This research explored the phenomenon of femaleness and how it impacts the experiences of women in higher education administration, specifically in colleges of agriculture, and how these experiences contributed to burnout, compassion fatigue, and job satisfaction. Despite representing more than half of the college-educated workforce, women are not represented equally within leadership positions in higher education. In academia, women faculty numbers have improved over the past several decades, representing 52.9% of assistant professor positions (Women in Academia: Quick Take, 2020). Higher education was initially intended only for men (Bystydzienski & Bird, 2006) and therefore valued men in higher-level positions (Bird, 2011; Trower, 2012). This has led to the creation of a culture where women and minorities are underrepresented and face multiple barriers (Bird, 2011). Having an inequitable distribution of power not only in organizations but within society suggests that women will need to traverse a different, more challenging path than their men counterparts to arrive at the same tier of status. Similarly, the field of agriculture has been a traditionally male-dominated field with land being tied to a male partner, being passed down from a father to son, or a widow from her late husband (Brandth, 2002; Pilgeram & Amos, 2015). These traditions further perpetuate the patriarchal ideologies that men are more inclined to do a specific type of work than women, thus causing the agricultural fields to be more male-dominated (Pilgeram & Amos, 2015; Shisler, 2016). Women have outnumbered men on college campuses since 1988 (Warner, 2016), specifically in agricultural sciences (Cho, Chakraborty, & Rowland, 2017). There is still a substantial gap with women in educational leadership positions, and particularly within agriculturally related disciplines (Enns & Martin, 2015). This study was framed by the work of scholars in organizational behavior and psychology. Maslach's Multidimensional Theory of Burnout (MDB) and Ashby's Law of Requisite variety were used as the framework. "Burnout is an individual stress experience embedded in context of complex social relationships, and it involves the person's conception of both self and others" (Maslach, 1998, p. 69). Christina Maslach (1998) developed the multidimensional theory of burnout (MDB), supporting that burnout is comprised of three-dimensional key components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This multifaceted theory provides the context that influences an individual's response to stress. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]