The Commonwealth Higher Education Support Scheme (CHESS) 1997 Workshop was designed to promote the professional development of women in leadership positions in higher education. Participants were drawn from senior university academics and administrators from five countries: Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Specific objectives of the workshop included: evaluating and adapting to the local context the training materials produced in previous CHESS workshops; exploring the relationship between process and content when planning training programs for women in higher education management; providing the theoretical basis to support development programs for women managers, academic leaders, and researchers; and promoting skill development for organizing training programs for different institutions and regions. Workshop sessions focused on: principles of group training; managing professional and social roles and the home-work interface; personal attributes of a leader, academic culture and the context of leadership; the place of research in individual careers; and actions that could be taken to facilitate women's participation in research at the departmental, institutional, and national levels. Action plans for each country are included, along with a list of participants, the workshop schedule, the text of two speeches, and evaluation questions and results. (SW)