King’s College London
Social Sciences & Public Policy
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Module Title: Gender Leadership and Society
Module Code:
(e.g. 5AABC123 )
Assignment: What role does gender play in leadership emergence
(may be abbreviated)
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Word Count: 1529
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, Leadership emergence is a product of the consensual settlement in the perceptions of a
group that a particular individual is the leader. 1 According to the leadership emergent theory,
leaders emerge through a process of “competition and elimination” from a group and the
winner of this ‘competition’ is the individual who is most successful is the most competent,
task and social wise, of the group.2 Lord and Maher states that leadership comprises of
behaviours, traits and outcomes created by leaders and the reaction of these components by
followers.3 Women have increasingly emerged as leaders with an example of women’s board
representation in FTSE 100 companies increasing from 11% in 2007 to 28% in 2017.4 In a
political sense, women hold 32% of seats in the House of Commons and 25.7% in the House
of Lords.5 This is an improvement, but men still frequently emerge more as leaders. In
consideration of the gender imbalance, the following discussion aims to debate the roles in
which gender plays in leadership emergence.
Gender role theory discusses the principles of individuals behaving differently in social
situations. It encompasses a range of attitudes and behaviours which are assumed to be
appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender. Gender roles revolve around
the very notion of femininity and masculinity, though notably there are exceptions to a
plethora of factors, such as different cultures. In gender role theory, one may use their own
implicit theories on what is expected of their gender in order to determine whether they are
better suited for that particular role. This stems from the gender differences which division of
labour in society sets apart through gender binaries. The theory elaborates that observers then
attribute these to the core variations between the two genders. For example, in a historical
context, men have generally occupied the higher status roles and therefore were more
frequent in emerging as a leader than women. 6
This leads on to the stereotyped characteristics of men who hold what is labelled as
‘agentic’ characteristics which refer to traits such as dominance, assertiveness and
decisiveness. Conversely, as women have historically attained the position of nurturing the
family home as opposed to leadership roles in the paid economy, they are associated with
‘communal’ characteristics which relate to excelling more in interpersonal relationships,
empathy and communication. Thus, these perceptions and the engrained historical social
roles are what may have predominantly hindered women in emerging as leaders because the
concept of effective leadership connoted authority which was viewed to be more of a
masculine trait.7 Evidence of this could be proven by a meta-analysis carried out by Eagly
and Karau in which they interpreted studies of sex differences in leadership emergence. They
discovered that the differences in leadership behavior could be explained by a tendency to
1
Hall, R.J., Workman, J.W & Marchioro, C.A. (1998), Sex, task, and behavioral flexibility effects on leadership
perceptions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 74, pp.1-32.
2
Johnson, S. D., & Bechler, C. (1998). Examining the relationship between listening effectiveness and
leadership emergence perceptions, behaviors, and recall. Small Group Research, 29, pp. 452–471.
3
Lord, R.G., & Maher, K.J. (1991). Leadership and information processing: Linking perceptions and
performance. (Boston: Unwin Hyman)
4
Vinnicombe, Susan. (2017). The Female FTSE Board Report 2017 (Bedford: Cranfield School of
Management): p. 1.
5
Vinnicombe (2017). p. 34.
6
England, Paula. (1993). Theory On Gender. (New York: A. de Gruyter)
7
Schneider, David J. (2005). The Psychology of Stereotyping. (New York: Guildford Press)
