By Kristin Howell

November 22, 2010

OverviewDescription

Gender & Leadership Styles & Effectiveness

Glass Ceiling

Strengths & Criticisms

Application of Approach

Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”. A definition more inclusive of followers comes from Alan Keith of Genentech who said "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.”

Gender & Leadership Styles & Effectiveness

(Male vs Female Leadership)

Historically, gender has prohibited most females from becoming leaders in organizations; as a result, the assumption that males were better suited than females for leadership roles was, until recently, rarely questioned.

Women who aspire to educational leadership positions in the male-defined structure of academia can "either live her womanliness up" or she can "live it down".

If she chooses to practice a profession by following the rules and habits long established by male practitioners she risks offending the old customs defining female virtue. If she behaves in a professional environment according to archaic female norms she appears weak.

These contradictions demonstrate the conflict women experience in regards to how they are expected to behave as women and how they are expected to behave as professionals.

Men Women

He is aggressive. She is pushy.

He's a stern taskmaster. She's hard to work for.

He is good on details. She is picky.

He's confident. She's conceited.

He exercises authority diligently. She's power mad.

The Glass Ceiling

The Glass CeilingSituation where the advancement of a qualified person

within the hierarchy of an s organization is stopped at a lower level because of some form of discrimination, most commonly sexism or racism.

believed to be an unofficial, invisible barrier that prevents women and minorities from advancing in businesses.

has also come to describe the limited advancement of the deaf, blind, disabled, and aged.

Types of Glass Ceiling Barriers

Different pay for comparable work.

Sexual, ethnic, racial, religious discrimination or harassment in the workplace

Exclusion from informal networks

Stereotyping and preconceptions of women's roles and abilities

Failure of senior leadership to assume accountability for women's advancement

The Gender Wage Gap the difference in both the wages and earnings between males and

females who have equivalent job titles, training experience, education, and professions

women make 75.3 cents on the dollar to men, which is derived from statistics maintained by the United States Census Bureau from 2003, relating specifically to an across-the-board comparison of year-round full-time workers

David R. Hekman, an assistant professor of management at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, found that customers prefer white men employees, which is why such workers may continue to earn 25 percent more than equally-well performing women and minorities.

Men tend to be highly concentrated in the top professions: supervisors managers executives production operators

Women tend to be over-represented in the lower-ranking and lower paid professions in the workforce:

secretaries sales associates Teachers nurses child care providers

As a result, occupations become “sex typed” as either being specifically male

or female jobs.

The stereotypically male-characterized occupations, in which at least 60-75% of the workers are males, are more highly paid than occupations in which 60-75% of the jobholders are women.

This segregation of women into less-prestigious and lower-ranked jobs also decreases a woman’s chance of being promoted, as well as the chance of having any type of power over others. Moreover, occupational segregation reduces women’s access to insurance, benefits, and pensions.

The gender wage gap is present within all realms of the workforce:

blue collarmanagerialprofessional occupations.

Only 16% of the top executive positions in America’s largest corporations and enterprises are held by women.

Additionally, the median weekly income of full-time working women is only 70.5% of full-time working men.

StrengthsWomen's management style may be

considered to be better suited than men's to the team-oriented leadership of the 21 Century because women :

Have better social skills Are better communicators Put the success of the team

first Use influencing skills rather

than authority Are better team players Are more tolerant of

differences Are less bound by social

traditions Are more readily show

appreciation for the efforts of others

Are more expressive of their thoughts and feelings

Are more enthusiastic

• Women are Expected to combine leadership with compassion—and are disliked when They Don’t

• People do not listen to or take direction from women as comfortably as from men

• Women who promote themselves and their abilities reap disapproval

• Women require more external validation than men do to be accepted as leaders in some contexts

Criticisms

Application of the ApproachAs women lead, they are changing leadership; as they organize, they are

changing organization. When women lead and articulate their purposes, it seems that they work together not only as individuals but with a sense of community and networking in a healthy way.

Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, the World YWCA Secretary General, says attitudes toward leadership are changing and what women offer is essential:

“Domination as a leadership style is becoming less and less popular. There is a new growing appreciation of those traits that women use to keep families together and to organize volunteers to unite and make change in the shared life of communities. These newly admired leadership qualities of shared leadership; nurturance and doing good for others are today not only sought after but also indeed needed to make a difference in the world....A feminine way of leading includes helping the world to understand and be principled about values that really matter.”

Referenceshttp://www.elites.com/f-style.html

http://aabss.org/journal1998/reynolds.html

http://www.womensmedia.com/lead/88-women-and-leadership-delicate-balancing-act.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_ceiling#Sexism_and_Glass_Ceiling_Effects_-_The_Gender_Wage_Gap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership