Native American Women Who Lead Human Service Organizations

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a qualitative, exploratory study of Native American women who served as organizational leaders in human service, educational and health-related agencies. Data were collected through interviews with 13 women. Findings include effects of gender and culture on leadership; motivations to act in a leadership position; challenges to successful leadership; and personal and organizational support to the leadership role.     

Women Elite Leaders Doing Respectable Business Femininity: How Privilege is Conferred,Contested and Defended through the Body

This paper offers a theory of respectable business femininity. Respectable business femininity is theorized as a discursive and relational process that explains tensions women elite leaders experience at the nexus of being both One and Other and sometimes privileged, embedded notions of leadership as masculine and wider expectations of acceptable embodied femininity. Such tensions manifest through a disciplining of women leaders’ bodies and appearance by self‐and‐others, as a means of appraising women as credible elite leaders and respectable women. Through a qualitative study we show how, within sites of ambiguity, embodied leadership and subjectivities are both enabled and constrained. Accounts highlight how privilege is fluid and (de)stabilized in that it is conferred, contested and defended through women's bodies and appearance. We advance understandings of contemporary respectable femininity, privilege at work, and body work, and consider practical implications for women leaders and management education.     

Change agents or defending the status quo? How senior leaders frame workplace gender equality

Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organizational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders' values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organizational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders' perceptions of workplace gender equality using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia's public sector (n = 2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematize dominant organizational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics, which produce and sustain organizational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organizations.     

The Underrepresentation of Women in Leadership Positions in Rural Russia

Numerous studies have documented the persistence of gender inequality in rural Russia, including the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions. A survey (N = 169) conducted in two rural Russian regions examined residents' explanations of gender inequality and their support for various remedies to ameliorate this situation. Both male and female respondents downplay outright discrimination in accounting for gender‐based occupational inequalities. Instead, respondents are more likely to agree with explanations that are embedded in cultural notions of a traditional gender‐based division of labor, in which the home responsibilities for women and a “natural” advantage of masculinity make it less likely that women become leaders. With respect to strategies for encouraging women to be leaders, both men and women support “more training” and “more husband help at home,” with women being slightly more positive on the latter item.     

Doing Authenticity: The Gendered Construction of Authentic Leadership

Authenticity has been a focus of much leadership research in recent years. Despite this interest, there has been a dearth of studies that explore the role of gender in the social construction of authenticity. To date, authentic leadership theories have tended to be either gender neutral or, where gender has been considered, it is argued that women as ‘outsiders’ are less likely to be accepted by their followers as authentic leaders. In this study we examine the media representations of the CEOs — one male, one female — of two major Australian retail banks during the global financial crisis. Our approach enables us to show that authenticity is something leaders ‘do’ rather than something they ‘have’ or ‘are’, and that being constructed as authentic depends on the leader performing authenticity in line with gender norms deemed appropriate for the socially constructed context in which they are expected to lead.     

The missing and needed male nurse: Discursive hybridization in professional nursing texts

The role of men in nursing has been of ongoing interest to gender and work scholars who examine the processes that maintain or challenge occupational gender segregation. Drawing on professional nursing texts, the current study moves beyond individual men to investigate organizational practices within nursing that discursively construct the male nurse. Using the rhetoric of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’, texts frame men in nursing as a missing and needed antidote to projected worker shortages and a homogenous workforce. Taking a critical lens to these arguments, analysis of professional discourse reveals an appropriated disenfranchisement that masks men's gendered privilege. Professional leaders frame men in nursing as equivalent to women in traditionally male occupations with little attention to the ways in which US men, particularly white and heterosexual men, are advantaged currently and historically. The findings trace a process of discursive hybridization through which organizational leaders appropriate rhetoric from historically disenfranchised groups to benefit predominantly white, middle‐class men.     

Cultural stereotypes and the gendering of senior management

This paper asks whether place is significant in understanding the gendering of senior management and how it might be integrated into existing theories. Drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with women and men in senior management in Wales, it compares the gendering of senior management in Wales with other regions of the UK. The situation in Wales is explained by the historical legacy of a peripheral economy dependent on male‐dominated heavy industries and the gender relations and stereotypes associated with this. There is a relative lack of senior managerial positions, for both women and men, and women are under‐represented in middle management compared with women elsewhere. There is evidence that paternalistic masculinites are widespread in managerial cultures and that although women may find this form of masculinity easier to deal with than a more aggressively 'macho' masculinity, it casts them in a subordinate role at work. Cultural stereotypes such as the 'Welsh mam' operate in contradictory ways, in some instances holding women back and in others furthering their careers, and there is evidence that women are challenging existing gender stereotypes. A lack of geographical mobility and associated attachment to place affects progress into senior management and creates stability at middle‐management level. Place needs to be taken into account in explaining the gendering of senior management because of the spatial distribution of production and the cultural patterns and stereotypes associated with different economic structures.     

Are male managers better than female managers?

This essay studies gender differences in leadership from two perspectives: social system and leadership styles. The rising of female's superiority on leadership has increasingly been recognized by the society. The discrimination problem and ‘glass ceiling'upon females arouse a more human, more mature and more efficient leadership style than male. This study concludes that female leaders are not weaker than male leaders and they have working enthusiasm and abilities just as male. As long as the opportunities are fair provided, female leaders can do even better than male leaders.     

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.     

Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine‐Feminine Dualism of Leadership

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The ‘Feminization’ of Management? Issues of ‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ in the Roles and Experiences of Female and Male Retail Managers

Explanations of women’s poor representation in senior management usually emphasize differences between women and men managers’ experiences, circumstances and aspirations, and the gendered character of organizational structures and processes. Whilst these may all disadvantage women, some writers have suggested recently that women managers may differ in style and orientation in ways particularly appropriate for today’s developing organizations. This paper explores issues of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ between women and men managers in retailing. Whilst both male and female store managers wanted to downplay gender differences and adopt a ‘gender neutral’ approach, they also associated a number of advantages and disadvantages with being a woman manager in certain contexts. Rapid sectoral change had caused companies to reassess the desired attributes and competences of managers; associated both with an enhanced valuing of ‘feminine’ qualities and with a more ‘objective’ and ‘clinical’ approach to assessment. Despite their equal numbers at entry points women remained poorly represented at senior levels, suggesting that subjective and informal processes were important determinants of women and men’s progress. Given management is inherently a process enacted by individual managers within a social context the extent to which it can be conceived in gender neutral terms is questioned since individuals are inevitably discussed and identified in terms of their gender.     

Gender in the Midst of Reforms: Attitudes to Work and Family Roles among University Students in Urban Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The onset of the Reform era in 1998 after the fall of Suharto bears interesting prospects on gender relations among youth in Indonesia. Using a survey of 1,761 university students from 12 universities in two contrasting urban settings, this article explores attitudes to work and family roles among senior university students in 2004: this is the year when people were preparing to elect a president directly for the first time in history, with the incumbent president the first woman in the role. Results determined that women were less traditional than their male counterparts in their attitudes toward gender roles. This article further explores correlates of gender role attitudes, offering insights on the role of sex, sample sites, gender ratio in faculty, parental role models, religion, and ethno-cultural background.     

Electorally Threatening Women? Understanding Gender Quotas in the French Socialist Party

ABSTRACT

Almost three decades ago, the French Socialist Party (PS) adopted a quota for women in the party leadership and for female candidates, and in the ensuing 25 years, the quota was increased and implemented at various times. The history of the PS' s gender-based quota raises the following questions: Why do party leaders adopt gender quotas at one time, increase quotas at another, and implement them in some elections, but not in others? In other words, how can we account for the decisions of political actors? This work seeks to answer these questions by examining the demands and actions of PS feminists. It shows that party women demanded gender quotas and frequently backed up their demands with ideational and electoral arguments that often appealed to male party officials. However, the success of these proposals did not depend on the ability of Socialist women to make convincing arguments; rather it depended on the presence of male party officials who had electoral incentives to support them. This work thus underscores the importance of taking party officials' electoral incentives into consideration when analyzing women's political representation.     

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Tracing Differentiation in Gendered Leadership: An Analysis of Differences in Gender Composition in Top Management in Business,Politics and the Civil Service

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Questioning the Notion of Feminine Leadership: A Critical Perspective on the Gender Labelling of Leadership

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