Four studies on gender and leadership

Abstract

Although women have made considerable advancements in the business realm, they remain underrepresented at the upper-management level. In an egalitarian society, differences in outcomes achieved by women and men demand explanation, especially the continuing paucity of women in senior management and CEO positions and the surprising lack of progress in the latter over the past 20 years. Scholars have long been interested in explaining and rectifying the persistent lack of gender equality in management and leadership positions, and in addressing gender inequality in its many guises in organizational behavior, but still there remains a need for new approaches to understanding this topic.

In this dissertation, I conducted four studies to understand the phenomenon with new perspectives. First, chapter 2 reports on a meta-analysis I conducted to answer the question of whether adult women and men differ in their core self-evaluations (CSE), a dispositional trait that represents one’s positive self-perceptions. I found only trivial gender differences in CSE, and the results refute the lay beliefs about women having lower self-worth. In chapter 3, I conducted an extensive literature review on gender operationalizations in the gender and leadership literature – that is, the various ways that gender-related variables have been measured. In chapter 4, I introduced a new approach to conducting a literature review by examining the set of hypotheses that articles have advanced in the area of leadership and gender. These two chapters generated new insights that will help to both consolidate our understanding of existing scholarship and identify new directions for future research.

Finally, in chapter 5 I present an empirical study on gender differences in two leadership styles. Numerous prior studies have suggested that female leaders are more effective than male leaders, but women remain underrepresented at the upper-management level. One potential explanation for this is that women are seen as displaying lower levels of strategic leadership than men, and such leadership is considered particularly important for top management positions. Building on the literature on strategic and supervisory leadership, I tested for gender differences in the instrumental and servant leadership styles, which represent the behaviors that comprise strategic and supervisory leadership. Overall, I found that female leaders were seen as displaying more servant leadership, and were also expected to show greater levels of servant leadership, compared to male leaders. Also, I found that two dimensions of instrumental leadership style – environmental monitoring and strategic formulation and implementation – that best capture the notion of strategic leadership, were perceived to be more important for top executives than middle managers. Contrary to my hypothesis, women did not score lower on instrumental leadership than men.

I hope my dissertation studies will help to reduce the gender stereotypic beliefs about women lacking the leadership capabilities needed to succeed in top management positions, and thereby help to promote greater gender equity in the workplace.