It is an irony that educational administration, as a practice, is not at all educational. It teaches nothing to those being administered, except perhaps the strategies for countering control and the devices for manipulating the managers. More significantly, for the purposes of this paper, it teaches us very little about the under-representation of certain groups such as women in the senior management of schools throughout many parts of the world. Concerns about equality have certainly been voiced of late; but the emphasis has been on "getting more women into management", or "helping women to reach the top". This paper will argue that gender imbalances in school management sho1dd provoke a fundamental critique of the concept or practice of educational administration itself, rather than focus on the short­comings and biases of individual women - or men - as they operate within a given system.