Guess Who's Perceived as Leaders? If You Guessed Women, Go to the Back of the Bus

It probably doesn't come as much of a surprise,  But guess who's still seen more as leaders, men or porcupines?  Just kidding.  Of course it's women who are not seen to be in charge as much as their male counterparts.

And we're losing more and more female leaders, like the chief executive of Pepsi (last week), and In May, Denise Morrison stepped down as CEO of Campbell Soup; in April, Margo Georgiadis stepped down as CEO of Mattel  and last year, Meg Whitman resigned as CEO of Hewlett Packard and Irene Rosenfeld, as CEO of Mondelez, according to marketwatch.com.

Despite progress, newswise.com notes, a gender gap still exists.  Hardly news to those of us in the workplace.

Women hold just 26 percent of executive-level positions in S&P 500 companies — and sadly that is no accident, according to a new study by researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Management.

The research team — led by doctoral student Katie Badura and Emily Grijalva, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management — aggregated 59 years of research, encompassing more than 19,000 participants and 136 studies from lab, business and classroom settings.

They discovered that although the gender gap has narrowed in recent decades, it still persists.

“As a society, we’ve made progress toward gender equality, but clearly we’re not quite there,” Badura says. “Our results are consistent with the struggle many organizations face today to increase diversity in their leadership teams.”

Duh?

The researchers primarily attribute the gender gap to societal pressures that contribute to gender differences in personality traits. For example, men tend to be more assertive and dominant, whereas women tend to be more communal, cooperative and nurturing. As a result, men are more likely to participate and voice their opinions during group discussions, and be perceived by others as leaderlike.

“We found showing sensitivity and concern for others — stereotypically feminine traits — made someone less likely to be seen as a leader,” Grijalva says. “However, it’s those same characteristics that make leaders effective. Thus, because of this unconscious bias against communal traits, organizations may unintentionally select the wrong people for leadership roles, choosing individuals who are loud and confident but lack the ability to support their followers’ development and success.”

I have to laugh at this.  When I was mid-career in the '80s and '90s, women who tried to be assertive in meetings were often called "b_ll busters."  And it wasn't too surprising that many of the women high up in large corporations like IBM were not married, and certainly didn't have children.  

While group size and participants’ ages did not affect the gender gap, the study found the length of time participants spent together was an important factor in whether men or women emerged as leaders. The longer a group spent together, the less gender influenced who emerged as the group’s leader.

“The gender gap was strongest during the first 20 minutes people were together, similar to an initial job interview, but weakened after more than one interaction,” Grijalva says. “During the hiring process, organizations should conduct multiple interviews to reduce gender bias and ensure they’re hiring the best applicant.”

You think?  You're still punished for leaving the work force to have children.  But lest anyone forget, those children will be paying our Social Security and Medicare, if it still exists when we're old enough to collect it.