Staying in the kitchen long enough to change the world.

Although the cliche is "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," the challenges facing education today require women to lead, create, mentor and nurture. Without women leaders, education might be stuck in the Dark Ages, as some do describe their schools today.

Getting out of the kitchen may sound like good advice. But then who would nurture our students, feed our souls, and plan for the barren winters that are inevitable?

Dr. Nancy Mims, head of the department of educational leadership at Western Carolina University, and Dr. Barbara McKenzie, interim chair of media and technology at the State University of West Georgia, studied the effects of stress on female administrators. They presented findings at the Women in Educational Leadership Conference at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in September.

We've seen the result when too much heat leads to stress and complications. Many women ignore internal stress signals until their body rebels and decides to take a sick day--or week or month or year.

Health dangers

As most women know, stress is less apt to be caused by one big crisis, but rather by the compounding of the day-to-day minutiae. As more women become higher ed administrators, their potential for internalizing the sickness of their job, school and colleagues can multiply.

Stress contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes. Type A people, who tend to be leaders, are eight times more likely to have strokes than Type B.