I was recently asked to become engaged in an on-line discussion through a leadership group on whether there were any significant differences inleadership effectiveness between male and female leaders. My heart sank when I was asked my thoughts. This was mainly due to boredom and a sneaking suspicion that the intitiator had another agenda than academic curiosity.
It is perhaps too easy to be dismissive of such a perennial question, but I often find it is an argument where individuals’ opinions are established before they enter the debate. It is a debate that can easily slide into stereotypes and confirm more prejudice than create insight. Often the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ are used pejoratively rather than as a description, and the generalisations undermine the subtleties of the argument. It is an argument that won’t go away, but does it actually tell us anything?
Until the 1980s and 1990s management was stereotyped as a male role in organisations and the vast majority of studies carried out into leadership were based on an almost exclusively male sample. Some argue that the consequence of this has been that women in leadership roles adopt male leadership behaviour and accept it as the ‘right’ way to lead. Until the 1980s, and to an extent beyond, the main traits and characteristics used to describe effective leaders and managers were predominantly male and emphasised task-based leadership rather than inter-personal or relationship-based leadership. In recent years there has been a significant increase in the amount of research carried out into the influence of gender on leadership styles. Factors affecting this increased interest include the growing role of women leaders in international politics, the number of women-owned and led businesses, and the increasing number of women in leadership and management roles in the workplace.
Despite the growing amount of research there is still no consensus on whether gender is a significant variable in the demonstration of leadership behaviours. Various meta-analyses (Eagly & Johnson 1990; Jaffee & Hyde 2000) offer conflicting opinions on the existence of a gender difference in leadership styles and there appears to be a sharp division of opinion between researchers.
There is a general stereotypical assumption that female leaders will foster greater social inclusion and individualised consideration than their male counterparts leading to higher individual satisfaction with the leader and less job-related concerns. The ‘feminine advantage’ position in leadership (Yukl 2002) purports that women are ‘inherently’ better at nurturing followers, building personal relationships and power-sharing, and that consequently they should be better suited to transformational leadership than males. It is also argued that females gravitate towards a cooperative, team-based leadership style whilst men operate a competitive leadership style in a hierarchical structure. What about Mrs Thatcher? I hear you cry. It is argued that the majority of organisations, especially until relatively recently, were male dominated and that to succeed women in management positions were forced to suppress their ‘natural’ leadership styles and adopt a more task-orientated approach to ensure that it corresponded to the overall male-dominated organisational culture.
Rosener (1990) argues that men prefer the command and control style of an ‘alpha-leadership’ model compared to relationship based beta-leadership style. Rosener’s self-report based study claimed that women’s leadership style was more transformationally based and that men’s was more transactional. In addition men reported that they were more likely to use their power coercively to achieve performance. She also cited women describing that their transformational style of leadership came ‘naturally’, but the researcher attributed this to a combination of socialisation and the particular positions they occupied where there was little opportunity for the use of formal power. It is claimed that women are more inclined, whether due to genetic makeup or social conditioning, towards power sharing than men, who regards the exercise of power as a coercive activity used to ensure compliance. (Druskat 1994) It is also argued that women and men differ in their interpretation of what constitutes transformational leadership with men stressing the inspirational and directive elements whilst women emphasise the aspects of individual care and consideration.
Alternatively, there is a viewpoint that regards the concepts of masculinity and femininity as social constructs that add little if any insight into distinguishing between different leadership tendencies. The labelling of different behaviours such as caring or listening as ‘feminine’ leadership behaviours or ‘directive’ or ‘inspiring’ as masculine is inherently subjective and gives no consideration to contextual factors. Perhaps the role the individual occupies in the organisation is more important than their sex. The pressures within the workplace to meet performance targets will focus the leader’s attention towards an effective leadership style regardless of gender. The main determinants of differences in leadership style will be access to power, access to resources and the position in the hierarchy or team and any study of gender difference should take cognisance of these variables.
Bass (1990) argued that despite the plethora of studies ‘no consistently clear pattern of differences can be discerned in the supervisory styles of female and male leaders.’ A meta-analysis by Jaffee & Hyde (2000) claims there were negligible differences between the sexes in terms of moral reasoning and that there was not a strong research basis for claiming that women were more inclined towards caring than men. Similarly, Dobbins & Platz (1986) carried out a meta-analysis of studies examining sex differences in leadership, choosing only studies that used observer ratings rather than self-ratings. Their meta analysis identified no differences between male and female leaders in terms of individual consideration behaviour and initiating structure behaviour and the authors called for an end to research into gender based leadership research. Carless (1998) identified no differences in the subordinate evaluations of transformational leadership for female and male managers.
Perhaps it is my frustration showing but I am more interested in what makes people follow a leader. People love or hate Mrs Thatcher or Hilary Clinton not because of their gender but because of their vision and leadership style. It can be argued that the fixation with gender in leadership is offering less insight and is merely a distraction.