HC 8: Leadership & Gender Flashcards
Do women have less human capital for leadership positions: Qualifications?
One explanation for the leadership gender gap is that women lack human capital
due to deficiencies in the skills, knowledge, and psychological attributes that enable leadership.
IN 2015 in US – women received 57% of BA degrees, 60% of MSc degrees and 52% of PhD’s
Generally women tend to show better academic performance on average
Do women have less human capital for leadership positions: Experiences?
Young people’s experiences outside of classrooms could build human capital in the form of self-confidence and competitiveness
Schoolboys participate more in sports, while school girls more in social clubs and student government – all of these are associated with
positive effects on well-being, pro-sociality, self-control…etc..
This pattern appears to be similar through higher education (in US)- men still do more sport, women more student government
Limited evidence suggests that competitive sports foster competitive behaviours elsewhere, but the main message is that currently there do
do not appear to be drastic differences in young men’s and women’s behaviors that could explain the bias in leadership
Do women have less human capital for leadership positions: Occupational interests and ambitions?
Women prefer and are employed in jobs with more communal focus- helping and interacting with people.
Meta-analysis investigating sex differences in preferences for job attributes shows that women show stronger preferences for jobs where they can: work with people, help others, have an easy commute, have opportunities for development of social networks
while men showed stronger preferences for solitude.
Women outnumber men as jobseekers in : non-profits, government, public service, health care…etc
Compared to men, women show less interest in political leadership
> Important to note that overall career ambitions are no different between women and men- adequately paid job, commitment to the organisations
Do women have less human capital for leadership positions: Family responsibilities?
It’s clear that women spend more time on childcare and house work
Historically this has also been the case, where women more often than not sacrificed career growth for family obligations
A large-scale study of professionals and managers in Fortune 500 companies found a 36% higher quit rate among women than men (Hom, Roberson, & Ellis, 2008).
This difference attenuated in positions occupied by more women because of a higher male quit rate in such jobs.
Women quit more than men only in the early years of job tenure and more often for family reasons
Part time work is increasing particularly among women – consequence slower career progress, also affects high-status women leaders who reduce their work hours for family reasons more than men do
Meta-analyses suggest there are some differences in leadership styles between women and men
Leadership style:
That is, their typical modes of interacting with their superiors, peers, and subordinates.
In summary, women’s leadership style tends to be more democratic and participative, compared with men’s more autocratic and directive style.
The study found no differences in task oriented versus interpersonally oriented leadership—
the extent to which they emphasized maintaining rules and procedures versus attending to followers’ needs
! Differences in styles are relatively small, and there is a possibility of selection bias
Meta-analyses suggest there are some differences in leadership styles between women and men:
Transformational leadership-
Female managers also tend to adopt a transformational style somewhat more than men do.
Future oriented rather than present oriented and that strengthens organizations by inspiring followers’ commitment and ability to contribute creatively to organizations.
Transformational leadership involves establishing oneself as a role model by gaining followers’ trust and confidence.
By mentoring and empowering followers, such leaders encourage them to develop their full potential and thus to contribute more effectively to their organization.
Meta-analyses suggest there are some differences in leadership styles between women and men:
Transactional leadership-
Transactionally, female managers use more rewards than men do.
Appeal to subordinates’ self-interest by establishing exchange relationships with them. This type of leadership involves clarifying subordinates’ responsibilities, rewarding them for meeting objectives, and correcting them for failing to meet objectives.
Meta-analyses suggest there are some differences in leadership styles between women and men:
Laissez-faire
Men, more than women, attend to subordinates’ failures to meet standards and display the more problematic styles that involve delay in solving problems or being absent or uninvolved at critical times.
General failure to tae responsibility for managing
Are more sex-typical leadership styles more effective?
There is no clear evidence to suggest that democratic- participative leadership style correlates with leader effectiveness
However- moderate levels of assertiveness are effective- too high assertiveness can have detrimental effects
What kind of leadership style is positively correlated to effectiveness?
Transformational leadership and rewarding followers is positively related to effectiveness
What kind of leadership style shows weaker associations with leader effectiveness?
Transactional leadership, punishing, show weaker associations with leader effectiveness
Early studies for The Business Case
Early studies show positive correlation between gender diversity and financial outcomes
so-called business case whereby female leadership is said to bring about higher corporate profits.
Early studies are problematic for multiple reasons: poor statistical control for endogeneity—that is, statistical anomalies such as reverse causation, omitted variables, selection biases, and flawed measures
More recent studies for the Business Case model
Adams and Ferriera (2009) found an overall negative average effect of the gender diversity of corporate boards when controlling for individual firm characteristics.
When firms poorly governed –
Specifically, the presence of female directors reduced attendance problems of boards and increased monitoring of CEOs, holding them accountable for poor performance.
This monitoring benefited firms with weak governance, but was counter productive for firms that were well governed.
> Meta-analysis of 140 studies found a tiny positive effect
Conclusion on the research on gender leaders’ style and effectiveness suggests
research on leaders’ style and effectiveness suggests that style differences between women and men are unlikely to hinder women’s performance as leaders but instead could even enhance their performance. Also, findings on leaders’ effectiveness suggest neither male nor female advantage
Parental Investment Theory
Women’s greater investment in reproduction, lead to women being choosier, and preferences for partners with resource holding potential
The win of the Dominant Man
As a result, ancestral men competed with other men to obtain resources and sexual access to women, and the winners in these competitions were more likely to have their genes carried on to the next generation.
By this logic, men who fared better in these competitions were dominant, aggressive, risk taking, competitive, and status seeking— attributes that facilitated leadership.
Such men’s greater control of resources and higher status facilitated their reproductive success, and these qualities became ingrained in men as evolved traits.
The win of the socially savvy
Extreme environmental variability and changing adaptive challenges present during human evolution (e.g., Richerson & Boyd, 2005), arguing that this evolutionary history would have enhanced cognition, producing humans capable of responding flexibly to environmental changes
Evoked culture
Espousing what is known as an evoked culture approach, they argue that genetically programmed sex differences in qualities such as aggressiveness
and dominance can be differentially evoked by contextual factors (Buss, 2016; van Vugt & Ronay, 2014).
From the evoked culture perspective, whether people favor leaders with masculine or feminine qualities would depend on the prevailing conditions.
Leadership tendencies and heritability
Leadership tendencies are partially heritable,
but also responsive to socialization
Main traits in Leadership tendencies and heritability:
Agressiveness & assertiveness
Men also score higher on assertiveness measures: particularly self-report
Also this advantage in assertiveness is reflected in men’s preferences for traditional, hierarchical , commanding and controlling management behaviors
Main traits in Leadership tendencies and heritability:
Competitiveness
Men compete more than women- possibly reflecting both overconfidence, and enjoying the competition
There are some context effects however- while men compete more for financial rewards, there appears to be
little difference between men and women when competing for benefits for children
While these traits appear to be male-biased, there is little evidence to suggest that these traits contribute to effectiveness
Main traits in Leadership tendencies and heritability: Personality
Majority of research focused on Big 5
traits positively associated with emergence:
extraversion, openness to experience and, conscientiousness have small to moderate associations with leader emergence, and along with agreeableness, also relate to performing effectively as a leader. In contrast, neuroticism relates negatively to leader emergence and effectiveness
Women on average score higher on neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness
No differences in overall intelligence
Prejudice and Discrimination
- Women face higher standards for promotion (prejudice = vooroordelen)
- Organisational studies show that despite equal performance women get promoted less/ were rated as less promotable
- Evidence of discrimination also comes from experiments that compare the evaluation of male and female job applicants with identical qualifications.
Where may prejudice against femeale leaders stem from?
Prejudice against female leaders may stem from incongruity
According to role incongruity theory, prejudice toward female leaders derives from gender roles—consensual beliefs about the attributes of women and men;
these beliefs are either descriptive expectations about what women and men are like or injunctive expectations about what women and men ought to be like
Male stereotype:
Male stereotype:
agentic, assertive, dominant, competent, authoritative
Consequences female stereotypes
Double standards
On one hand, women are perceived as lacking the agency to be effective leaders; on the other hand, because of injunctive norms about female communion, female leaders are perceived as lacking sufficient warmth if they behave too agentically.
The challenge for women leaders is to balance the leader role’s demand for agency and the female role’s demand for communion, creating a double bind.
As a result of the double bind, female leaders also face a double standard, such that for comparable levels of performance, female leaders overall receive somewhat lower evaluations than male leaders, especially in male dominated settings
Organizational obstacles: male biased job design
Organizations often establish norms that appear on the surface to be gender-neutral, but that inherently advantage men (e.g., Martin, 2003).
In particular, many organizations have increased demands on their managerial and professional workforce, requiring long hours and personal sacrifices.
Such demands implicitly presume an ideal employee that fits a traditional male image, with few outside responsibilities and complete devotion to the organization
These demands are especially pronounced in high-status executive and professional positions, where long hours lead to faster advancement and higher pay
Organizational obstacles: Limited options for building social capital?
Women’s greater family responsibilities can also undermine their ability to form work-related networks, which depend on socializing at bars and restaurants after work and through activities such as golfing or attending sports events. Regardless of whether women are welcome in such venues, mothers no doubt find that such activities interfere with time with their children. Consequently, women have less access to powerful career networks than men do
Organizational obstacles: Glass cliff
In general, managers view female employees as having less career motivation
than male employees and treat them accordingly (Hoobler et al., 2014).
Therefore, it is not surprising that corporate women more than men exit
corporations or shift into staff management roles instead of the line management roles
that typically lead to senior management (Barsh & Yee, 2012).
However, women are more often given highly risky, high-level assignments where they are likely to fail,
Organizational obstacles: In-group favouritism and queen bees?
Providing evidence that senior women benefit the advancement of female subordinates,
one national sample of 20,000 U.S. firms found that the percentage of women in senior management
predicted subsequent increases in the percentage of women in middle management
Moreover, not all senior women are equally supportive of female subordinates: Some are queen bees, who distance
themselves from junior women (Derks, Van Laar, & Ellemers, 2016).
Although this behavior exacerbates gender inequality, it appears to be a response to existing gender discrimination
and the social identity threats experienced by token female leaders.
In conclusion, organizational structure and culture implicitly favor men. Because men typically lack women’s domestic duties, men can more easily satisfy the corporate demands for long work hours and continuous availability.
- Men prefer to hire men over women for (3)
- Men are more likely to get hired for (2)
- Men prefer to hire men over women for male-dominated, female-dominated, and integrated jobs
- Men are more likely to get hired for a male-dominated positions, or for positions of high status and income
Female stereotype:
Female stereotype:
communal, warm, supportive, kind, helpful
