Do female leaders and managers make better managers ?

[MrsPhilippaPippaVoss]

theres often talk about females being better than men and that if women had control of the world etc the world would be better and since they have not achieved that yet, part of the question can be answered by me asking do females / women make better managers than males and why ?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’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. 😡

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

I suspect a lot also depends on your work environment- I have mostly worked in very male-dominated areas of IT, and I've only had two women managers. However, in my library career when I was young, it was nearly all women. Head librarians were all male, though...

My best managers have been men - but so have my worst (men are also very capable of micromanagement.) But then the vast majority of my managers have been men, so that's just a question of numbers as much as anything. Interestingly, the very top of my reporting line is currently all female, but there are 3 levels of men until you get to the three levels of women above them. The woman in charge of our division in the UK seems to be really brilliant and tries to get to know everyone regardless of rank.

Ive been bullied badly in certain jobs I've had. Every time its been a woman responsible and a particular vindictiveness came with the bullying from those women.

Law is well known for that though.

I’ve had some horrors in my career, vindictive, spiteful and incredibly moody, but also had some inspirational female leaders so it’s a hard one to answer.

I’ve experienced poor, average and excellent with both men and women. I have to say though, our current female Head Teacher is exceptional! Honest, sincere, hardworking, reflective, constantly striving for improvement.

I’ve been treated poorly more by female managers than male, some can be really nasty.

Interestingly, the most compassionate manager I've ever had was a man and the most hands-off one/emotionally cold manager was a woman.

I remember reading somewhere that women leaders are less likely to show compassion and are more likely to be ruthless due to perception of them being judged as 'emotional'. I also remember reading that at times of trouble, businesses often hire women leaders as they want to the women to make visibly tough decisions as it looks better/less aggressive than if a man does it.

I'm middle management (and a woman) at the moment and I strive so hard to be myself and not soften my soft edges as I'm aware of this.

As others have echoed i have had shit managers of both sexes. I guess if I really had to split hairs, generally speaking, the male managers were shit due to lack of competence, organisational skills, indecision or any kind of emotional intelligence. The women were shit because of manipulative bullying vindictive behaviour. Not sure which conditions were worst to work under.

Same
and I’m afraid to say the 2 female ones have been horrendous 😭

but the current one makes the first one seem like Mary Poppins

i don’t doubt those is some ingrained expectations of empathy and understanding from a woman. So when you get neither it does seem even more shocking for her to consciously make every effort to cause more damage

So I’ve had some mediocre male managers but the two worst managers I’ve had were woman. The best manager I’ve ever had (and best manager in the world, I love you Joan) was also a woman. I think it really depends because some women managers can just be fucking sadistic freaks - the two I’m talking about hated me for my youth and used to be absolutely awful to me and the other young things. To this day I go out of my way to be nice to younger women in the workplace. I’m 27 and self employed, so not really an issue yet but when I go to meet ups and stuff and professional development things I always always try and be nice/ share my knowledge.

The most gossipy people at my work are definitely men.

No way.

The worst bosses I have ever had were female, the best male.

In my decades long career experience, women are not better leaders.

Come off it.
Women tolerate, even venerate, mediocre women leaders.

Just think Jacinda Ardern, hailed as a covid strategy genius - apparently because she was a woman - and then proved to be as mediocre as any other on every other topic or policy she touched.

Some people get some things right sometimes. I dont know anyone, man or woman, that gets it mostly right most of the time.

Even your Thatcher dig is fairly misplaced: short term fixes for a very ailing country that have had long term consequences. But to say that was bad is to assume there was a better course of action at the time. In her absence I'd guess there were about 2 chances of someone finding a better solution against 5000 different ways to fail even more completely.

It's easy to look back and find alternatives with hindsight but no guarantee they wouldn't also have had unintended consequences

I’ve had more male managers given the type of work I do (Engineering) but on the whole I have been really lucky to have mostly really good direct line managers with very limited exceptions.

One of our big bosses though isn’t a great leader and I’m extremely thankful he has an exceptional woman over him who holds him in line.