Gender Differences In Leadership Roles Between Men And Women

Much of contemporary society has focused on the gender of who makes the better leader, in 2014, less than a 1/3 of women held the Chief executive occupation (283 women, 795 men), and this goes the same with other top leadership occupations (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). Even when women do hold some of the top jobs and have the title of manager, evidence shows that women and men do not hold the same responsibilities, which still makes society unequal (Reskin & Ross, 1992). It is thought that we live in a ‘masculine’ society, and thus associating most of the dominant and assertive jobs with males rather than females, making society very stereotypical of who is the most successful leader, forgetting about the rise of feminism. Leadership …show more content…
Their meta-analysis found that when all leadership contexts are considered, men and women do not differ to the effectiveness and ratings of leadership, and when other-ratings were carried out, women were found to have been rated as significantly more effective than men. Whilst it was also found that when self-ratings were carried out, men rated themselves as significantly more effective than when women rated themselves. This may show the advantage men may have over women, for having a higher self-esteem, thus not preventing them for reaching higher leadership occupations, due to stereotypes and the self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948). Similarly, Schuh et al., (2012) believe women are underrepresented in leadership positions and thus investigated the difference of the proportion of men and women in leadership roles, they found that that due to lower pay, and discrimination, women consistently reported lower power motivation than …show more content…
Following on from this study, the present study investigated in the relationship of the direction of eye gaze, whether direct or indirect, and the gender it was presented in. It was hypothesized that the direction of gaze (direct or averted gaze) would affect the ratings of competence in opposite directions for males and females. It was considered that females with averted eye gaze would have a lower rating of competence than females with direct eye gaze, and males with averted eye gaze would seem less competent than males with direct eye gaze, these 4 conditions were carried out by using a 2x2 design analysis of variance (ANOVA) to explain the variation in people’s explanation and endorsement of potential leaders. Thus, the interaction being that the direction of eye gaze (averted or direct) and the specific gender (male or female) would differ on the ratings of