Differences in Leadership Styles between Genders: Outcomes and Effectiveness of Women in Leadership Roles

Women, today constituting a large portion of the work force have very few leaders at the top constitutional or organizational positions. In this paper we try to analyze what’s causing hindrance to their growth focusing primarily, if there exists any differences in the leadership styles employed by male and female leaders. As was the case in previous literature, the evidence for sex differences in leadership behavior is still mixed, yet it is clear that these sex differences have not vanished. It is argued that sex differences in leadership styles are largely a consequence of the context in which male and female leaders work. Arguments and evidences from both sides on, “Do women really make better androgynous leaders? ” is analyzed overall based on several inferences. This paper further focuses on the values and attitudes of women being in leadership positions leaving challenges for further research on the effect of external variables such as the work force, corporation structure, and necessity of innovation on the gender in the leadership role. Running Head: LEADERSHIP STYLES OF WOMEN AND THEIR OUTCOMES 3 Rise of women as leaders Gender differences and their leadership styles has become one of the most studied research topics in the recent years. Is there truly a difference in the leadership styles employed by the two genders, if yes, are they interrelated? This question enlightens many other factors unto why we have so few women leaders. Though women constitute for a large portion of the work force in today’s world we seldom have women leaders in the top administrative positions. Previous research studies have shown that this lack of competitive holding of top positions is certainly due to the differences in their leadership styles. The ease of accommodation and constant modification of leadership styles is being an important issue for the corporate organizations today. As women become a proportionately larger part of the work force, one of the greatest challenges for organizations will be to assimilate a more diverse labor force into higher level management roles (Moran, 1992). Though women leaders are not so commonly found in top level management roles, my curiosity questions what leadership styles do they generally have? The purpose of this article is to present an over review on the topic of gender differences in leadership style and to provide a synthesis of the voluminous amount of material that has been written on the topic, primarily in the literature of management, psychology, sociology, and political science. The first section of the paper throws light on the topic if there really exists some differences in leadership styles showing evidences that women make better androgynous leaders and the outcome of their results is more suited for the public good. The following section opposes the findings supporting the statement that differences in leadership styles do exist and also brings a point of stereotypic attitudes and behaviors that have affected the growth of Running Head: LEADERSHIP STYLES OF WOMEN AND THEIR OUTCOMES 4 ambitious women into higher leadership positions of an organization. The last section of the paper discusses the effect of women as leaders at several levels of management, social and political levels and how our conventional wisdom has affected our attitudes and beliefs towards seeing woman as leaders. I personally opine that there exists some differences in leadership styles, as they differ in communication styles, situational handling styles and women make better androgynous leaders as they tend to communicate more expressively and can motivate the creativity and innovation in the team. So, the outcomes of such leadership styles are more suited towards the public good rather than the success of the corporate level organizations which might require more assertive and commanding leadership abilities. Leadership styles differ from male to female Many research studies have assessed the styles of male and female leaders since the fifties and found that there definitely exists the differences in leadership styles. However, these differences take the form of highly overlapping distributions of women and men—in other words, the differences are small (Eagly, 2013). One of the differences, is that, the female leaders are seen to adopt a more democratic and participative style than their male counterparts (Merchant, 2012). Men in leadership positions are found to adopt a top-down style, in general. This is the command and control style. Although female managers are not generally more interpersonallyor communally-oriented than male managers, this tendency emerged to some extent in less male-dominated roles, where the tendency for women to be more participative than men strengthened as well (Eagly, 2013). It thus show that women tend to apply more culturally leadership behaviors, when their role is not male-dominated. Now the question arises, that “is it beneficial to be a participative leader? ” Studies reveals that it is not always. Being a participative Running Head: LEADERSHIP STYLES OF WOMEN AND THEIR OUTCOMES 5 leader benefits depending on the context. There are also evidences that the middle ground between directive and participative leadership styles obtain optimal results. A very strict adaption of the directive and assertive style can effect social relationships and being less directive can hinder the achievement of intended goal. Another meta-analytic generalization is that women, more than men, combine feminine and masculine leader behaviors (Eagly, 2013). Researchers have specially analyzed and uncovered an asexual style termed as transformational style of leadership, a highly effective style, which comprehends several interrelated types of behavior (Avolio, 2010). Thus transformational leaders succeed at being inspirational role models, nurture good relationships, cultivate the skills of the member followers and motivates to think out of the confines of the job requisites. Analysis also show that female leaders employ transformational styles more than the males. Another leadership style, transactional leadership is also seen in more female managers in which they tend to motivate their members with positive, reward-based incentives. Men, in contrast, employs more strict and less effective threatening styles of leadership. Enhancing confidence in these findings on transformational and transactional leadership are two large studies that have replicated them (Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003). So, after analyzing the transactional and transformational leadership we see that women do have better leadership styles. What could be the reasons behind these differences? On one hand, women often face a double standard in attaining leadership roles, so a selection effect could account for these findings (Eagly, 2013). The other reason could be that, the cultural gender at work reacting favorably towards leaders with androgynous style than those with strict masculine or lenient feminine styles. The small differences detected in leadership style are Running Head: LEADERSHIP STYLES OF WOMEN AND THEIR OUTCOMES 6 consistent with highly overlapping female and male distributions. Also, there are some troubling nuances in findings on transformational leadership such as the possibility that men may not accept transformational leadership from women as easily as from men (Ayman, Korabik, & Morris, 2009). Normative opinion of researchers how that female leaders might breakthrough these stereotype culturally feminine behaviors while male leaders must apparently display more captivating aspects of transformational leadership styles, which are supplementary to the top level leadership capabilities. Leadership styles doesn’t differ between genders Contrary to the findings in the previous section, literature also shows that there are no assessable differences in leadership styles between genders, but the fact that leadership styles in their roles are highly situational. This side of argument debates that neither of the genders are better in employing a leadership style, but the effectiveness is conditional to various internal and external environments of the group. Contingency theories recognize that there is no best style of leadership, but rather “leader effectiveness depends, or is contingent on, the interaction of leader behavior and the situation” (Riggio, 2008). Adherents are of a view that gender is not a key determinant of actual leadership style, need to explain, first, why perception is often to the contrary and secondly, if the gender socialization process mentioned earlier does not determine leadership style and behavior, just what does? Stereotyping is central to an explanation of why gender is often perceived to be the central determinant of leadership style. In terms of the topic in this paper, gender stereotyping is largely detriment of females in implying that they are inferior to men in leadership capacity. Valentine and Godkin (2000), for example, have noted a Running Head: LEADERSHIP STYLES OF WOMEN AND THEIR OUTCOMES 7 substantial body of work that suggests that women face socially prompted stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that undermine their credibility as organizational leaders. However, Kanter (1977) argues that organizational roles override gender roles when it comes to management or leadership positions. He brings forward that irrespective of the gender in a same leadership role, theoretically do not differ much in their leadership approaches, because leaders at these roles “are presumably more concerned about managing effectively than about representing sex-differentiated features of societal gender roles” (Kanter, 1977). Kanter (1977) also argues that managers in spite of their genders either of the leaders behave merely less stereotypic when they occupy the same leadership position because they are confining to the guidelines about the conduct of behavior of