Do female leaders and managers make better managers ?

This. In my limited experience I've only seen a handful like this (both sexes)

I’ve been bullied at work twice over the years and both times were women. However I have also had some great female bosses.

What rankles me is that I work in a female dominated area (social work) yet the DAS (Director) is always a man. Always. Higher up you go… men. 😡

I don't know. All the really poor managers I have had have been female. Then again, so have all the very best ones, including my current one.

I think that due to the way the sexes are socialised differently there can be patterns in leadership styles. However leadership strengths are skills based so can be learned by both sexes.
If you have a good manager/leader it will be largely down to the approach they've adopted and its fit within the context of their role, not their sex.
I do think its more common to encounter incompetent male leaders. However this is due to the high numbers of inadequate and mediocre men who manage to get themselves promoted, by over selling themselves in sexist environments who have bias towards male leaders.

Similar to pps, my female bosses (head teachers) have been micro managers. Most of them have based personnel decisions on personal preferences. Male bosses (head teachers) - in teaching, penis promotion is very much a thing, so for the most part, male heads are under experienced and over confident.

In my experience yes. I prefer working for women, and I prefer working with women. For the first time in my life I have a completely female reporting line all the way up to Chair.

Just employed a middle-aged man and I’m frankly quite nervous about it, would have preferred a woman but he was best candidate.

I think it’s not so much about sex. Being able to lead people well is a special alchemy of emotional intelligence, empathy, vision and being able to inspire.

Being a good manager has nothing at all to do with their sex.

My current manager is a woman
she is ruining my life
bullying, gaslighting abuse

I am physically sick with panic all the time
she enjoys creating division and mistrust

so no, in my experience absolutely not

I've had in excess of 30 managers in my life and I can say categorically that in my case, the worse managers were women. They were in the majority childless, micro managers, kiss ass to higher up and big bullies. I had a few who were lovely though.

Overall I found male managers much more relaxed and flexible. Thinking back, the ones that comes to mind as the worse managers that made me dislike my job were all women.

It’s got to the point now where if I’m looking at a role or a new job I’d prefer an experience woman over any man. Perhaps that’s an age thing.

My manager is absolutely useless. She is a woman. Can’t wait until she gets rotated.

Every good manager I have had has been a woman - even the not so smart ones have been decent people managers. The men have range from clueless and promoted above ability to bullies and egotists. Most of the men have been sexist.

If I remember correctly, the management witnesses in the Sandie Peggy and Darlington nurses tribunals did not seem too bright. Were they a fair representation of managerial quality in the NHS?

I’ve had as many bad female managers than male and same with good ones.

As someone else mentioned I have noticed female managers seem to be gone quicker if they rubbish where’s as Men seem to be moved about or everyone knows they crap but they keep their jobs.

I also hate females that are strong leaders but described as ball buster like they have to be aggressive to compete with men.

A decent manager can be either, it’s important to have a balance across sexes and personalities otherwise you will just end up with a group of people that all just think the same way. (Recent Golf advert controversy comes to mind when you forget to have different voices in the room)

Not in my experience and I have been a female leader . I much preferred working for a male boss . I find that females can make decisions based on emotion and not always appreciate fairness . Men are much less gossipy and stick to facts . I also like that men can give you a totally different perspective, something not always thought of .

I think the wider point is that we would be better off with more balance of male AND female leadership.

diversity of thought and experience is one of the most important ingredients for success and when leadership is too heavily skewed to a few demographics, it risks being blinkered and less effective. Hence why unconscious bias is so discussed now; although far more useful than forcing people to go through theoretical training would be having more representation of minority demographics at the top table so constructive challenge and discussion could happen in real time.

I had good and bad managers of both sexes. I found in general male managers to delegate more and let you get on with it and got micromanaged more by women . My best manager ever was a man though.

In management women as a group would probably skew to different positive and negatives than men.

However as world leaders, possibly there would be fewer wars given that women are less violent and maybe not so much risk takers. But you would need no men in power anywhere.

What could be interesting is to take the vote away from men to see how that shifts everyone's focus.

There is evidence that the Countries with female leaders had fewer Covid deaths, also patients are less likely to do when looked after by female Drs. So I would say women are better at keeping people alive.

What’s the YABU?

Define "better". Women generally have higher empathy, but also higher neuroticism.

While you're at it, define "leader"...

Two of my best managers have been women. One promoted me to a position I was too scared to apply for and I thrived and I'm in a reasonably senior role now which is 100% down to her doing that 30 years ago.

My ex-manager was promoted last year and a male colleague got her job (I didn't apply as my work life balance is perfect right now). He has based his management style on hers and is the best male manager I have ever had.

In my experience there are good and bad managers of both sexes. The good ones are good in the same sorts of ways.

But the way in which the bad ones are bad differ significantly by sex. The bad male managers I’ve had are more likely to be indecisive & lazy, or to make flagrantly stupid / destructive business decisions, whereas the bad female managers have been micromanaging and jobsworthy but still get quite a bit done.

Like most here, I've had very good managers of both sexes, and terrible managers of both sexes.

It was very different as a young, ambitious and quite attractive woman who climbed the ladder quickly at the start of my career. I was 'taken under the wing' of a lot of senior men, and treated with open hostility by many senior women.

Now I'm out of the cute impressionable ingenue phase and well into my cynical old hag era, it's all pretty same-same.