Abstract
This study examined the challenges and opportunities encountered by women employees as emerging leaders in DAR Masbate Provincial and Municipal Offices. It utilized a mixed-method research design involving 77 women employees for the quantitative survey and 10 selected participants for the qualitative phase. Data were gathered using a structured survey questionnaire and an open-ended questionnaire. Quantitative data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, while qualitative responses were examined through thematic analysis. Findings revealed that women employees generally agreed that training, mentoring, committee participation, organizational support, and career advancement opportunities strengthened their leadership potential. The qualitative findings further explained that leadership development was influenced by personal role conflict, time constraints, workplace barriers, gender bias, societal expectations, and the field-based nature of agrarian reform work. The integration of findings showed that while leadership opportunities were present and positively perceived, women employees still experienced informal and structural barriers that affected equal access to leadership exposure and advancement. Based on these findings, the study proposed a position paper centered on continuous training, formal mentoring and coaching, experiential leadership exposure, gender-responsive workplace support, and transparent merit-based promotion systems. The study contributes to public administration and gender development literature by providing contextspecific evidence on women’s leadership development in a provincial and field-based agrarian reform setting.