ABSTRACT
This study analyzes the gender dynamics experienced by women in senior management positions in Brazilian Federal Higher Education Institutions and, from an intersectional perspective, how these dynamics shape the identity construction of women in these roles. Drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), the study investigates the lived experiences of 16 women in senior management roles within Brazilian HEIs, examining the perceptions, feelings, and meanings they attribute to navigating gendered organizational contexts. The findings show that emotional ambivalence, understood here not as a purely psychological response but as an affective expression of gendered power relations, emerges through simultaneous experiences of recognition and exclusion, pride and frustration, authority and vulnerability. By integrating intersectionality across gender, race, class, field of knowledge, and institutional type, the study reconceptualizes emotional ambivalence as a structural phenomenon embedded in gendered power relations, linking it to women’s identity construction in leadership and demonstrating how it functions simultaneously as a mechanism of resistance and a source of resilience. These contributions broaden feminist debates on leadership, identity, and affect in academia. The study highlights the need for structural change within HEIs so that the responsibility for addressing gender underrepresentation does not fall solely on women themselves.