Masculine and Authoritarian Leadership in the Film "The Devil Wears Prada"

Confidence, integrity, purpose, empowerment, determination, and courage. These are some of the many words associated with leadership. Regardless of gender, these words apply to all leaders. It is no longer a question of what women leaders are, but rather why there are not women leaders. Today’s society focuses on fulfilling leadership positions with males, not because females do not have the same skills and knowledge as men, but because people associate men with leaders. There are various daily obstacles that women face in the attempt towards leadership roles including prejudice beliefs, resistance due to stereotypes, leadership styles, family life demands and underinvestment in social capital. We have found that through depictions in the media, women are not seen as effective leaders in the same sense as men. These media findings and various research techniques provide evidence for the lack of female presence in leadership positions.

When interviewing a leader in an organization in order to discover their leadership style one must ask critical questions. I had the opportunity to interview Casey Aguirre who is a Team Manager at the Salem Call Center for T-Mobile. Casey has been with T-Mobile for over 11 years. In this interview we discussed her leadership style, the steps she took to become a leader, her biggest challenges, and her greatest achievements among other things. While interviewing Casey I kept in mind the connection between women in leadership and the cultural disadvantages and advantages that women in leadership

If there is one word in leadership that gets leaders both excited and worried it is the word “power”. Leaders are excited by the word because it means they have to ability to make decisions and get things done. On the other hand, they are scared by this word because it has a negative connotation and there are many examples of leader who used their power for the wrong purposes. To use power correctly, one needs to examine the positives and negatives of power, as well as find a few ways to use power in a healthy, productive manner.

Andersen, JA & Hansson, PH 2011,"At the end of the road? On differences between women and men in leadership behaviour", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, vol. 32 no. 5 pp. 428 – 441

One identified contributor to women's slower than expected assent into leadership is the persistence of assumptions and stereotypes that women are intrinsically "communal" or "dependent" and "passive", and therefore, lack the capacity to succeed as leaders. (National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Engineering Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2006 as cited by Isaac, Kaatz & Carnes, 2012).

In prior studies, leadership roles have been based off one’s sex instead of gender. According to Park, male gender qualities characterized as; aggressive, independent, objective, logical, rational,analytical, decisive, confident, assertive, ambitious, opportunistic and impersonal are distinguished from female gender qualities described as; emotional, sensitive, expressive, cooperative, intuitive, warm, tactful, receptive to ideas, talkative, gentle, empathetic, and submissive (p. 12). These characteristics brings up the notion of how women pursue being leaders because they are opposite of men who dominates the leadership

The main goal for the “Ban Bossy” campaign is to strive for equality among women and men in leadership positions. They are trying to do this by bringing attention to how the words “bossy” and “bitchy “ are used. These words are often used to discourage women from entering leadership roles. This discouragement has caused very few women to obtain leadership positions. During this presentation there were four women speakers whom currently hold leadership positions at Oregon State University, their names were; Dr. Indria Rajagoapl, Dr. Julie Greenwood, Luhui Whitebear, and Dr. Susie Brubaker-Cole. Each of these women were asked three questions that had to do with leadership.

The studies observed that women tend to adopt a more transformational and participative initiative style while men were seen to embrace more dictatorial and disciplined styles (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). The research studies likewise found that the style chosen by most women for the most part ends up being helpful for authoritative adequacy, for the most part coordinating the arrangement of reward, inspiration, expectation, and eagerness among others (Mohr & Wolfram, 2008). These differences in gender leadership styles may influence the way the coach approaches his or her coaching method to be more effective. For example, women in leadership are described as having a softer verbal tone than men who often have a more authoritative tone (Mohr & Wolfram, 2008) which can be offensive if a coach uses an authoritative tone unnecessarily or constantly with a woman

Thesis statement: Leadership depends on the leader’s leadership style and there way of communicating ideas rather than the leader themselves. Both women and men believe in similar leadership styles however women prefer a more participative leadership approach.

Despite the fact that Northouse (2016) offers many reasons why gender should not matter in leadership, it does still matter. Eagly & Johnson and van Engen & Willemsen (as cited by Northouse, 2016) state that “one robust gender difference found across settings is that women led in more democratic, or participative manner than men” (p. 402). Female leaders have also been shown to use more adaptive and transformational leadership styles, but Ayman, Korabik, and Morris (as cited by Northouse, 2016) point out that male subordinates still devalue these female leaders despite the fact that their leadership style predicts effectiveness (p. 402). Eagly, Karau, and Makhijani (as cited by Northouse, 2016) conducted a study that showed women to be just

Miranda’s leadership style in The Devil Wears Prada is pitiless as she wants her employees to do everything she wants without questioning. She keeps them on toes and for sure this helps the organization to expand in the fashion world. Miranda is a leader quick witted and ruthless and she never accepted anything less than perfect from her employees (Ryan, N. 2007.pp 20)

In 1960 John R. P French and Bertram Raven identified five bases of power accessible to managers (Victor, 2015). These five sources of power are legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, and referent (Jones & George, 2015, p. 435). Legitimate power not with the person; is granted to the position held in an organization’s hierarchy. Reward power is gained by rewarding subordinates for jobs well done, however the rewards must the expectancy of subordinates or the power ultimately fails. Coercive power is based on using fear to intimidate subordinates to carry out tasks. Expert power is based in the distinct knowledge, skills, and expertise that a leader possesses. Referent power is a function of the personal characteristics of leader that result

As the author points out, the figures on women in leadership is staggering in disparity. The article takes time to focus on identifying and highlighting reasons what makes a successful leader. Having an opportunity to attend a leadership meeting, in which we discussed improving inclusion at my company, this article presented many of the same reasons that as a company we tried to understand, “Why do we not have more women in leadership?” This article really underscores that in order for a business to survive and grow or for that matter, any organization to flourish you need to find individuals that embody the above-mentioned leadership traits not just seniority.

More and more women are rising to the leadership challenge, even in some of the most male-dominated industries. The increase in the number of women attending college, the increasing number of women in the workplace or starting their own business has demonstrated to men who own businesses that women can be both managers and mothers, thus showing their male counterpart that women can in fact "do it all".

The purpose of this article was to examine women’s and men’s leadership styles, the effectiveness of the different leadership styles, and the true determination of effectiveness as a woman leader (Appelbaum et al, 2003, p. 43). The article present research conducted for theories examined. Comparing this week’s work assignment to this article, I notice a linkage to a few items. The comparable list that is closely related to parts of theories in the reading assignment are gender stereotypes; different leadership style effectiveness; developmental opportunity, and experience. All of these different topics are related to the Leadership Labyrinth.