Gender and Leadership. Gary N. Powell

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СКАЧАТЬ leadership (Powell & Butterfield, 1979), to be described in Chapter 2, was conducted with Tony Butterfield, my former dissertation supervisor who became my life-long collaborator, colleague, mentor, and friend. At about the same time, early in my career at the University of Connecticut, I was given the opportunity to teach a graduate elective on any topic I wanted. I decided to teach a course with a unique title, “Women and Men in Management.” The title was chosen to legitimize the course's having a male instructor (me), increase its appeal to male as well as female students, and call attention to the fact that people typically said “men and women” in that order rather than the order in the course title. To make a long story short, the course's first offering drew enough students for it to be offered on a regular basis; further, the course won the AACSB Committee on Equal Opportunity for Women Innovation Award, which inspired me to write a scholarly book with the same title “based on the award-winning course” (Sage, the publisher, was impressed).

      What came to be the first edition of Women and Men in Management (Powell, 1988) chronicled the major transformations in the nature of female and male roles that had occurred in the workplace in recent years and looked ahead to what changes might be yet to come. It presented two diametrically opposed scenarios for the roles that women vis-à-vis men would play in the workplace of the future. In the positive scenario, all employees are treated according to the human capital they bring to the job – knowledge, skills, abilities, education, relevant work experience, past performance, and so on (Stumpf & London, 1981) – and given the chance to reach their leadership potential regardless of their gender. In the negative scenario, gender stereotypes and roles are the primary basis for treating others, predicting their behavior, and evaluating how they behave regardless of their human capital. The book concluded by basically saying “it's up to all of us” as to which scenario would be more likely to prevail in the future (Powell, 1988). However, given all the workplace changes that had occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, the overall message of the book was hopeful.

      Since then, subsequent editions of Women and Men in Management (Powell, 1993, 2011, 2019; Powell & Graves, 2003) as well as subsequent articles in what came to be my research program on issues regarding gender and leadership have offered regular assessments of the state of affairs regarding these issues. However, as I have researched and written about this topic for over four decades, my perspective on these issues has gradually evolved from being more optimistic (e.g., “Sex discrimination in leadership positions favoring men has traditionally existed. However, there has recently been considerable growth in the proportion of women in management, a positive sign.”) to being more pessimistic (e.g., “Sex discrimination in leadership positions favoring men persists, although its nature has evolved. Further, growth in the proportion of women in management, including in top management positions, has stalled.”) If the social goal of research on the linkage between gender and leadership is to eliminate the need for such research (i.e., to foster achievement of the positive scenario described above), I do not anticipate that this goal will be attained anytime in the foreseeable future.

      Hence, this book. I believe that we still need to talk about the linkage between gender and leadership. Something troubling and problematic is still going on regarding this linkage that calls for our unwavering attention as scholars.

      Organization of the Book

      The next four chapters of the book explore research questions regarding specific aspects of the linkage between gender and leadership. Chapter 2 addresses the frequently researched question, “Why do leader stereotypes emphasize masculinity?” Chapter 3 addresses a complementary question, “Why are there so few women in top management positions?” Chapter 4 addresses a question that has emerged in recent years, “Is there a female advantage or disadvantage in the managerial ranks?” Chapter 5 addresses a question ripped from today's headlines: “Why do (some) men in top management feel free to sexually harass women?”

      The latter question is seldom addressed in the literature on the linkage between gender and leadership. However, I believe that it belongs in this book because it focuses on a type of behavior directed by mostly male leaders in positions with considerable power towards mostly lower-level female employees or job applicants with less power that is especially problematic, thereby rendering it a question pertaining to gender and leadership.

      Chapter 6 serves as the concluding chapter of the book. It addresses the question, “What actions would work toward undoing the linkage between gender and leadership?” In raising this question, it responds to the notion that if social systems can become gendered or “do gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987), they can also take steps toward “undoing gender” (Deutsch, 2007).

      2 Why Do Leader Stereotypes Emphasize Masculinity?

      The linkage between gender and leader stereotypes has been one of the most researched topics in the field of gender and leadership. Research on the topic began in earnest in the 1970s, or at the time of the women's liberation movement that was exhibited in many nations (Binard, 2017; Magarey, 2018; Yelton-Stanley & Howard, 2000). Its purpose was to seek to explain why there were so few women in management positions worldwide (Powell, 1988). Although the proportion of female managers has increased in virtually all nations since those times (Powell & Graves, 2003), this linkage has continued to receive a considerable amount of scholarly attention; Koenig and colleagues (2011) conducted separate meta-analyses of research following different paradigms of the linkage that incorporated almost 200 effect sizes.

      In this chapter, I first consider why gender stereotypes, leader stereotypes, and the linkage between them are important to examine. Next, I review the research into and theories of the linkage between gender and leader stereotypes, including my own research since the 1970s, followed by research with new results included and theories of change in this linkage. I conclude with the implications of the linkage for individuals who aspire to or already occupy leader roles.

      Stereotyping

      Stereotypes are defined as “beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups” (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996, p. 240). Stereotyping is a ubiquitous human phenomenon (Fiske, 1998), partly because stereotypes are so easy to use. When people are identifiable as members of a larger group, stereotyping makes it convenient for others to remember and categorize them. Stereotypes may be accurate or inaccurate, and positive or negative, in their depiction of the average group member. However, a stereotype of members of a particular group (e.g., women, men, leaders) is unlikely to characterize all group members accurately.

      Stereotyping is a cognitive activity, related to learning (or imagining) and remembering distinctions between various groups of people. People who display prejudice, or a negative attitude toward members of other groups, are engaging in an emotional activity. Discrimination, a behavioral activity, is exhibited in how people treat and make decisions about members of other groups (Fiske, 1998). We have reason to be concerned about all three of these phenomena in the workplace. All of us may be targets of these phenomena, as well as engage in these phenomena. Further, negative stereotyping of members of a group may lead to prejudice and discrimination directed towards them. In this chapter, we focus on stereotyping on the basis of both gender and the leader role.

      As noted in Chapter 1, gender stereotypes represent beliefs about the psychological traits that are characteristic of females vis-à-vis males. They are typically characterized by two independent dimensions, masculinity and femininity (Bem, 1974). According to gender stereotypes, males are high in “masculine” traits (also known as agentic traits) such as independence, aggressiveness, and dominance; in contrast, females are high in “feminine” traits (also known as communal traits) such as gentleness, sensitivity to the feelings of others, and tactfulness (Ellemers, 2018; Kite et al., 2008). Gender stereotypes may affect workplace outcomes by serving as the basis for differential treatment of and decisions about women vis-à-vis СКАЧАТЬ