An Overview of the Literature on Gender, Race and Leadership in Organisations

An Overview of the Literature on Gender, Race and Leadership in Organisations

The majority of extant leadership theory emanates from the United States and is represented as gender- and race neutral (House & Aditya, 1997; Nkomo, 2006). This is despite the fact that in-depth insight into race (Ospina & Foldy, 2009) and gender (Korabik & Ayman, 2007) has yet to penetrate mainstream leadership theory.

Earlier accounts of women in management, such as that of Stogdill (1981), were treated as a special or separate case from mainstream leadership studies.  These are the very types of “additive” theorising an intersectional approach to studying social phenomena warns against (Brewer, 1993).  However, to some extent this seems to still be the case if one considers approaches such as the ‘female advantage’ (Eagly, 2007; Eagly & Carli, 2003) or “feminine leadership” (Eagly & Johnson, 1990).  To some extent a ‘distinctly female’ approach to leadership has developed in the study of leadership, which stands in quite strong contrast with the classical Western, male dominated approach to leadership (Parker & Ogilvie, 1996).  The traditional approach to a male dominated view of ‘good leadership’ is associated with instrumentality, autonomy and a result-orientation (Billing & Alvesson, 2000).  It has been claimed that men tend towards leading autocratically, while women tend to lead democratically (Eagly & Johnson, 1990).  Female leaders have also been said to exhibit more transformational leadership styles (Carless, 1998), with a focus on effective teams, building and maintaining relationships and trust (Paris et al., 2009; Stanford et al., 1995; Trinidad & Normore, 2005).

These simplistic connections made between gender and leadership outcomes are quite reductionist in nature and run the risk of further reproducing inequality by inadvertently legitimising the masculine conception of leadership (Parker, 2005).  These assumed links between gender and leadership outcomes assume significant homogeneity across all women leaders (Parker & Ogilvie, 1996), disregard the fact that male and female identities are co-constructed (Collinson & Hearn, 1996) and also that these social constructions are embedded in a wider societal context with various influences like history or legislation.  It has also been found that claims of ‘interpersonally-oriented’ women leaders versus ‘task-oriented’ men leaders are mainly supported by research from laboratory experiment- and assessment studies, from which participants are not selected for actual leadership role occupancy (Eagly & Johnson, 1990).

In a meta-analysis of research findings regarding perceived leadership styles (as rated by followers), Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt (2001) found that women are observed to exhibit more transformational leadership behaviours, which seem to fit the earlier critiqued view of a gender-dichotomy within organisational leadership enactment.  However, it is proposed that these differences in ratings made by followers for their various male and female leaders is argued to be the result of challenges women face when attempting to use traditional hierarchical styles of leading, rather than an innate preference towards said transformational styles.  Further criticism against the idea of a gender advantage in organisational leadership can be found in the secondary analysis of interview data relating to the experiences of men and women of being and during the process of becoming union stewards, conducted by Bryant-Anderson and Roby (2012).  They note that in a union context white men were far more likely to show an easy-going, hands-off or democratic leadership approach, while stewards of colour and white women tend towards a more strong, direct and uncompromising style.  However, instead of these leadership enactments being assumed to be the product of some inherent property of the leader (union steward), it was found that women and people of colour were supposedly more easily perceived to be incompetent or not taken seriously as a result of racial- and gender prejudice and therefore opted for a more direct and uncompromising leadership style.

From a methodological stance, the ‘female advantage’ in leadership has been challenged for its objectivity and empirical rigor (Vecchio, 2003).  It is said that the attempted merging of leadership constructs and gender constructs which imply an inherent relationship between constructs such as femininity and concern for people or between masculinity and initiating structure (on which the argument for female advantage is based) is superficial and overly simplistic (Vecchio, 2002).  Vecchio (2002) cites various authors in support of this assertion.  Firstly it is said that the “people-structure concern” dichotomy in itself