Research is vital to our initiatives
The project follows and supports some exciting research into women working in a masculine environment.
The Project Leader's research
Sue Congram is in the final stages of her PhD studying leadership. She is investigating the experience of men and women in leadership roles with a particular emphasis on the feminine qualities that leaders describe when they relate their experiences. These 'real life' descriptions are very different to the traditional masculine dominated understanding of the leaders role.
The language of leadership
Research at Aston University has explored how language is used to enhance, or more often to deprecate women's roles in organisations. The work has been published by Judith Baxter in her book The Language of Female Leadership. (Amazon link).
What men can learn from women about leadership in the 21st century
The Washington Post reviewed two important areas of research recently.
Their article describes the work of a group from several Universities addressing the question 'Are Leader Stereotypes Masculine?' (published in Psychological Bulletin 2011, Vol. 137, No. 4, 616–642). The research concludes:
"... a strong and robust tendency for leadership to be viewed as culturally masculine across three paradigms that use different method ... Men fit cultural construals of leadership better than women do and thus have better access to leader roles and face fewer challenges in becoming successful in them ... stereotyping continues to contribute to the labyrinthine challenges that women encounter in attaining roles that yield substantial power and authority. Given the strongly masculine cultural stereotype of leadership quantified by this analysis, these challenges are likely to continue for some time to come."
Not if the Leaderful Women Project has its way !
The Washington Post article also describes research at the University of Southern California. The Post describes that they found a striking gender difference in brain function when under stress. The distinction appeared in the brain regions that enable people to simulate and understand the emotions of others. According to the research, stress seemed to increase the capacity for empathy in women while reducing it in males.
