Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

📜 The female leadership advantage. An evaluation of the evidence

6 min read

Highlights

Around the 00s, press begins to praise that it is women who should lead:

Even more startling is Business Week’s subsequent cover story on the ‘‘New Gender Gap,’’ maintaining that ‘‘Men could become losers in a global economy that values mental power over might’’ (Conlin, 2003, p. 78).

…stating that newer complexities and interdependencies are making male command-and-control outdated.

Although the specifics of these views vary, most such discussions emphasize that leader roles are changing to meet the demands of greatly accelerated technological growth, increasing workforce diversity, intense competitive pressures on corporations and other organizations, and a weakening of geopolitical boundaries. As Kanter (1997, p. 59) wrote (…)

Faced with extraordinary levels of complexity and interdependency, they watch traditional sources of power erode and the old motivational tools lose their magic.

And it may be true according to social science:

…we show that a careful sifting through social scientific evidence, separating wheat from chaff, suggests that contemporary journalists, while surely conveying too simple a message, are expressing some of the new realities associated with women’s rise into elite leadership roles.

Sex differences and similarities in leadership style

Task-oriented vs. interpersonally oriented. Autocratic vs. democratic styles

Although equalized by the organization, it does seem that women are more democratic than men.

Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire styles

Refers to Transformational, Transactional, and Laissez-Faire Leadership Styles A Meta-Analysis Comparing Women and Men.

Transformational leaders state future goals, develop plans to achieve those goals, and innovate, even when their organization is generally successful. By mentoring and empowering followers, such leaders help followers to develop their potential and thus to contribute more effectively to their organization.

…transactional leaders, who appeal to subordinates’ self-interest by establishing exchange relationships with them. Transactional leadership involves managing in the conventional sense of clarifying subordinates’ responsibilities, rewarding them for meeting objectives, and correcting them for failing to meet objectives.

In addition, researchers distinguished a laissez-faire style that is marked by an overall failure to take responsibility for managing.

Note that even if the effects are small…

Similarly, small biases against women in performance evaluations, when repeated over individuals and occasions, can produce large consequences in terms of the distribution ofwomen and men in senior management (Martell, 1999; Martell, Lane, & Emrich, 1996).

Which could be because…

(c) the glass ceiling and the associated double standard for the selection and promotion of managers may produce more highly skilled female than male leaders.

Paradoxically, the discriminatory disadvantage that women encounter in male-dominated environments can sometimes produce the appearance of a female competence advantage. Given impediments to achieving high-level leadership roles, those women who do rise in such hierarchies are typically the survivors of discriminatory processes and therefore tend to be very competent. This increment of competence, driven at least in part by a double standard, is no doubt one factor underlying social scientific evidence and journalistic claims of female advantage (e.g., Eagly et al., 2003; Sharpe, 2000).

Transformational leadership is better and the other two are worse.

…a meta-analysis of 39 studies showed positive correlations between effectiveness and all components of transformational leadership as well as the contingent reward component of transactional leadership, the one aspect of transactional leadership on which women exceeded men (Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996).

Prejudice and discrimination against women as leaders

Unfortunately, similar to 📜 Gender Stereotypes and Workplace Bias, there is a mismatch between the stereotype of women (communal) and the stereotype of leader (agentic). And even if they are agentic, then they are rejected as “too masculine”. This is worse in male-dominated professions.

Even worse, since this conditioning affects women themselves, who then manifest less preferences for leadership roles.

The effectiveness of male and female leaders

… women are slightly more likely than men to lead in the ways that managerial experts consider particularly effective (…) However, we have also presented evidence of prejudice against female leaders and potential leaders in masculine domains.

So even if women lead in effective ways, their true effectiveness is lower because of the role incongruity (that is, because men reject them):

(a) women were less effective than men to the extent that leadership positions were male dominated; (b) women were less effective relative to men as the proportion of male subordinates increased; (c) women were less effective relative to men the greater the proportion of men among the raters of leader effectiveness (see also Bowen, Swim, & Jacobs, 2000); (d) women were substantially less effective than men in military organizations, a traditionally masculine environment, but modestly more effective than men in educational, governmental, and social service organizations;

But, hey, middle managers:

(e) women fared particularly well in effectiveness, relative to men, in middle-level leadership positions, as opposed to line or supervisory positions. This finding is consistent with the characterization of middle management as favoring interpersonal skills that are in the more communal repertoire (e.g., Paolillo, 1981).

Like Hillary Clinton in 📖 The myth of the nice girl:

[Hillary] Clinton explained that, as secretary of state, she had an extremely high approval rating, but as soon as she announced her run for president, it dropped significantly. (p. 20)

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But things are changing

As women shift more of their time from domestic to paid labor, they assume the personal characteristics required to succeed in these new roles (View Highlight)

Some research indicates that the incongruity between leader roles and the female gender role have diminished. (View Highlight)

consistent with the idea of cultural lag (Brinkman & Brinkman, 1997), the ideological aspects of culture, including stereotypes, are slower to change than shifts in social structure such as the actual content of roles. Therefore, gradual change in stereotypes of leaders is not inconsistent with change in leadership roles to emphasize qualities that are more consistent with the female gender role than traditional characterizations of leadership. (View Highlight)

Organizational changes that are not necessarily driven by lawsuits have also increase the representation of women in leadership positions. To the extent that organizations have become less hierarchical and more driven by results than ‘‘old boy’’ networks, they reward talent over gender and present a more level playing field than do traditional organizations (Klein, 2000). In addition, the culture of many organizations now embraces the benefits of including women and minorities among their leaders. Such organizations may support women by encouraging mentoring and networking and establishing more family-friendly policies (View Highlight)

Appointments of women signal an organization’s departure from past practices and help it to capture the symbols of innovation and progressive change. (View Highlight)

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