Leadership Styles of Women in the Work Force

The purpose of this paper is to explore how women in the modern work force have advanced themselves, and what is known about the leadership styles used by women when they are given positions of responsibility. How leadership styles interact with gender is a question that requires investigation. Things have changed for women at work. Their increasing numbers in today's work force mean that there are more of them competing for higher salaries, more power, and more responsibilities.

This paper will examine how leadership styles are affected by gender, and how women are increasingly perceived as being capable of leadership. Advancement to the upper echelons of management becomes possible only as perceptions of leadership style are adapted to include women. This research paper will present a brief history of women in the workforce and discuss the extent to which their numbers have grown, explaining briefly what that has meant for women, and for the economy. Next, the paper will define leadership styles generally and apply a leadership styles model to the changing roles of women in the workplace. Finally, it will explore how technology may be enhancing the changing face of women and work and suggest how this factor may be introducing profound changes in the concepts of leadership, and the potential for women as leaders in the 21st century.

Even before the rapid expansion of women in the workforce after World War II, the presence of women accounted for almost a quarter of

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re women in upper management. But the "Catch 22" for women involves the way that they are perceived in the work place and the limits seemingly placed on their ability to advance to top managerial jobs. And even if they make it to the "top," one source says, they receive less money for the work they do there. "In fact, women may make it to upper level management but rarely to the top level, which is still an almost all-male club. Among the Fortune 500 companies, there are only 2 female CEOs; among the next 500, there are only five. Wall Street's 'Financial World's' list of the top 100 earners includes no women (Glass Ceiling, 2000). With this in mind, we shall now turn to the question of leadership styles. Could it be that women are not advanced to the top positions, and are not paid as highly for the positions they do manage to attain because they do not have the "classic " male leadership styles? Women in executive, managerial and administrative jobs earn only 69.2 cents earned by their counterparts, which is significantly lower than the 75 cents for women generally (Glass Ceiling, 2000). Why are they paid less? What is it that a "leader" is expected to be, do, and look like, anyway? Classic leadership styles have chang

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