Gender and Leadership

Page 218

Would you vote for a female presidential candidate? A 2007 Gallup poll found that 88 percent of Americans said they would vote for a well-qualified female president to lead the nation (Kohut, 2007). But why the concern over a leader’s biological sex? Is there really a difference between men and women as leaders?

With a few key exceptions, research has provided little support for the popular notion that men and women inherently lead differently, though the idea has nonetheless persisted.

With a few key exceptions, research has provided little support for the popular notion that men and women inherently lead differently, though the idea has nonetheless persisted. In essence, we may assume that men have a masculine style of leadership, emphasizing command and control, while women have a feminine style of leadership, emphasizing more nurturing communication environments. For example, some research has suggested that feminine leaders think of organizations as webs of relationships, with leaders at the center of the web, in contrast to the more traditionally masculine view of organizations as pyramids with a leader at the top. Feminine leaders may also view the boundaries between work and personal life as fluid and may communicate their understanding of employees’ need to balance professional and personal obligations (Helgesen, 1990; Mumby, 2000; Rosener, 1990).

Interestingly, a study by Sarah Rutherford (2001) notes that men’s and women’s leadership styles are often dictated by factors other than sex and gender, such as the general communication style of the group or organization. In the marketing department of an organization Rutherford studied, for example, 47 percent of the managers were women, yet the department had a decidedly masculine style, perhaps due to the competitive and confrontational nature of a business that favored a less nurturing response. You might contrast this with the leadership style of Sun-Joo Kim, the chairperson and chief executive of luxury-goods company MCM Worldwide, who leans on motherhood as a model of leadership and seeks to run her business with her heart (Covel, 2008). Such a style might well work in an organization that values and promotes nurturing, sharing, and other traditionally feminine values.

However, regardless of the leadership style encouraged by a division or an organization, 84 percent of female respondents in Rutherford’s study (2001) believed that women manage differently than men did, while 55 percent of men believed the same—supporting the point that the idea of sex differences can be hard to shake. That said, we encourage you to remember the concept of behavioral flexibility discussed in chapter 3. Leadership is a complicated and messy topic, and it seems clear that men and women—when leading a business or even a student organization—must look for opportunities to use the best skills from both traditional styles of leadership at the right time for ethical purposes, regardless of their biological sex.