Gender, Hierarchy and Leadership Essay

Although wo man superpowers spot has improved remarkably in the twentieth century in many societies, wo men continue to lack adit to source and leaders comp ard with men. This trouble reviews look for and theory concerning womens leadership. The binds included in the going provide say of bias in the evaluation of women, hash out effects of rouseual urge stereotypes on womens solve and leadership behaviors, and appraise strategies for channelise. This introductory article provides a brief summary of changes in womens status and power in employment and education and the absence of change at the upper echelons of power in organizations. Also included is an analysis of the contri furtherions of the some other articles in the issue. It is an exciting period for scholars who national how sex affects leadership The presence of greater numbers of women in positions of power has produced new opportunities to bump pistillate leaders along with priapic leaders.There has b een an increase in the numbers of women in positions of public leadership, including highly visible positions. Of course, focusing on women who occupy such leadership positions should non ca go for us to barricade that women take gain always exercised leadership, particularly in families and throughout communities. Howalways, until recently, women were extremely lofty in study positions of public leadership. Now women are in a sm every minority in such roles, but present. Political leadership illustrates this trend In history only 42 women have ever served as presidents or prime ministers, and 25 of those have come to chest in the 1990s (Adler, 1999). Almost all of the women who have attained turn over positions in corporations around the world have done so in the 1990s.Public interest in womens emf as leaders is fueled by high-profile women serving in unchewable positions Supreme royal court Justice Sandra Day OConnor, U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and outsetator Secretary of State Madeline Albright are just three recent examples from the joined States. Many of the newspaper and magazine articles written about these and other feminine leaders have a positive tone (e.g., Dobbs, 1999 A matter-of-fact Judicial Eye, 2000).The idea that women power hold such positions and the suspicion that they might exercise power somewhat differently than men no interminable seems as alarming to people as in the past. Indeed, people are receptive to the idea that different might be give away or at least non worse than what the nation experiences at a time. In reception to the Gallup Polls question, Do you think that this country would be governed better or worse if to a greater extent women were in political office? 57% of the respondents in the United States chose the response better, with greater endorsement by women (62%) than men (51% Gallup, 1995). Only 17% of the respondents placed that such a change would worsen government.The fa naticism about the presence of just a few women in goodish positions raises the question of why, with womens roles changing so dramatically in the outlive decade, the numbers of women in these positions are so small. Indeed, the concept of the glassful detonator was introduced by the Wall passage Journal to account for this disjunction (The bodied Woman, 1986) and has since been acknowledged by journalists and the public as an invisible but powerful barrier that allows women to advance only to a certain level.Evidence supports the glass hood metaphor. By some yardsticks, the United States and other advanced industrial societies appear to be approachinggender equality. In the United States, women have entered the paid labor force in large numbers and now constitute 47% of workers (U.S. authorization of get Statistics, 2001b). Whereas in 1972 only 18% of managers were female, the proportion of women has steadily increased over time (U.S. Bureau of dig up Statistics, 1982) an d originally women make up 45% of managers and administrators (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001a). In education, women possess 51% of all bachelors degrees that have been awarded (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). Since 1981 82, more than of these degrees have gone to women than men, with women currently receiving 56% (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Women as well as possess 45% of the advanced degrees that have been awarded (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000) and currently make up 42% of PhDs and 43% of professional degrees (e.g., those in law or medication Morgan, 2001).Although these aggregate statistics on labor force participation and education notify gender equality, the distributions of men and women in elite leadership positions tell preferably a different story. To borrow former President Clintons phrase, the transcend of managerial and governmental hierarchies do not look like America. In Fortune 500 companies, women constitute only 4% of the top officers, 3% of the most highly paid officers, and 0.4% of CEOs (Catalyst, 2000). In U.S. politics, only 13% of senators, 14% of congressional representatives, and 10% of state governors are women ( totality for the Ameri mickle Woman and Politics, 2001). In the host, women make up 2% of the top officers (U.S. Department of Defense, 1998).Although about 30% of lawyers are women, women make up only 15% of law sloshed partners and 5% of managing partners in large firms (Rhode, 2001). In contrast to the changes in womens education, labor force participation, and employment as managers, little change has occurred in terms of placing women in the most powerful leadership positions. The lack of women in powerful positions used to be explained by many as a pipeline problem, that is, the interpretation that women with the appropriateeducation and background were not available. notwithstanding though the pipeline explanation remains popular among male CEOs (Ragins, Townsend, & Mattis, 1998), its pl ausibleness has been eroded by the dramatic increases in womens employment as managers. Because the pipeline is full of women, this idea has given way to the glass ceiling in the popular imagination.The glass ceiling is a metaphor for bias and discrimination. To the extent that people are prejudiced a touchst women as leaders and potential leaders, this prejudice would manifest itself in many ways and have eight-fold effects. Prejudice can take subtle or blatant forms and can be held by employers, customers, voters, and even by the targets of prejudice themselves. Prejudice against women as leaders and potential leaders would interfere with womens cleverness to gain authority and exercise influence and would produce discrimination when it is translated into personnel office decisions indoors organizations and political structures. Because sociable psychologists have long studied prejudice and industrial/organizational psychologists have studied managerial roles and organization al processes, the stage is come in these fields for understanding the rarity of women in powerful positions. The authors of the articles in this issue have all made important contributions to this developing knowledge. arranging of the IssueBias in the Evaluation of Women LeadersThe articles in the eldest air division of the issue present evidence of biased evaluation of womens competence and potential for leadership, showing that across a wide change of settings and contexts, women are presumed to be slight competent than men and less quotable to hold leadership positions. In the first article of the section, Cecilia L. Ridgeway gives an overview of expectations states theory and casts that gender differences in influence and leadership occur because people presume that men are more competent and legitimate as leaders than women are. These beliefs cheer hierarchical patterns of social interaction through which men exert more influence and exercise more leadership.In suppor t of the theory, Ridgeway reviews research examining gender differences in behavior in taskoriented groups and identifies conditions that modify these differences. In the sections second article, Madeline E. Heilman reviews research on leadership in organizations, showing that as a consequence of biases against women, people de cherish the work of female managers. When the value of that work is impossible to deny, people tend to attribute it to external factors or else than the womens competence. Finally, when external attributions cannot be made, people dislike and reject booming female managers.Virginia E. Scheins article, the third in the section, reviews cross-cultural research on bias against female leaders. Studies in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan all reveal that men are cover to be more fitting as managers than women are, especially by men. In addition, Schein identifies changes in the perception of worry over time and discusses why men from different countries with varying political, economic, and social conditions all continue to view women as less competent and suited to leadership than men.In the sections fourth article, Jennifer Boldry, Wendy Wood, and Deborah A. Kashy describe an observational study that revealed gender biases against women in a military setting. The authors report that both male and female cadets considered men to have more leadership ability and women to have more character (e.g., integrity, lack of selfishness) than the other sex, perceptions that are congruent with traditional gender stereotypes. Unfortunately for womens potential in the military, cadets success in the corps was best predicted by perceived leadership ability, not perceived character, suggesting that a persons success in the military depends on conforming to a virile model of leadership.In the concluding article in this section, Monica Biernat and Kathleen Fuegen report twain new trial-and-error studies documenting duty period standards in evaluating women and men in work and academic settings. Presenting further evidence of bias against women, their findings revealed that female study participants set harsher standards for hiring female than male applicants and were less likely to hire women than men. In contrast to other articles in this issue showing greater gender bias by males than females, male study participants did not show gender biases in their hiring decisions.Gender Effects on Social Influence and HireabilityThe authors in the issues second section provide evidence showing that, in pasture to be influential, women must combine agentic qualities, such as competence and directiveness, with communal qualities, such as warmth and friendliness. In the first article of the section, Linda L. Carli reviews the literature on gender effects on social influence, reporting that males exert greater influence over others than females do. She argues that this occurs for deuce reasons. First, females are generally presumed to be less competent than males and on that pointfore less credible as influence agents. Second, when women are perceived to be as competent as men, they are often seen as violating prescriptive gender role norms that require women to be communal. As a result, people, especially males, often dislike highly competent women and reject their contributions.In the sections second article, Laurie A. Rudman and Peter Glick report on an empirical study that further explores pressures on female job applicants to be both agentic and communal. Results showed that agentic men were considered more socially skilled than agentic women. Moreover, agentic male applicants were considered more hireable than agentic female applicants for jobs requiring both agentic and communal skills. Women who possessed both agentic and communal qualities, however, were considered to be as hireable as their male counterparts, regardless of job requirements.In the third article in this section, Felicia Pratto and Penelope Espinoza discuss the importance of the interaction of line of happen uponment and gender in affecting discrimination in hiring. They report the results of two empirical studies showing that study participants preferred to hire White male job applicants over White female applicants for jobs that enhance group-based pecking order but did not prefer slow and Hispanic male applicants over Black and Hispanic women for those same jobs. Instead, Blacks and Hispanics were generally more often selected for jobs that attenuated group-based hierarchy than Whites were.Characteristics of Womens LeadershipLeadership has traditionally been construed as a masculine enterprise with special challenges and pitfalls for women. This perception raises the very interesting question of how women lead. The two articles in the issues third section discuss current research on gender differences and likeities in the ways men and women perceive themselves as leaders an d engage in leadership.In the first of these articles, Alice H. Eagly and bloody shame C. Johannesen-Schmidt examine the controversy in the popular and academic literatures about whether there are gender differences in leadership style. These authors review the empirical literature on gender differences in leadership style, including recent research on transformational and transactional leadership. They conclude that, although male and female leaders are quite similar in a number of ways, on average they do wear somewhat differently.In the sections second article, Hilary M. Lips reports an empirical investigating of the ways in which samples of college students from Virginia and Puerto Rico perceive themselves as future leaders. Her findings indicate that both men and women expect to lead in domains that are relatively traditional for their gender for example, men in business and women in education. Compared with men, women too expect more difficulties in their personal relation ships and other negative consequences as a result of their leadership.Strategies for ChangeThe articles in the first three sections of this issue present evidence of gender inequalities in leadership and influence and propose theoretical explanations for these inequalities. This research helps clarify why women are underrepresented in positions of power and provides a framework for identifying possible strategies for reducing gender discrimination. In the last-place section of this issue, Janice D. Yoder focuses on strategies that can be used to increase womens emergence and effectiveness as leaders. In particular, she endorses a wide vomit of organizational strategies for increasing womens leadership. She also describes individual approaches that women can use to reduce resistance to their leadership but argues that individual approaches, because they demand more of women than men, are inherently unfair.Importance of the Effects of Gender on pecking order and Leadership Scholars hip on gender has addressed a regularise of issues in past decades, with early work concentrating on gender stereotypes and sex-differentiated record traits. An underlying goal of this work was to understand the status of women in alliance and foster favorable change in womens status. Although womens status has risen substantially in the 20th century in many societies, womens subordination remains apparent in their lack of access to positions of power. Earlier researchers rarely addressed this issue directly.If women are ever to achieve a status equivalent to that of men, however, they will have to participate equally in those contexts where the most important and far-reaching decisions are made. Decision making with major impact on what is valued in societies and how resources are allocated is surely not shared equally by citizens, but concentrated among people who hold positions of power in organizations and governments. Women must be present in sinewy numbers in these settin gs and must perform effectively in order to produce a balance between male and female power. The research and theory considered in this issue help us understand why power has remained unequally allocated between the sexes and how greater equality can be achieved.ReferencesAdler, N. J. (1999). Global leaders Women of influence. In G. Powell (Ed.), Handbook of gender & work (pp. 239261). constant of gravitation Oaks, CA Sage.Catalyst. (2000). Census of women corporate officers and top earners. New York Catalyst.Center for the American Woman and Politics. (2001). Fact sheet On-line. 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