Mindful and Masculine: Freeing Women Leaders From the Constraints of Gender Roles

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Christine Kawakami, Judith B. White, Ellen J. Langer

Judith B. White [*]

Despite gains in women's status, successful leaders are more likely to be men than women. The styles that successful leaders set tend to be masculine. Female leaders face a paradox: If they emulate a masculine leadership style, their male subordinates will dislike them. If they adopt a stereotypically warm and nurturing feminine style, they will be liked, but not respected. Two experiments found that female leaders who are mindful can escape this paradox. In an experiment, college-aged men perceived a woman who was masculine and mindful to be a better leader than a woman who was masculine and mindless. A second experiment replicated that result with middle-aged businessmen.

Over the past 2 decades, the number of women pursuing managerial careers in the United States has risen dramatically. Women in management have proven to be equally skilled, educated, and trained as their male peers, and organizations are hiring managerial men and women in roughly equal numbers. Despite their comparable qualifications, however, female managers are not entering the highest leadership positions at the same rate as their male counterparts (Burke & MacDermid, 1996). At the start of the 1990s, only five of the Fortune 500 industrial and service companies had female CEOs (Feminist Majority Foundation, 1991, in Heilman, 1995), and of the highest paid officers and directors of the 1,300 largest industrial and service companies, women made up less than 0.5% (Fierman, 1990, in Dodge & Gilroy, 1995). The numbers have improved, but at the close of the decade one survey found only 11% of Fortune 500 board members were women (Mann, 1999). These statistics raise the question of why women have encountered li mited access to senior leadership roles.

Perceptions, rather than reality, may be the answer. The gender stereotype of women as warm, nurturing, and caring and the corresponding stereotype of men as cold, competitive, and authoritarian may have contributed to a popular perception that women are less effective than men in leadership positions, though in fact they are equally effective. Eagly, Karau, and Makhijani (1995) conducted a meta-analytic review of gender and leader effectiveness and concluded that men and women are equally effective leaders, unless the leadership role is gendered (people expect the leader to be male or female). In that case, leaders of the expected gender are more effective. That is, social role expectations influence leader effectiveness. The relationship between gender and perceived leadership is widely discussed in the current literature, and research has focused on two questions: how traits associated with effective leadership are gendered, and how leaders acting outside of their gender roles are viewed.

With regard to how leadership traits are gendered, research has shown that traditional managerial roles are sex-typed as masculine, meaning that characteristics deemed necessary to be a successful manager are stereotypically associated with men. Schein and colleagues (Schein, 1973; Schein, 1975; Schein & Mueller, 1992; Schein, Mueller, & Jacobson, 1989) have found that subjects perceive a successful middle manager as having characteristics more often held by men than by women. The expectation that successful managers will possess masculine traits is stronger among men than among women (Schein & Mueller, 1992). Similarly, Powell and Butterfield (1986) found that male undergraduate and part-time graduate business students also viewed good managers in masculine terms. These findings support the claim that managerial roles are widely perceived as being aligned with stereotypically male characteristics.

Just as successful managers are defined in masculine terms, perceived leader effectiveness is also associated with male characteristics. Hackman, Hills, Paterson, and Furniss (1993) showed that masculinity in male and female leaders was perceived by all subordinates as effective, whereas female leaders displaying feminine characteristics were not seen as effective. Eagly et al. (1995) suggest that especially in cases where they occupy highly male-dominated leadership roles, women are vulnerable to "prejudiced evaluations and lowered effectiveness" (p. 126). In leadership positions that are rarely held by women, and that perhaps as a result become strongly associated with male characteristics, women may need to display masculine characteristics to be seen as effective. In fact, current advice to women adopts this strategy. For example, one recent self-help book aimed at women managers advised women to be assertive, explaining that "men in the business world often misjudge [women's] behavior style ... as an in ability to lead" (Turkington, 1996, p. 54).

Although the above findings support the perception that female leaders need to possess masculine traits to be perceived as an effective leader, the gender role congruency hypothesis seems to offer advice that contradicts this. Nieva and Gutek's (1981) gender role congruency hypothesis states that behavior that is congruent with one's gender role will be evaluated more favorably than gender role incongruent behavior. Early research supported this hypothesis. Haccoun, Haccoun, and Sallay (1978) found that men rated female leaders in out-of-role behavior (acting masculine) as less effective, and Bradley (1980) discovered that masculine-acting female leaders were not well-liked by peers. A 1992 meta analytic review (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992) offered further support, finding that female leaders who were perceived as having a stereotypically masculine style were less positively valued and seen as more