Women have leadership advantages – on why that matters and how it may help us

Why might women leaders have leadership advantages?

To understand the potential for a leadership advantage, it is worth exploring the ways in which relative gender adversity impacts on the lived experience of women in the workplace.

The foremost challenges are the masculine favouring design of work environments, work hours, school and holiday arrangements reflecting our agricultural predominantly male workforce past^17,18 alongside gender stereotypes that portray women as having fewer leadership qualities. ⁹ These physical and organisational hurdles exist in a world where women still do more of the at home household work, ¹⁹ and by necessity require women to either work faster or harder to maintain career trajectory with male peers.

It is well recognised that sociocultural perceptions or unconscious bias lead to some bizarre ideas about leadership. Commonly, when people are asked to picture a doctor or scientist, they imagine an older white man. ²⁰ Even women do this. Even women who are doctors do this. Internalised unconscious bias translates at every level to the identity of women in the workplace. ²¹ And this stereotype persists alongside data that consistently shows better outcomes for the patients of women medical practitioners. ²² Women doctors are more likely to spend more time, ²³ follow guidelines, ²⁴ have fewer emergency room visits and more specialist referrals ²⁵ and are more likely to enquire about social circumstances affecting care. ²³

As a community, we expect more kindness and empathy and less leadership, less strategy and less assertiveness from women leaders.^26,27 It is possible that expectations of women are enhanced because they gender align with most people’s primary attachment figure. There is evidence to suggest that secure attachment styles are associated with experiences of leadership ²⁸ and that the leader–follower relationship echoes our internalised familial ones. There is additional evidence to suggest attachment capacity, and a parenting perspective is a component of transformational leadership. ²⁹ Do we expect leaders who match our primary attachment figure to also fully meet our developmental and career needs? Experience in managing higher expectations may accelerate leadership development.

There is ample evidence that women have to work harder to achieve equivalent success in academic and professional careers. There are more hurdles to senior roles, more hurdles to publication,^30,31 fewer awards, ³² less professional visibility ³³ and recommendations ³⁴ and lower retention rates. ³⁵ There is well-documented sexism in our language. ³⁶ Women are more likely to be untitled when introduced. ³⁷ In Australia, there remains a real gender pay gap ³⁸ and a persistent difference in unpaid domestic workload between men and women. ³⁹ These gaps represent additional workload. Persistence and stubborn optimism are also highly relevant skillsets for leadership and influence. ⁴⁰

I speculate that women’s assumed superior interpersonal skills are unconsciously recognised in the glass cliff phenomena. ⁴¹ This refers to the over representation of women employed into precarious leadership roles. ⁴² A common explanation is that this protects men from inevitable failure. Alternatively, it may represent an underlying belief that a woman has the best chance of changing a culture or are better leaders in a crisis. ⁴³ Regardless, many women inevitably fail in these situations, and this is then regarded as evidence of their unsuitability, rather than an opportunity from which they may have learnt much.

There is additional evidence that women have a different lived experience of power^44,45 and must routinely influence from a lower power position. Lesser power may enhance skills in interpreting and anticipating the impacts of power and may hone influence skills. There is an emerging literature on how informal power^46,47 may successfully incentivise more sophisticated influence approaches over traditional hierarchical ones. ⁴⁸

In addition, women who are mothers generally have more parenting experiences that incentivise collaboration and a range of other mature emotional regulation skills. While many people in the workplace are parents, women continue to shoulder more of the domestic and mental load. ⁴⁹ Pregnancy and childbirth teach humility, acceptance of personal weakness and uncertainty. Parenting tends to improve personal integrity, compassion and self-emotional regulation. Needing to manage family logistics encourages extreme time management. The outcomes tend to be familiarity with eliciting help, cognitive flexibility, collaboration and enhanced capacity to balance multiple competing needs.

Leadership approaches favoured by gendered lived experience

Leadership evidence suggests that great leaders have higher integrity, empathy, strategy and alignment with values. ⁵⁰ These are strengths that align with many women aligned gender roles.

There are a number of core leadership skills that I believe at the current time are more prevalent in women. These approaches blend the components of alignment, empathy and future focus and may be useful for all to consider developing.

Conclusions

The job of the leader is to synthesise the need and the capacity and hold a strategic vision. Ultimately, the job of the leader is to be systems oriented and future focussed, while utilising the strengths of others. There are many ways to lead; some are more useful in the modern world than others. At this point in history, it seems possible that the additional challenges of a gender socialised world have enhanced the capacity of women to build cohesive, diverse and engaged teams. Perhaps we should embrace these skills and use them to build more inclusive, more networked professional communities that will be robust enough to support the emerging and diverse challenges of the future.