The under-representation of women in decision-making roles is an issue of pressing national and international significance. Calls are being made for more ethical, careful and connected forms of leadership popularly gendered as female. Concerns are being extended from adult women to girlhood as initiatives encouraging girls to aspire to leadership proliferate. Both political and corporate discourses are coalescing around girls as the potential leaders who can deliver a more equal and secure future.

At the same time, traditional media sources represent women leaders in demeaning, diminishing and stereotyped ways, and women leaders are subjected to unprecedented abuse via social media. Leadership itself continues to be characterised as masculine in popular and corporate realms.

Concerns about the proportion and visibility of women leaders too often translate into ‘role model’ solutions for girls based on simplistic ideas of gender-matching. In such solutions the complexities of relationships that young people may have with media figures are reduced to a matter of inspiration leading to imitation; few consider the cultural contexts in which girls encounter leadership figures, the meanings girls attach to them, and how these are embedded in girls’ everyday lives and media practices.

Drawing on research conducted in schools, youth organisations and online, this book investigates what girls apprehend leadership to mean in their own lives, and in their discussions of popular media representations of women leaders. It seeks to add to understandings of the role of public figures in girls’ identities and aspirations, and particularly in shaping their ideas about power, influence and social change.