The increasing number of women entering the ranks of leadership, as well as the problems some women face in their efforts to be hired as leaders or promoted into leadership positions (to include getting equal pay), continues to shine the light on the relationship between gender and leadership.
The reality is that despite the fact that there are relatively more women in leadership positions today than there were a decade ago, there are still relatively few women in top leadership and, in some organizations, even in middle or frontline leadership.
Unfortunately, it is a fact that when women, for example, advance to top leadership positions, special attention often is focused on them and the fact that they are women.
A widespread stereotype of women is that they are nurturing, supportive, and concerned with interpersonal relations. Men are stereotypically viewed as being directive and focused on task accomplishment.
Such stereotypes suggest that women tend to be more relationship oriented as leaders and engage in more consideration behaviors (e.g. focus on people), whereas men are more task oriented and engage in more initiating-structure behaviors. Initiating structure is the extent to which a leader defines leader and group member roles, initiate actions, organizes group activities, and defines how tasks are to be accomplished by the group.
Does the behavior of actual male and female leaders bear out these stereotypes?
Do women leaders lead in different ways than men do?
Are male or female leaders effective as leaders?
Research on the similarities and differences in female and male leaders reveals the following four conditions:
Men and women were seen as displaying more task and social leadership, respectively.
Women used a more democratic or participative style than men, and men used a more autocratic and directive style than women.
Female leadership was associated with more cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication among team members.
Women executives, when rated by their peers, leaders, and direct reports, scored higher than their male counterparts on a variety of effectiveness criteria.
Other research suggests that male and female leaders who have leadership positions in organizations behave in similar ways. Women do not engage in more consideration than men, and men do not engage in more initiating structure than women. However, as noted above, leadership style may vary between women and men and especially in the area of how participative they are.
There are at least two reasons that female leaders may be more participative as leaders than are male leaders.
First, direct reports may try to resist the influence of female leaders more than they do the influence of male leaders.
Some direct reports may never have reported to a woman before, some may incorrectly see a leadership role as being more appropriate for a man than for a woman, and some may just resist being led by a woman. To overcome this resistance and encourage direct reports’ trust and respect, women leaders may adopt a participative approach.
A participative approach to leadership requires high levels of interaction and involvement between a leader and their direct reports’ feelings, and the ability to make decisions that they may be unpopular with direct reports but necessary for goal attainment.
Good interpersonal skills may help female leaders have the effective interactions with their direct reports that are crucial to a participative approach. To the extent that male leaders have more difficulty managing interpersonal relationships, they may shy away from the high levels of interaction with direct reports necessary for true participation.
The key finding from studies on leader behaviors, however, is that male and female leaders do not differ significantly in their propensities to perform leader behaviors. Even though they may be more participative, female leaders do not engage in more consideration or less initiating structure than male leaders.
While it is important to discuss whether or not male and female leaders differ perhaps a more important question is whether they differ in effectiveness. Consistent with the results for leader behaviors, research suggests that across different kinds of organizational settings, female and male leaders tend to be equally effective as leaders.
Thus, there is no logical basis for stereotypes favoring male leaders or for the existence of the “glass ceiling” (an invisible barrier that seems to prevent women from advancing as far as they should in some organizations).
Because women and men are equally effective as leaders, the increasing number of women in the workforce should result in a larger pool of highly qualified candidates for leadership positions in organizations, ultimately enhancing organizational effectiveness.
Leaders interested in achieving a balanced gender leadership, should change overall perception of women in leadership and treat both genders equally.
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