'lessen the power of the male order, rather than join the ranks' Squires 1999

[Spidergirl8]

I'm currently reading a variety of text in preparation for a programme of study/training. I've learnt some very interesting things and I genuinly feel I've learnt some new ideas. One of main ones is how leadership is socially considered a male trait and this needs to be challenged rather than women trying to fit into this.

I'm sure I'm late to this research but please do enlighten me with any further facts and theories. Also just about to start reading Anne Dickson 'A Woman in your own right'

Anyone?

I'm not sure I understand 'leadership' as a male trait. Can you elaborate a bit?

The essays/papers I'm reading suggest that attributes associate with leaders are based on 'gender cloning', the idea that people hire people like themselves and as more men are in positions of leadership they are more likely to hire a man. There's also reference to there being a perception that women are 'risky' choices when appointed to senior positions because they are not the 'norm'.
Another point made is that maleness is seen as a resource in the form of career capital and femaleness is viewed as a form of negative equity. Based on the social constructed definitions of masculinity which perceive leadership as demanding, aggressive and authoritarian.

There is some good stuff on this on Harvard Business Review online. Just do a search on their website using the keyword 'women', and a bunch of stuff comes up.

Thank you

I read an article about sport women and leadership. That was focused more around the motivational qualities of leadership rather than it being authoritarian. Bringing people with you, so to speak. The very opposite of aggressive.

Meant to say I'll try and dig it out for you!

This wasn't it but I think one of the links in it was. However it does still expect women to fit in with the traditional thoughts on leadership rather than stress traditionally female traits can also be good for leadership. But it does mention a few of the less aggressive traits of leadership such as team building and motivation.

Anecdotally my workplace is going much more collaborative and team building is becoming much more critical as are motivational and persuasive skills along with more respectful behaviour. Let's just say it isn't the women having issues with this.

I was in a conference a couple of weeks back, and one session was on unconscious bias. One of the questions to the panel was about what do they think is the biggest threat to achieving a more diverse workplace, and one of the answers was that the stereotype of a leader or manager is a man, and we really need to beat the manager=man view.

Another presentation I was in earlier this year was talking about careers and women; the presenter had searched online stock images for people in a management hierarchy - and she couldn't find one that included women.

Thank you for replies. I think it will take decades to overcome this, unfortunately. Thank you for the article link, very interesting. I was a keen athlete through school- never thought there might be a connection!