The Democratic Sex: Gender Differences and the Exercise of Power

ABSTRACT

Few have studied differences between how women and men lead, particularly at the local level. This article addresses this gap by reporting the results of a unique study of 192 female mayors and 192 male mayors in cities with populations of over 30,000 to consider whether the female mayors emphasized different policy issues and whether the women in local leadership created alternative decision-making processes in allocating resources. Overall, the results show similarities on policy issues, the use of power, and budget issues. However, some key gender differences emerge. Female mayors were far more willing to change the budget process, be more inclusive, and seek broader participation. Finally, more women mayors than men were willing to admit fiscal problems and discuss changes in their goals. Women mayors were also more likely than their male counterparts to believe that women face gender-based obstacles in the exercise of leadership.     

In search of the glass ceiling: gender and recruitment to management in Norway's state bureaucracy1

There are still fewer female than male managers in Norway's state bureaucracy. This article asks if there are organizational barriers which prevent women from entering these positions. Is there really a glass ceiling, or must one look outside the organizational environment to find an explanation? Is it rather the case that the scarcity of female managers is caused by women's own preferences or their life situations outside work? Or do both contribute to the situation? The study shows that female managers are treated just as well as male managers in central parts of the state bureaucracy. Employers give equal shares of respect and attention to both genders. Female managers are encouraged to apply for the same number of jobs as men and are offered an equal number of jobs as men when they apply; in fact, women are offered more jobs than men, when one controls for the number of job applications. This indicates that organizational barriers are not the problem. The study also shows that there are no differences in work orientation between male and female managers. Female managers are just as ambitious as male managers. Nor do female managers find it more difficult than male managers to combine work and family life. So, how can one explain the low number of female managers? The study shows that one reason can be that female managers apply for management jobs less often than their male colleagues. The cause of this seems to be anticipated discrimination rather than lack of ambition or self‐confidence. However, this slows down women's movement into higher management positions in the state bureaucracy.     

He is a Firm,Strong‐Minded and Empowering Leader,but is She? Gendered Positioning of Female and Male CEOs

The article focuses on how management and gender are done in written stories about female and male chief executive officers (CEOs). The stories were written by young Finnish business school students. The logic for studying stories written by students lies in the argument that the new generation will not reproduce common stereotypes about soft, democratic and caring female managers and hard, authoritarian and strong male managers. In the analysis, we rely on positioning theory, which focuses on how the CEOs are discursively positioned, that is, what kinds of roles and duties they are assigned and how their positions shift as the story unfolds. The analysis shows that while there is little difference in the rights and duties assigned to the CEOs, the positioning of female and male CEOs construct a very different picture of their abilities as business managers and leaders of people. The female CEOs are depicted as successful business managers but lacking in interpersonal skills. The male CEOs are also successful business managers but they are constructed as naturally competent leaders of people. This finding is linked to the Finnish management context as well as to the institutionalized leadership and management discourses.     

Expatriate paternalistic leadership and gender relations in small European software firms in India

The study examines how European managers deliver paternalistic leadership in two small IT companies in India, a collectivist, high-power-distance culture where private lives are largely influenced by extended families. In particular, gender aspects are discussed in relation to recruitment and attrition, working hours and leave policies, and building company culture. These small companies experience a different set of challenges from those faced by the big multinationals, and they meet them in different ways, often translating Western management ideas to fit the Indian context. This article shows how managers of these two companies, with their European background, adapt their leadership to the Indian setting and how they handle gender issues. While some degree of paternalistic leadership appears to be a necessity in the Indian context, introducing European ideas of low power differences and regulated policies creates a mix which is appreciated by the employees.     

The Family Context of Relational Aggression in “Difficult to Treat” Female Juvenile Offenders

Female juvenile offenders often engage in socially aggressive behaviors that make them more difficult to treat than male juvenile offenders. This social (i.e., relational) aggression may be developed or maintained through transactions with family members. To investigate this issue, we measured relational aggression in the family interactions of 140 adolescents divided by gender and offender status into four equal‐sized groups (female juvenile offenders, male juvenile offenders, female nonoffenders, and male nonoffenders). Adolescents and caregivers completed a family discussion task, and raters coded relationally aggressive behaviors at the dyadic level. Results showed that female juvenile offenders and their mothers directed more relational aggression toward each other than did mother–adolescent dyads in the other groups. Implications of these results for treatment and research are discussed.     

I Am Woman,Hear Me Tweet! Gender Differences in Twitter Use among Congressional Candidates

This study synthesizes two theoretical literatures to explain gender differences in Twitter usage and effectiveness among US Congressional candidates. The first suggests that candidates in perceived disadvantaged positions, females in this case, innovate to improve their chances of success, and the second, that female politicians often adopt stereotypically masculine behaviors to be successful. On the basis of these theories, we hypothesize and confirm that female candidates are more likely than males to integrate Twitter into their campaigns, but our results are less conclusive regarding a difference in the likelihood that females use negative campaigning tactics via Twitter. Our results also indicate that those females who use Twitter more than their male counterparts tended to do better electorally, but this difference is conditional. Female Republican candidates who tweeted more increased their vote share, but the opposite is true for Democrats. We speculate that this differential effect may be a product of different audiences for social media in each party’s electorate.     

Topmanager im Spiegel ihrer Selbstorientierung

A whole collection of technical and popular scientific literature describes business thinking and communication processes. But what do we know about the thinking and communication processes of those that actually give important impulses in their leadership positions as members of the board and top managers? What do we know about their strategies and mechanisms? What is their underlying self and world view? This article gives answers to these questions in form of certain types and structures. The raw data was obtained as set of narrative, biographically oriented interviews, conducted with eight top managers. They have leading positions in companies with upwards of EUR 70 billion annual sales volume, and more than 300 000 employees. Most of the managers interviewed are members of the board. All companies considered are based in Germany.     

The Subjectivity of Fairness: Managerial Discretion and Work–Life Balance

We use organizational justice theory to examine how perceptions of fairness affect the decision‐making process of line managers. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 35 Irish managers to explore how managers make organizational allocation decisions in cases where it is impractical to offer work–life balance accommodations to all employees. The findings suggest that firstly, managers construct the ‘life’ aspect of work–life balance within a heteronormative framework, where the emphasis is on caregiving and most usually parenting. Secondly, managers actively use their decision‐making powers around both formal and informal work–life balance supports to minimize injustice within their departments. By bringing together ideas about organizational justice and managerial decision‐making, we indicate how managers determine fairness through a decision‐making process narrowed by embedded gender role beliefs. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Sexual Abuse Victimization and Psychological Distress Among Adolescent Offenders

ABSTRACT

This study focused on sexual abuse victimization and psychological distress among 272 adolescent offenders. The respondents were interviewed while they were being detained in a short-term holding facility. Female respondents reported more sexual abuse victimization and psychological distress than did their male counterparts. Furthermore, church attendance moderated the association between sexual abuse victimization and psychological distress among the male respondents. Implications of these findings for research and interventions with adolescent offenders are discussed.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

Leadership criteria in the Pacific Northwest of the USA 19972002

Abstract

There have been very little follow-up leadership behaviour studies. This study describes an investigation of the US insurance industry. Management behaviour was studied in the beginning and at the end of the five-year period 19972002. On the whole insurance managers in the Pacific Northwest in the hard market conditions of 2002 appear on average to have changed their leadership criteria evaluations only slightly: they appreciated staffing and managing by example more than their colleagues did previously in the soft market conditions of 1997. The empirical data were checked for company size and management level. According to three-way variance analysis the different time period (soft or hard market conditions) and company size seem to have affected three leadership criteria: insurance managers in big companies in 2002 seemed to rate organizing, delegating and mutual trust more highly than their colleagues did five years earlier. The study suggests hypothetically that in a soft market period (buyer's market) managers employ a more relationship-oriented leadership style and correspondingly adapt their leadership style to a more task-oriented approach in a hard market phase (seller's market).     

Cognitive communication competence within public relations practitioners: Examining gender differences between technicians and managers

This study examines gender differences within public relations practitioners. Of specific interest was the role that cognitive communication competence played within public relations managers and public relations technicians. Public relations practitioners completed a questionnaire that included the Duran and Spitzberg's [Duran, R. L., & Spitzberg, B. H. (1995). Toward the development and validation of a measure of cognitive communication competence. Communication Quarterly, 43(3), 259–275] Cognitive Communication Competence Scale. Participants self-identified whether they were a technician or a manager. Results showed that male public relations managers had significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male public relations technicians. However, the hypothesis that female public relations managers would have higher cognitive communication competence than female public relations technicians was not supported. Also, this study found no significant gender differences with levels of cognitive communication competence. However, female technicians have significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male technicians.     

Der regulatorische Fokus als Führungsinstrument für eine bedürfnisorientierte und effektive Mitarbeiterkommunikation

Interaction with employees is essential for organizational leaders. If executives do not communicate well, important processes like giving feedback, setting goals or guiding change processes can nevertheless lead to resistance from subordinates when communication is received as more threatening than challenging. Conveying messages in ways that provoke challenge instead of threat appraisals can be achieved via employee-oriented communication, but this may require taking peoples’ differing motivational orientations into account. This is because motivational orientations partially determine what kind of information is motivating to us, which goals and strategies we prefer, and how we deal with changes. In this regard, Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins 1997) compares the gain- and success-sensitive promoter with the loss- and failure-sensitive preventer. This article applies this theory to the organizational psychological context and outlines practical implications for managers. The goal of the piece is to provide managers a leadership tool that acknowledges the diversity of peoples’ motivational styles and by that revealing a need-oriented and more efficient way in communication with subordinates.     

Perceptions of cross-sex and same-sex nonreciprocal touch: It is better to give than to receive

Observers' perceptions of actors engaged in cross-sex and same-sex nonreciprocal touch vs. no-touch interactions were assessed. Touchers were rated significantly higher than recipients on dimensions of status/dominance, instrumentality/assertiveness, and warmth/expressiveness. Furthermore, touchers were rated higher, and recipients were rated lower, on these dimensions than no-touch controls. Female observers rated actors involved in touch interactions as more attractive than those involved in no-touch interactions, whereas male observers did the reverse. Results suggest that nonreciprocal touch conveys several messages, and appears to benefit the toucher more than the recipient. Implications of these results for evaluations of the nonverbal communication patterns of women and men were discussed.     

Cultural Correlates of Gender Integration in Science

Gender integration within science has been uneven: some fields have integrated women to almost equitable levels, while others remain male‐dominated. Explanations for this variation abound, but few are able to assess empirically the relevance of disciplinary cultures in a systematic way. We take up this challenge by analysing accounts of scientific success in fields that integrated women to a large degree (Psychology and the Life Sciences) and fields that did not (Engineering and Physics). We qualitatively assess how the salience of relationships changed over time in these fields. We find that scientists from disciplines that have crossed the threshold whereby women are no longer tokens culturally value informal relationships more than those in which women remain a small numerical minority.     

高校学生干部情绪智力领导力研究

提高高校学生干部领导力教育的针对性和有效性,应当着力于把握当前中国高校学生干部的领导力水平。对1238名高校学生干部的抽样调查发现,中国高校学生干部的情绪智力领导力总体处于中等水平,且存在不同类别高校、学科、学历、年级、性别等方面的差异。因此,相比"211"高校,普通高校更应加强学生干部领导力的培养;在开展高校学生干部领导力教育的过程中,应考虑大学生的学科差异、性别差异等因素;大学生干部领导力教育应加强情境认知能力的环境觉知和团队洞察方面的内容;加快研究适合中国高校大学生领导力教育的理论和评估工具,以更好地指导大学生领导力教育的实践。     

Provider perceptions of the social work environment and the state of pediatric care in a downsized urban public academic medical center

The author's purpose through this study was to document and analyze health provider perceptions of their social work environment and the state of pediatric care at Los Angeles County King/Drew Hospital and Medical Center in 2000, after the restructuring and downsizing of the hospital and its community clinics. The research results showed nurses and physicians reporting that both the quality of pediatric care and the provider social work environment were poor. Negative factors in the social work environment included: low employee morale, poorly staffed clinical teams, lack of professional autonomy, perceptions of low quality of care for pediatric patients, and interpersonal issues of poor communication and collaboration among providers. Providers also perceived a non-supportive work environment, sense of powerlessness, poor quality of work, lack of goal clarity from leadership, lack of fairness in leadership behavior, and an organizational leadership that is abandoning its core mission and values, thereby making it difficult for providers to carry out their professional functions. The author's findings in this study suggest a relationship between intra-role conflict, social employment environment and quality of care at King/Drew Medical Center in 2000. Lessons for practice are presented.     

Management und Teilzeit? – Eine empirische Analyse zur Verbreitung von Teilzeitarbeit unter Managerinnen und Managern in Europa

Part-time work helps organizations to ensure flexibility and allows employees to combine work and family duties. However, despite their desire to work reduced hours, many individuals work full-time – particularly those in leadership positions. This article therefore examines which factors contribute to the use of part-time work among managers. By analysing a data set that combines individual-level data from the European Labor Force Survey (2009) with country-level information from various sources, we identify the circumstances under which managers reduce their working hours and the factors that explain the variations in part-time work among managers in Europe. Our multi-level analyses show that normative expectations and cultural facts rather than legal regulations can explain these cross-national differences.     

“Where Have All the Good Men Gone?” Gendered Interactions in Online Dating

This article explores gendered patterns of online dating and their implications for heterosexual union formation. Using 6 months of online dating data from a midsized Southwestern city (N = 8,259 men, 6,274 women), the authors found that men and women tend to send messages to the most socially desirable alters in the dating market regardless of their own desirability levels. They also found that male initiators connect with more desirable partners than men who wait to be contacted, but female initiators connect with equally desirable partners as women who wait to be contacted. Female‐initiated contacts are also more than twice as likely as male‐initiated contacts to result in a connection, but women send 4 times fewer messages than men. Finally, the authors compared partner desirability levels over repeated exchanges and concluded that couple similarities are more likely to result from relationship termination (i.e., nonreciprocity) than initial homophilous preferences.