Women in Management Introduction For the past fe

For the past few decades, there has been a focus in the research on the characteristics of women in management. There have been questions about whether or not women possess the leadership qualities to manage large organizations. There has been exploration of the differences, if any, between women's management styles and those of men. There has been talk that women might actually be hampered by a fear of failure. There has been focus on the glass ceiling. Research results have often been inconclusive. The intention in this paper is to look at the contemporary discussion about women in management, exploring any differences in styles of management and leadership, and exploring stylistic trends for the future.

Any discussion that focuses on the specific characteristics or styles of women in management runs the risk of stereotyping both men and women. Stereotypes are based on sexrole expectations and, although these have been changing in modern U.S. society, those expectations are still deeply ingrained. These expectations can lead to selffulfilling prophecies, in which individuals perform the way we expect them to perform, or to biased evaluations, in which men and women are judged on different criteria.

In their study of sex effects on evaluation, Nieva and Gutek (1980) noted that most of the research indicated that there is a promale evaluation bias, in which competent women are evaluated as less competent

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nd wave of women in management was able to use new styles that were distinctive because they emerged from women's experiences as women. There is still little evidence of this, however, in metaanalyses of the research (Eagly and Johnson, 1990; Eagly et al., 1992). There are a number of explanations why the differences may not be showing up in the research, including the selfselection/organizationselection process identified earlier, bias in the research, selection bias, the fact that most women managers are still from the first wave, and other factors. There is a new trend toward seeing female and male managers as having different styles and characteristics, but not viewing that as a negative for women, but a positive, either as an advantage or as an equally good way of managing and leading organizations. For example, in her discussion of women's ways of leadership, Helgesen (1990) noted that women's styles enable them to accomplish things that more male styles make difficult. Like Rosener (1990), she indicated that women's style of management is more participative and flexibility, offering an advantage in a more diverse workplace and in an environment where creativity is vital in order for the organization to survive and

Category: Business - W