Leadership and Gender Differences

Feminine leadership versus masculine leadership

If we compare male and female leaders, we can see that it is an ever-evolving situation. There are some female principles and characteristics (such as using their intuition in the decision-making process, being careful, getting a good work-life balance, and social responsibility), as being in tune with the basic cultural hypotheses with regard to the way men and women think and act.

In general, women are better equipped for motivation (they are energetic and enthusiastic), communication (they make sure that their employees are well informed), feedback (they update their team in terms of their performance), and aspirations (they set high goals). Men are better at tradition (building knowledge based on past experience), innovation (they are open to new ideas and are willing to take chances), strategy (seeing the big picture), being calm (they tend to keep their emotions in check), delegating (they assign objectives and responsibilities), cooperation (they are good teammates), and persuasion (they sell ideas and win people over).

Furthermore, women tend to be better evaluated in terms of empathy (showing good people management skills and their needs by establishing a strong connection with their team) and communication (by establishing clear demands from others, expressing their thoughts and ideas clearly, and by keeping a solid communication flow) when compared to men. Also, women are better qualified in terms of people skills (sensitivity toward others, being kind, having good listening skills, and developing efficient relationships with their team and their superiors). Contrary to popular belief, women have great results on the leadership scale, which measures their focus on production (women have a great interest in achieving their goals; they have high expectations both from themselves and their colleagues). Men tend to get good results on scales that evaluate the focus on strategic planning and the overall company vision.

We all know that at the beginning of this century, the professional activity was totally different from the reality nowadays. There was no discussion upon flexibility and innovation as phenomena characterizing the global economic conditions and there were no such fast changes in technology. Cameron calls these transformation changes in the culture of Anglo-American capitalism and associates them with the passage to the norms of traditional interaction (aggressiveness, competitiveness, and individualism) to a new leadership style focused on flexibility, team work, and collaboration in problem solving.

Traditionally, the most appreciated leadership characteristics were masculine in their nature. Yet, in the past years, the researchers have shown that many of these traits (assertiveness,individualism, and task orientation) did not always contribute to the efficacy of leadership. Instead of the leadership theory centred on The Great Man, the transformational leadership has emerged, and its efficiency is supported by more and more researchers. It is interesting that many of the traits of the transformational leadership (such as collaboration and empowerment) are associated traditionally with women, which illustrates that many feminine features contribute to the leadership efficacy. Fortune 500 showed how the companies with many female managers have a much higher average productivity of their own capital in comparison with the companies with few female managers. Despite this information, female leaders still deal with many disadvantages. Often, people tend to attribute their success as leaders to some external rather than internal factors and avoid placing them on leadership positions.

Some authors showed that increasing the number of female leaders has been accompanied by changes of theory and practice in leadership. They also specify that the most modern characterization of an efficient leadership found in the literature and in mass media is heavily based on the characteristics considered to be feminine. At the same time, they state that if the leadership roles belong to more women and/or are perceived feminine attributes, we will continue to see a serious cultural change. It is a real success that many analyses emphasize the fact that employees position female leaders better than male leaders in more traits of the transformational leadership (charisma, ability to motivate the employees, and creativity in problem solving). Moreover, these characteristics of leadership are considered a real support for the efficacy of leadership. Subordinates of some of the female leaders are more willing to make supplementary effort, are more satisfied with their leaders, and are more efficient competitively in comparison with the subordinates of male leaders. It was also observed that women work harder than men in the same position, and this difference is explainable by the strict standards and exigencies manifested toward women.

Various papers published on this topic develop and compare the feminine leadership with the masculine leadership. The feminine leadership style was called social-expressive, with personal attention paid to subordinates and with focus on a good work environment; by contrast, the masculine leadership style was described as an instrumental one, focused on giving directions. Helgesen is one who made researches that led to the identification of the differences between the masculine and feminine leadership styles. The works of Hofstede are also very well known at the international level and actually femininity versus masculinity is considered an important cultural dimension. Human traits that are generally attributed to men are more present in some cultures, whereas the ones generally attributed to women appear in other cultures. For example, in a more masculine culture, like the American one, it is expected that in CVs, people's works are presented in superlative terms, as they feel the need to show their qualities and sometimes even more. For people living in a masculine culture, it is important to win, to have recognition, to be promoted, and to accept challenges. On the contrary, in Holland, we should meet more modesty, as there is a feminine culture. People value relationships and cooperation and generally think that work safety is more important than challenges.

Is feminine leadership a solution for modern organizations? In order to answer this question, we took, as our starting point, the opinions of Kouzes and Posner and conducted a research based on the list of the 10 descriptors included in the Checklist of Admired Leaders: Ambitions, Caring, Competent, Determined, Forward-looking, Honest, Imaginative, Inspiring, Loyal, and Self-controlled. In conducting this research, we have taken the following steps: Step 1: Preparing the research. During this stage, we formulated the goal of the research, we chose the research method, and we built the instrument we needed to conduct it. Also, we defined the respondent group, while also formulating the research hypotheses. Step 2: Conducting the research. During this stage, the research was launched and the respondents' opinions were gathered. Step 3: Interpreting the results, verifying that the objectives were completed, and validating the work hypotheses that were initially formulated.

We have taken into consideration the continued development of new businesses, organizational structures, and operational and managerial processes. Many of today's companies are lean, dynamic, and adaptable, which is essential, especially with employees who have different expectations, motivations, and skills than the ones from previous generations. It seems obvious that a successful leader for these types of companies ought to have a different profile from the traditional one.

In order to collect the data, we have constructed a questionnaire consisting of two parts: Part 1, composed of questions referring to personal information: age, gender, field of work, professional status (manager/non-manager) and Part 2, in which respondents are invited to establish the relationship between, on the one hand, the leadership characteristics as seen by Kouzes and Posner and, on the other hand, the gender of a successful leader (in other words, they were asked to assign each characteristic to a gender: masculine, feminine, or they could consider to be neutral). Then, the respondents were asked to order these characteristics on a scale of 1–10, based on their importance to a successful leader.

After analysing the resulted data, we have noticed that descriptors such as Ambitious, Caring, Honest, Imaginative, and Loyal are mainly associated with a female style of leadership, whereas descriptors like Competent and Forward looking tend to be associated with a male style of leadership. We have also noticed the fact that there is no clear answer when looking at the Determined, Inspiring, and Self-controlled descriptors, which means that these concepts are generally equally attributed to male and female leadership.

This research has also helped us observe how people's perception of a successful leader varies when the respondent is a manager or not, male or female, and when they belong to a certain generation (Baby boomers, X or Y). Indeed, the respondents' opinion influenced their preference for several key female leadership characteristics: non-manager respondents said that they appreciated descriptors such as Honest, Imaginative, and Caring more (35% versus 15%). As far as the generation differences are concerned, they were also clearly visible: for people from Generation Y, characteristics such as Imaginative, Ambitious, Honest, Inspiring, and Determined are more valued, which suggests the fact that, over time, there have been changes in mentality that favour the women's style of leadership.

The research has also given us a lot of signals indicating that successful leadership is no longer solely attributed to men and we anticipate that there will be further important changes in the approach based on the social and cultural evolution of our times. For this reason, we will keep following the articles and studies written on this subject and we will analyse the opinions of as many employees from the business environment as possible.