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  Female leadership style



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2.3.3   Female leadership style 
 
The debate about whether or not women have a unique leadership style is an interesting 
area in leadership research. It is even more interesting for feminist researchers who are 
inclined to believe that women do indeed have different leadership styles than men. 
Perhaps it might be useful at this point to define leadership style.  
 
Style has to do with how a person relates to people, tasks and challenges. A person’s style 
is usually a very personal and distinctive feature of his or her personality and character. A 
style may be democratic or autocratic, centralised or decentralised, empathetic or 
detached, extroverted or introverted, assertive or passive, engaged or remote. Different 
styles may work equally well in different situations, and there is often a proper fit 
between the needs of an organisation and the needed leadership style (Cronin 1993:14). 
Hollander and Offerman (1993:69) characterise style as more than just typical behaviour, 
but as being “affected by such situational constraints as role demands, which are related 


 
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to the leader’s level in the organisation and the expectations of followers. Style also is a 
function of the particular followers with whom the leader interacts.” 
 
Although it is a general belief that women have a different leadership style to men, some 
researchers (Blackmore 1999, Blackmore 2002, Rhode 2003) think it may be a problem 
to lump all women together and treat them as if they were a ‘homogeneous group’ 
without considering differences such as race, class, beliefs, ethnicity, age and sexual 
orientation (Blackmore 1999:57, Rhode 2003: 18). In other words, all women are not the 
same and as Rhode puts it, “ sweeping generalisations about women’s experience risk  
over-claiming and over-simplifying” ( Rhode 2003:18). These ‘sweeping generalisations’ 
have to do with what Blackmore refers to as “the popular discourse about women’s’ 
leadership being flexible, democratic, valuing openness, trust and compassion, ‘humane 
and efficient’” (Blackmore 1999:57). Osler’s (1997) study cited by Hall (2002: 23-24) 
attests to the existence of differences in leadership priorities between black and white 
women educational leaders. For black women, the overall aim of educational 
management is the promotion of racial justice, whereas for white senior educators, the 
priority is running an effective school. 
 
Whilst it cannot be denied that women have certain leadership qualities that are different 
from men’s, such as the prevalent one of ‘caring and nurturing’, studies conducted so far 
have not yet provided conclusive evidence about the dichotomy between male and female 
leadership styles. What some studies have been able to reveal is that women seem to have 
styles of leadership better suited to certain contexts than others.  For instance, Blackmore 
(1999:57) thinks that the popular discourse about women’s style of leadership “is 
seemingly convergent with ‘new’ and softer management discourses that focus upon 
good people management as the new source of productivity in post-modern 
organisations”. 
 
This section focuses on women’s leadership styles in the context of the changing culture 
of higher education. The position taken is that the changing culture is likely to have 
certain implications for leaders and managers, such as the need to adjust from specialist 
to generalist so as “to extend the range of their managerial skills and competencies, to 


 
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manage complex change at a time when their performance is under constant scrutiny and 
the resources they have to manage are constantly questioned and traditional career paths 
are crumbling” (Dopson & McNay 1996:31).    
 
Women leaders and managers are likely to experience adjustment problems as well as the 
challenges of surviving and excelling in a more demanding work environment. They will 
need to adopt new leadership styles better suited to the changing culture. Women’s 
leadership styles are considered to be more suited to contemporary demands for ‘softer, 
more feminine’ qualities. For instance, some studies have found that women leaders tend 
to have transformational leadership styles which would probably make them more 
suitable leaders in the new corporate, academic environment which emphasises team-
work and where fresh values and visions are promoted and pursued. rather than 
committee-work where, as Dopson and MacNay (1996:27) argue, “positional power and 
the purse-strings are used to promote conformity to corporate objectives”. 
 
In Jones’ (1997) study of African-American women executives, the leadership style most 
respondents described as their approach to leadership was transformational characterised 
by “participative management, empowerment, team building, vision creation and hands-
on supervision” (Jones 1997:207). There seems to be a shift in the new management era 
towards more feminine styles of leadership which emphasise connectedness and 
collaboration. This augurs well for the inclusion of more women in management 
positions. Women managers are believed to be a new source of leadership talent because 
of their organisational skills, their ability to share, communicate, listen to and empathise 
with the needs of others (Blackmore  2002). Their more openly softer characteristics are 
thought to be critical to new managerialism in post-modern organisations. Women’s 
nurturing nature  places them in a better position  than men to exercise these more 
spontaneously occurring ‘soft skills’ alongside the tougher skills already expected of 
managers in a male defined managerial world. The ‘soft skills’ involve  “motivating staff, 
creating co-operation, re-defining organisational values and beliefs, and re-aligning 
management focus”(Karpin report 1995  in Blackmore 2002:60). What this 
characterisation of  women  means then, is that opportunities exist for more inclusive 
leadership in the changed culture of the university organisation. We may begin to see 


 
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more and more women leaders in the academe as universities take on a more corporate 
and less collegial structure as events in the external environment begin to shape and 
redirect the internal workings of the university. 
 
2.3.3.1   The debate concerning a female style of leadership 
 
This is a disputed issue as indicated in the introduction to this section. To reiterate, 
leadership studies have historically focused on male leadership styles.  Traditionally only 
males were leaders, and the factor of gender in leadership did not exist. But with the 
emergence of, and increase in the number of female leaders, gender began to feature in 
leadership studies with several researchers attempting to understand the differences in 
leadership styles of men and women. Experimental and assessment studies carried out by 
Eagly and Johnson 1990, Eagly et al 1992, as well as Adler and Israeli 1988 had 
interesting findings. The results indicated that: 
 
Women employed a more interpersonal style of leadership than did men who were 
found to be more task-oriented. However in the real world of organisations, no 
differences were found in both the laboratory and the organisational settings, in other 
styles…women were typically more democratic than men employing a more 
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