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

Discussion

This study examined the effect of leader mindfulness on perceptions of female leadership. As predicted, men who viewed a speech given by either a mindful or mindless female leader rated the mindful leader higher on leadership. A manipulation check on perceptions of genuineness showed that male participants also perceived a mindful leader to be more genuine, as expected. Unexpectedly, male participants also perceived a mindful leader to be warmer than a mindless leader.

Though the differences were in the predicted direction, participants' mean ratings of leadership and perceived genuineness were at or below the scale midpoint ([less than]3) for both mindful and mindless speakers. This is probably due to the fact that the participants, college-aged men, watched young women give a speech in which they pretended to be president of a Rotary Club. The mean ratings of warmth for both conditions were quite low (M = 1.83; M = 0.33). This was expected, however, since all the speakers in clips shown to participants in Experiment 1 were instructed to convey a sense of coolness.

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that a woman leader who mindfully adopts a stereotypically masculine trait (coolness) will be perceived by her potential peers--businessmen--as an effective leader. We predicted that female speakers who were instructed to make the script their own (mindful condition) would be perceived as better leaders than mindless speakers. Since leadership is presented as a paradoxical wade-off with warmth, we also wanted to see whether mindful female leaders could adopt a cool presentation style and still be perceived as more effective than their mindless, cool counterparts. Findings supporting this hypothesis would challenge the current belief that female leaders need to follow the warm gender role to be evaluated favorably (the gender role congruency hypothesis). It was expected that the results of this part of the experiment would delineate more clearly how female leaders should guide future behavior to win favorable evaluations.

Experiment 2 employed a 2 (mindful, mindless) x 2 (warm, cool) factorial design. As in Experiment 1, we used two different speaker clips in each of the four cells to counter an effect due to a particular speaker.

The Rotary Club of San Cabs, California, has 96 members, and the district spans from Mann to Palo Alto. The group falls under Rotary International, a global association of business and professional men and women dedicated to serving the community, and the San Carlos Club in particular is known for its hands-on involvement with helping its local youth. In fact, one of the requirements for club membership is that one either owns a business or holds the position of director, principal, supervisor, or an equivalent title. Regarding leadership experience within the Rotary Club, 45.4% of members held or had held a position in the club, and 54.6% had not.

Method

Participants. Forty-two male members of the San Carlos Rotary Club participated in a 10-min study during one of their regular weekly meetings. (Seven women also participated in the study, but their numbers were too few to allow us to include them.) Participants in this study ranged in age from 30 to 75 (M= 54.5, SD = 9.5). Participants overwhelmingly held positions of leadership in business. The majority of participants (77.3%) held titles indicative of leadership, such as business owner, president, vice president, director, managing director, chief, pastor, superintendent, and boss, 72.7% in business and 27.3% in nonbusiness fields. As they entered the meeting, members were asked to participate in a study and if they agreed, they received a copy of the questionnaire. Each participant was randomly assigned to watch one of eight video clips according to which of eight different questionnaires he received as they were distributed when the Rotarians entered the meeting room.