Many employers have asserted that women are not good candidates for administrative positions because they could not stand up to the pressures and stress associated with administrative responsibilities. To test the validity of this assertion, a comparision was made of the occupational stress profiles of male and female educational administrators in Oregon. The Administrative Stress Index, a 35-item questionnaire, was developed and sent to all members of the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators (N=1855). Four interpretable factors were obtained from 25 of the 35 items: (1) role-based stress, associated with the administrative role and responsibilities; (2) conflict-mediating stress, concerned with conflict resolution among students, parents, and school; (3) task-based stress, day-to-day stress in an organizational setting; and (4) boundary-spanning stress, arising from administrator activities in relating the school to the external environment. One-way analyses of variance, conducted on 1156 useable questionnaires, showed that female administrators experienced substantially lower levels of occupational stress on all four dimensions than their male counterparts, suggesting implications for recruitment of women into administrative positions. (Author/NRB)