literature. In this section, we want to evaluate the importance and meaning of our findings according to GOS approach.
In the present study, we have found that the attitudes of teachers are affected by independent variables such as the sexes and ages of the teachers, and the type and level of the schools. According to O´Neil and Hopkins (2015) we need to focus on social and organizational factors to understand the women managers' status in organizations. Although, the sexes and ages of the teachers appear individual factors, in fact, the gender approaches of individuals are shaped by societies and cultures according to many factors such as their sexes, ages ect. It may explain why elder, who are older than 40 years old, and male participants have shown more negative attitudes toward women managers. Also, the attitudes of teachers were different according to both of the level and type of the schools, which can be accepted as organizational factors according to GOS. Fagenson (1990) assumes that the internal process and structures of organizations are affected by the values, ideologies, histories and gender stereotypes of societies. Fagenson also states that both the gender-centered and the organization structure perspectives are not enough to explain the situations of women in organizations, also in our study the findings cannot be explained with those perspectives. For example, according to Yukongdi (2005), both perspectives of the gender-centered and the organization-structure cannot explain the dynamics of females access the managerial positions, due to lack of consideration of the societal factors such as culture, ideologies, sex-role stereotypes, policies, histories, etc. We are agreeing with the view of Martin, Harrison, and Dinitto (1983) which stated that the behaviors in organizations can be understood with the mutual interactions of social system and gender. They stated that organizations are in societies and the internal process of organizations is affected by societal (external) dynamics. This perspective may explain our belief, which is our sample´s attitudes are not independent of the ideological, historical, political, cultural and social realities and practices of the Turkish society, also we believe the gap between male and female participants´ attitudes regarding with those realities. We think that the attitudes of the Turkish teachers in our sample are similar according to teachers´ similarities (i.e. gender, age, institute type, etc.). We have tried to explain our ideas about the causes of our findings above. In our perspective, similar groups learn and show similar attitudes in social life, culture, and organizations, as like the assume of GOS.
For the future of gender equality, the policymakers and authorities of the sectors must focus on inequality factors in working life for women. We think that to change some things for the next generations the gender attitudes of teachers should be extra valued and been focused. O´Neil and Hopkins (2015) emphasized that when the organizational or social conditions are fixed for women, and the role models of the females, who are in senior positions, may foster and include the females in organizations, and create new opportunities to climb upper steps in their careers. To provide more equality in organizations for women especially for the upper steps, we need more researches to understand the dynamics of patriarchy in the education sector. With the findings of scientific researches and reports by independent NGOs, women movements, which may be political, ideological or women rights-based, and human rights defenders in Turkey, must establish a political pressure on governments and policymakers. Past experiences of females have shown that men will not want to leave their status, which gives strong roles in society and the labor market, easily. Because of the potential resistance of males and policymakers, women will need these types of researches findings to create combat strategies and policies. On the other side our study and similar studies on female labor force and statuses in Turkish society, which tendency approximately 50% conservative and nationalist perspectives, may create the various perspectives and new discussion fields to reach better equality conditions for women.