Gender and Leadership

1. Gender and Leadership

2. Outline • Class Debate • Gender and Leadership Style • Class Exercise: Breaking the Glass Ceiling • Stereotypes and Discrimination of Women Leaders • Assignment 3

3. Class Debate • “Women lead differently than men”

4. Leader styles and gender • Let’s take a look at what the empirical research tells us… • Leadership style findings from experimental settings tend to be gender stereotypic • Gender stereotypic behavior is observed • Organizational studies primarily do not show these gender differences • However, women’s styles are more democratic than men’s… • Might this reflect special legitimacy problems?

5. Leader styles and gender • Study by Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt • Women scored higher on transformational scales and contingent reward scales • Men scored higher on management by exception and laissez faire leadership • Women were more effective than men • What implications do these findings have for the effectiveness of female and male leaders?

6. Women Leaders • Women are underrepresented in elite leadership positions • Although… • Women represent 47% US workforce • Women now occupy a considerable portion of middle management positions • Women earn 51% of the bachelor degrees and 46% of all advanced degrees • They still only hold… • About 4% of top officer positions in Fortune 500 companies • 3% of the most highly paid officer positions • .4% of CEO positions • Only 6 women CEO in Fortune 500 Companies • Glass ceiling

7. Exercise: Breaking the Glass Ceiling In your group, explore what forces are at work behind the aforementioned data. Compose a list of factors that contribute to women’s relative lack of top leadership roles. Then devise some recommended steps to make the workplace and its leadership more equitable along the lines of gender.

8. Role Congruity Theory • The descriptive and prescriptive aspects of the female gender stereotype are incongruent with the leadership role • That incongruity leads to prejudice against women leaders.

9. Stereotypes • Cognitive structures that influence the way individuals process information regarding groups & group members • Descriptive • Describe stereotypic beliefs about the attributes of women and men • Prescriptive • Prescribe how men and women should, or ought to, be

10. Descriptive StereotypesHeilman, 2001

11. Prescriptive Stereotypes • Not only should individuals conform to their stereotypic description, but they should also avoid behaviors that are incompatible with the stereotype • Ideal women and men are described in stereotypic terms • Women and men’s ideal selves are stereotypically differentiated • People hold stereotypically sex differentiated attitudes about the roles and responsibilities of women and men in society

12. Good Leadership is a Manly Business …or so many think…. • Role congruity theory maintains that the agentic qualities deemed necessary in the leadership role are incompatible with the predominantly communal qualities associated with women • Leadership prototypes are more congruent with male stereotypes than female stereotypes • Good managers are described predominantly by masculine attributes • Stereotypically male qualities are thought necessary to being a successful executive

13. "There are some people here who probably don't want a woman as the No. 1. They are comfortable with women in the No. 2 position.“ –Legislative Aide, San Francisco Chronicle Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. • Faces “cynics and doubters” who don’t believe a woman is capable of running Hewlett Packard

14. Biases in the Perception and Evaluation of Women Leaders • Two competing expectations: • those based on gender stereotypes and those based on leadership roles • Two forms of prejudice • The descriptive components of the gender role and the leader role leads to perceptions that women are less qualified for elite leadership positions. • The prescriptive aspects of the female gender role leads to less favorable evaluations of women leaders when they demonstrate behaviors that fulfill prescriptions of the leader role • These two forms of prejudice lead to • Less favorable attitudes toward female than male leaders • Greater difficulty for women to attain top leadership roles • Greater difficulty for these women to be viewed as effective in these roles.

15. Biases in the Perception and Evaluation of Women Leaders • Empirical evidence: • Male politicians seen as better suited for pursuing the more agentic tasks of public policy • Directing the military, the economy, foreign relations • Female political leaders as more appropriately suited for more communal tasks • Helping the poor, working for peace • While women managers are seen as more similar to successful managers than women in general, they are rated as more different from successful middle managers than are male managers

16. Biases in the Perception and Evaluation of Women Leaders • More empirical evidence: • Women are presumed to be less competent leaders than men and less worthy of leadership positions • Eagly, Makhijani, and Klonsky’s (1992) meta-analysis revealed that male and female leaders are evaluated differently. • Male and female leaders are evaluated equally favorably when using a stereotypically feminine leadership style (democratic) • Female leaders were evaluated unfavorably when they used a stereotypically male leadership style (autocratic and directive) • Women were particularly devalued when the raters were men. • In sum, substantial empirical evidence reveals that stereotypes can significantly alter the perception and evaluation of female leaders

17. An Empirical Test of Role Congruity Theory • Assignment 3 • Imagine that you are a researcher and your next project is to empirically test one aspect of role congruity theory. In one page or less, describe at least one testable hypothesis (that is, a specific testable proposition) that can be derived from role congruity theory. Additionally, discuss a specific way in which a researcher could feasibly go about testing your hypothesis.