Women Leadership

Leadership - The perception of excellence in business leadership needs to be re-examined. This requires challenging the norms that determine leadership eligibility. Are there drivers that perpetuate a leadership incumbency that excludes females? What is the basis for these drivers?

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 the fight for equality, it is obvious to defend against forms of sexism that are used for antagonization. However, chivalrous attitudes that cast women as weak and in need of men are often ignored. Social psychologists have studied the effects of benevolent sexism using experiments testing one’s performance shortly after being labeled as incompetent. Benevolent sexism is not a series of compliments, but rather a threat to one’s ability to think, learn, and perceive information. The workplace is an environment of which benevolent sexism occurs most often and one of which most are familiar with. Benevolent sexism in business does not allow men and women to achieve the same goals within the work place. Forcing an individual into a social role can limit them to only specific simple tasks that do not allow for maximum personal growth.

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

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.

The perceived contradiction between women and the typical leader role tends to create certain prejudices that causes people to think that leadership is more suited for men than women (Eagly et al., 2003)

It is recommended that women’s leadership programmes are particularly intended to be fit for purpose and that can be utilized across male dominated countries.

Since the beginning of history, men have always been considered the innate leaders of any society. They are considered to be aggressive, dominant, smart for business, and born to be leaders. Conversely, to women who since early history had to break stereotypes to show that they had the potential to work and prove themselves to hold powerful positions at work. Due to the pursuit of women 's rights and equality to men, known as feminism, history has changed. Different from decades ago, women are now entitled to choose between working and staying at home, they have more options than just being a wife and a mom. While, women now have rights, they still carry different stereotypes that sometimes prevent them to be respected and considered for a better position at the workplace. Stereotypes of women such as sensitive, unstable, deep emotional are some of the reasons why women are not considered potential leaders. That is why, as Ariel Levy discusses in her essay “Female Chauvanist Pigs” “Women who 've wanted to be perceived as powerful have long found it more effective to identify with men than to try and elevate the entire female sex to their level” (268). Instead of fulfilling the designated stereotypes, women are showing that they can have a masculine side too. In order to be considered as powerful leaders in a male dominated society, most women try to identify with men by acquiring masculine characteristics.Although, the successful leadership style is masculine, women

Gender stereotypes “reflect percievers’ observations of what people do in daily life” (Eagly and Steffan, 1984) and remain if perceivers continue to observe a certain group engaged in specific activities, which then turn into assumptions that the group is able to perform such tasks. When it comes to gender roles, Heilman (2001) suggests that there are two roles that either gender can possess, agentic or communal. Agentic behaviour is usually associated with men, and portrays the idea of being achievement orientated and taking charge (Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard, and Hogg, 2013). Additionally, leadership and manager attributes such as, problem solving, risk taking, and being active are associated with an agentic, masculine figure (Heilman, 2001). Women, on the other hand, show communal attributes that are associated with care taking, helpful, and relationship orientated. Sczesny’s work (2003) introduced the common assumption that managerial positions are male dominated, “think manager – think male”, and crisis situations are associated with females (Haslam & Ryan, 2007).

To understand differences between male and female leaders, it perhaps is best to understand how these differences are perceived. The perception of an individual can greatly differ depending on the viewpoint of the observer. A subject who is both educated and articulate can be defined by an observer as a worthy and accomplished individual. The observer in this case has assigned positive qualities to describe the subject. The same educated and articulate individual can be defined as conceited and stuck-up by a second observer. The second observer has assigned negative qualities to describe the individual. Suppose an unbiased scientific study concludes the educated and articulate individual is in fact worthy, accomplished, yet conceited and stuck-up, how is this possible and what does this say about the perception of the observers? According to Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, assistant professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, perceptions can and do change within the context of executive business; “successful women may face changing stereotypes as they move up the corporate ladder” (Rosette, 2010). Rosette conducted a study in which she had students evaluate male and female CEO’s. Though female top executives and middle managers were viewed less favorably, at the CEO level they were viewed more favorably than their male counterparts.

In another meta-analysis, Paustain-Underdahl, Walker, and Woehr (2014) used 99 studies conducted between 1962 and 2011, mostly within the United States and Canada. Their goal was to determine how contextual factors including publication date, hierarchal level, percent of male raters, and rating source affect how effective leaders of different genders are seen to be. Their analysis was based on Role Congruity Theory. This theory states that male gender roles and leadership roles are congruent, while female gender roles and leadership roles are not congruent. For this theory, women in leadership positions get disapproval because they are not follow their female gender roles. The researchers found that, while the difference was not significant, men were seen as more effective in earlier publications. All male-dominated organizations favored male leaders over female leaders; however, the difference was only significant in some of them. In female-dominated fields, women leaders were favored as more effective. When comparing different level management positions, female leaders were favored in middle level positions. When the group of people rating the effectiveness of leaders was mostly women, women leaders were favored. Groups of raters that were more gender balanced rated male and female leaders equally. When people were asked to rate their own effectiveness as a leader, the results show male leaders as more effective than female leaders. However, when people rate the

Chemers perceived that there are three theoretical explanations for the main differences between male and female leadership. One difference, the most obvious, is biological differences, which is based around hormones and temperament. The second difference is culturally diversities. This tells that socialized roles are varied per culture. The final difference is structurally determined. The different sexs have very diverse organizational structures (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992; Chemers, 2000). Placing practical differences aside, the essential problem with women leadership roles is actually seen in the attitudes of those around them. The attitudes people have towards women when they are the ones making decisions are a perception with no objectivity, formally known as a stereotype.

For long, the idea of leadership has been associated with men, as evidenced by the idea of “masculinity”, a core idea of the 20th century leadership theories (Lord, DeVader & Alliger, 1986). While it is now commonly accepted in the western world that being a woman is not incompatible with being a leader - even though their num-ber remains limited (Joy, 2008), the question of the role of gender remains. Are there different leadership traits according to the genre? Is there a “feminine” and a “mascu-line” way to lead? In this paper, we try to determine to what extent gender has an im-pact on leadership styles. First, we will look at empirical evidences of the role of gen-der in leadership. We will then

This report will examine factors effecting women’s leadership in the global business culture. I reviewed an article by Catherine Hakim from

Gender and leadership? Leadership and gender? A journey through the landscape of theories start off by giving a statistical summary of percentages of women in higher echelon position in the workforce. With this information in the intro, the article quickly highlights the limited representation of women in exclusive positions in Fortune 500 companies. Next, the paper examines multiple theories why this problem exists in the workforce. The four theories examined are biology and sex; gender role; causal factors; and attitudinal drivers (Appelbaum et al, 2003, p. 44).