In the past, leadership was predominantly associated with command and control. The lifestyle of ancient tribes and communities required the leader to be physically stronger than all other members. Later on, other competences and personality traits such as age, wisdom, and lineage were taken into consideration. With very rare exceptions (Cleopatra, Empress Theodora, Elizabeth I of England, and others), females were common-sensically excluded from ruling positions. Present-day leadership, however, refers to none of this. It signifies the process of articulating a vision to a group of followers and motivating, influencing, and directing them towards the achievement of such vision, be it within political, military, organizational, educational, or other settings. So while the aforementioned historical view of females-as-leaders is, to some extent, understandable, why is it that the term “leader” itself—in all contexts—still often brings to mind a picture of a male, not a female? B. Morgan in “Gender Differences in Leadership” specifically focuses on gender differences in organizational leadership, highlighting the sex-related stereotypes that inhibit women from moving up the organizational ladder, and recounting a brief history of how thinking about gender differences has changed over the past century. She examines the organizational effects of leadership styles employed by men and women and argues for the acceptance of non-gender-linked leadership styles.
According to the writer, even though women are, nowadays, assuming more leadership positions than before (though more often only middle and low ones), the picture of a leader in our collective consciousness, or at least, in many people’s implicit leadership theories, is still associated with maleness. Many people when asked to describe the characteristics of a leader tend to use masculine adjectives such as competitive, assertive, aggressive, and the like. Conversely, women are, for the most part, described with “feminine” adjectives such as warm, expressive, dependent, conforming, and submissive. Based on these definitions, women—since they are not men—are unquestionably excluded from leadership positions. These associations and somewhat tacit prejudices which result in gender discrimination within the field of leadership are not fact-based or empirically proven (as the writer will prove later). Rather, they are socially and culturally constructed stereotypes that perceive women as less competent than men. The customary, thus, is a man being a leader; the aberration is a woman being a leader, and even in this case, she is supposed to fit into the stereotypical leadership mold by neglecting her feminine characteristics and adopting masculine characteristics. The women might be a leader as long as she can act like a man.
Research has shown that women assume far fewer leadership positions than their male counterpart. Contemporary leadership scholars and researchers no longer view these disparities as the result of innate, sex-linked, genetically determined psychological and cognitive factors which make males more competent than females and thus worthy of leadership positions. Nonetheless, this has not always been the case. In the 1940s, trait leadership theorists held that certain “exceptional” individuals were born with specific universal characteristics and attributes which distinguish them as leaders from the rest of non-leaders. The name alone of The Great Man theory, the most prominent trait theory, is enough to conclude that masculinity was one of the prerequisites.
By the 1950s and 1960s, trait theory was proven invalid, and new situational and contingency theories began to emerge. It was noticed, however, that women still assumed low job status than men; so psychologists carried on research to investigate the person-centered variables (neglecting situational and environmental factors) as an attempt to explain why women generally performed less than men within organizational contexts. In this regard, Henning and Jardim (1977) and Harrang (1977), for instance, advised women to learn the language and customs of men if they wanted to succeed. Later on, with Kanter’s (1977) In Men and Women of the Corporation, attention was shifted to external situational variables. The lower status of women was considered to be the result of, not innate gender differences, but the unequal distribution of power and opportunities.
Another factor that drove leadership scholars to empirically investigate gender-related differences was, according to the writer, the contradictions in the literature between leadership studies and other social sciences. While most leadership scholars acknowledge dissimilarities between men and women who occupy leadership positions in organizations, Social sciences have generally maintained that there are no reliable differences. Eagly and Johnson located 162 studies about gender and leadership and conducted a meta-analysis to provide a systematic quantitative integration of the available research in which leadership styles of men and women were compared and statistical analyses were performed on the resulting data (Morgan, 1992). The results are as follows: men and women, indeed, exhibit some differences in their leadership styles. Female leaders were more people-oriented, established more connections with their followers, and employed a democratic leadership style. Male leaders, on the other hand, were more inclined to authoritative leadership styles and built fewer relationships with their followers. The authors speculate that these differences are due to personal as well as social skills. Women had highly developed interpersonal skills than men; they were also not as readily accepted so they had to allow input into their decision making.
Research has proven that women and men differ in their leadership styles. As mentioned before, women are more participative and people-oriented than men. For this reason, men are typically associated with Bass’ transactional leadership style; they rely on their legitimate power (that comes from their organizational position) and employ contingent rewards and punishments to push their subordinates to carry on their work and complete tasks. Typically, they are competitive, though, decisive, and in control. Contrarily, women are characterized as transformational leaders, ascribing their power not to their position but to their personal characteristics. Compared with men, they are more cooperative, emotional, supportive, and compassionate. Nonetheless, as the writer asserts in the beginning of the article, these are typical overgeneralizations. Many differences exist between the same gender just as they exist across-gender. A third style of leadership is the androgynous style. Individuals who adopt this style combine both feminine traits (cooperativeness, concern for people…) and masculine traits (dominance, assertiveness, competitiveness…).
Though the female leadership style has been proven to be effective in many contexts, not all organizations—according to the writer—adopted it. Eisler (1991) distinguishes between two types of social organization models: the first one—dominator model—is marked by patriarchy (i.e., male dominance), hierarchy and authoritarianism, and use of institutionalized violence. The second, partnership model, is marked by equal power relations between women and men, less institutionalized violence, and democracy and egalitarianism.
Clearly, with countless contemporary examples of successful female leaders in all leadership contexts (educational, organizational, and even military and political), women, just like men, can be effective leaders. In terms of leadership style, though situational leadership theories assert that each style is suitable for a certain situation—that is, men’s typical style is appropriate for certain situations and the same for women’s style—, research has proven that transformational leadership (associated with females) can be effective in far more situations than transactional leadership (associated with males). As long as erroneous, groundless stereotypes about leadership and about women are eradicated, being an effective or a non-effective leader will no longer be conditional on inherent gender-linked characteristics. With the proper character traits and competence suitable for the situation, any woman
Eisler, R. (1991). Women, men, and management: Redesigning ourfuture.
Hennig, M., & Jardim, A. (1977). The managerial woman. GardenCity, NY: Anchor Press
Harragan, B. L. (1977). Games mother never taught you: Corporategamesmanship for women. New York: Rawson Assoc.
Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. New York:Basic Books.
Moran,Barbara. (1992). Gender Differences in Leadership. Library Trends.
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