Gender and Leadership. Gary N. Powell

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СКАЧАТЬ on the basis of gender) (Heilman, 2012; Koch et al., 2015; Perry et al., 1994).

      The masculinity and femininity dimensions of gender stereotypes may be further divided into independent constructs; that is, there may be multiple masculinities and multiple femininities (Broadbridge & Simpson, 2011; Lewis, 2014). For example, masculinity may be subdivided into a personal dimension that focuses on independence and a social dimension that focuses on aggressiveness and dominance (Choi et al., 2009); further, there may be many variations of “hegemonic masculinity,” or patterns of practices that go beyond stereotypes to maintain men's dominance over women (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). However, the terms masculinity and femininity refer to meaningful concepts for people and are an important part of their gender schemas (Bem, 1993). Thus, although the concepts themselves may be broken down further, I will refer to masculinity and femininity as global constructs in the book.

      Gender stereotypes evoke strong reactions. For example, after the American Psychological Association (2018) issued its first-ever guidelines on counseling boys and men, some praised the guidelines as “reimagining boys in the 21st century” (Way, 2019, p. 926) while others criticized the guidelines as defining masculinity as an illness (Komisar, 2019). A poll of British young men found that although most had a negative view of masculinity, they felt pressured to “man up” by conforming to the male gender stereotype (Petter, 2018). Still others have argued that masculinity receives too much attention and the importance of “doing femininity” needs to be recognized (Fondas, 1997; Lewis, 2014).

      Leader stereotypes represent beliefs about the traits that are characteristic of leaders or managers. In the leadership literature, leader stereotypes are often referred to as individuals’ implicit leadership theories (Junker & van Dick, 2014), or beliefs about leadership in general. They evoke less strong reactions than gender stereotypes. However, they may also significantly affect workplace outcomes, in that candidates for selection or promotion who are stereotyped, whether accurately or not, as deficient in the traits needed for a specific leader position will be unlikely to attain the position.

      If both gender and leader stereotypes have these kinds of effects, the linkage between the two types of stereotypes is likely to have significant effects as well. Hence, this chapter.

      The Linkage between Gender and Leader Stereotypes

      Research

      At the time I began my scholarly career, there had been little published research on the linkage between gender and leadership, and leadership theories had been based almost entirely on studies of male managers. A classic 1974 compendium of research results, Handbook of Leadership (Stogdill, 1974), discovered few studies that examined female leaders exclusively or even included female leaders in their samples. When female managers were present in organizations being studied, they were usually excluded from the analysis because their inclusion might lead to distorted results!

      However, Bem (1974) had recently argued that more effective people are high in both masculine (agentic) and feminine (communal) traits, or “androgynous.” Consistent with the feminist spirit of the time, the concept of androgyny received “instant celebrity” (Bem, 1993, p. 121) in the psychology of women literature. Androgyny was soon found to be associated with high self-esteem, a flexible response to situations rather than a rigid emphasis on feminine or masculine behaviors, and a host of other positive outcomes (Lenney, 1979). In short, androgyny was proposed as an ideal combination of “the best of both worlds.” I found the concept appealing, as it was consistent with my own values (“let's get rid of expectations that people conform to gender stereotypes and roles if we can”) and had apparent benefits.

      When I first read Bem (1974), a light bulb went on in my head. I asked Tony Butterfield, “If the androgyny concept has not yet been applied in work settings, why not apply it ourselves?” As we later put it (Powell & Butterfield, 1979, p. 396), “If the more effective person is androgynous, the more effective manager may be androgynous as well.” The proportion of women in management positions had been increasing, which may have contributed to the replacement of masculine standards for managerial behavior with androgynous standards. Accordingly, we optimistically hypothesized a linkage between gender and leader stereotypes such that the “good manager” would be perceived as androgynous (Powell & Butterfield, 1979). To test the hypothesis, we surveyed samples of undergraduate business students and part-time (i.e., evening) MBA students in the mid-1970s; respondents were asked to describe both themselves and a good manager on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974), an instrument with separate scales assessing the independent dimensions of masculinity and femininity. Our hypothesis was soundly rejected. Instead, the good manager was perceived as possessing predominantly masculine traits by women and men in both populations.

      Meanwhile, the proportion of women in management positions was continuing to rise (Powell, 1988). Also, in response to criticism of some of the items in the original BSRI, Bem had released a “new and improved” version of the BSRI, called the Short BSRI (Bem, 1981), that contained half of the original items and was found to be a more valid and reliable instrument (Choi et al., 2009). Therefore, we decided to survey the same two populations in the mid-1980s, now using the Short BSRI, while posing the same optimistic hypothesis: The good manager would be perceived as androgynous (Powell & Butterfield, 1989). In short, we were arguing that “we want a recount” of the earlier results with new data. Once again, the hypothesis was soundly rejected, both for the new data and for the earlier data re-analyzed using only the items included in the Short BSRI. The good manager was still perceived in predominantly masculine terms.

      A decade later, Tony and I, this time with Jane Parent (Powell et al., 2002), revisited the linkage between gender and leader stereotypes with new data collected from the same two populations in the late 1990s. For this study, we got the message conveyed by our earlier results and reluctantly gave up on arguing for the applicability of the androgyny concept to descriptions of a good manager. Instead, because the proportion of women managers was still rising (Powell & Graves, 2003), we examined whether change in leader stereotypes in relation to gender stereotypes, perhaps due to this change in the composition of the managerial ranks, had occurred over time. Accordingly, we hypothesized that the good manager would be perceived in newly-collected data as less masculine than in data collected earlier. We found some support for this hypothesis for both undergraduate and part-time MBA students. However, the good manager was still described in predominantly masculine terms as before.

      In our next study in this stream of research, incorporating data collected from identical populations in the late 2000s with data collected during the three previous decades, Tony and I decided to examine stability and change in the correspondence between self-descriptions and good-manager descriptions over four decades (Powell & Butterfield, 2015a). We found that, when good-manager descriptions and self-descriptions were compared, men consistently saw themselves as more like the good manager than women did in data collected in each decade and for all four decades combined. There was no consistent pattern of change for either women or men in correspondence between self- and good-manager descriptions across the four decades. Also, as before, the good manager was seen as possessing predominantly masculine traits.

      We have extended this stream of research over time to the political arena. Periodically, during US presidential election campaigns, we have collected similar data using the Short BSRI (Bem, 1981) on descriptions of the “ideal president” as well as the candidates of the two major political parties (e.g., Powell & Butterfield, 2011; Powell et al., 2018). In such studies, we have always found that the ideal president is described in predominantly masculine terms. Also, the candidate whose leader profile is perceived as closest to that of the ideal president typically, but not always, wins the election; Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the exception (Powell et al., 2018).

      Considerable research by others has followed Powell and Butterfield's (1979) original research design in examining the linkage between СКАЧАТЬ