Paper Example on Women Leaders: Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

Introduction

Women´s roles in leadership have been changing drastically over the past few decades (Schuh et al., 2013). Various research around gender disparity in leadership often focuses on the hurdles that women face while attempting to climb the corporate ladder. These women experience the glass-ceiling phenomenon when trying to advocate for equal leadership promotions for similar qualifications and competencies. Furthermore, aspiring women leaders continue to be faced by a phenomenon researchers currently refer to as the glass cliff situations. Such women are always set up to fail in leadership positions to restore the ongoing narrative that men make better leaders than women (Haslam & Ryan, 2008).

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The purpose of this study is, thereby, to analyze the suitability of women to occupy and succeed in leadership positions. The author shall thus aim to investigate the leadership styles that the women leaders tend to adopt, how they may improve these styles and their collaborative abilities and communicative powers in the diverse workplaces. Strategic thinking and logical decision-making abilities of these women are interrogated objectively to challenge the long-running perceptions of women´s inability to exercise objective and non-emotive leadership choices. Various societally imposed challenges are often seen to hinder the success of women in organizational leadership. The traditional view of women´s roles in families is furthermore, often associated with their perceived inability to exercise logical, decisive leadership. We shall thereby hypothesize that the perceived gender-prejudiced leadership challenges projected on women in corporate leadership positions are a continuation of a societal indoctrination that reproduces the social sorting of gender and stereotypes women in such areas.

Background and Significance of the Problem

Studies around the challenges women face in attempting to make their way to top management positions have continued for almost a century now. Factors that create perceived inequalities in leadership between the two genders, however, continue to cause disunity in discourse (Gipson et al., 2017). Perceived leadership failure attributed to gender is an area most scholars always prefer not to study carefully. This study is thereby significant in developing a theoretical base for investigating the specific challenges that women often face in top leadership positions. The author intends to analyze these challenges in both the extrinsic (e.g., the glass ceiling and glass cliff situations) as well as the intrinsic factors that often appear in popular discourse as women´s weaknesses in tough leadership positions.

Research Questions

The two Key research questions the author intends to investigate in this study are; 1). Do women in leadership positions face leadership challenges that are attributable to gender differences with their male counterparts? 2). Are family roles a barrier to the objectivity and rationality of women´s leadership? These fundamental research questions will then lead to specific issues addressing the various macro and micro level (as well as intrinsic) challenges facing women in leadership positions.

Brief Review of Related Literature

For over 75 years, a vast array of studies have continued to address the gender-related workplace leadership inequalities (e.g., Berkery, Morley, & Tiernan, 2013; Haslam & Ryan, 2008; Burton, 2015). At the core of these – and many more – studies is the societal prognostication of women as mostly irrational and illogical in leadership decision making. The traditional societal view of women as family keepers and overly emotional beings is often projected to their management decision-making trends (Berkery, Morley, & Tiernan, 2013). Such perceptions are, however, challenged by various studies scoring the leadership skills of women against their male counterparts. Zenger and Folkman (2019), for instance, aggregate two notable studies from 2012 that positioned women leaders as significantly more competent in various leadership skills than their male counterparts.

It is thereby exciting to continue to observe the normalization of gender inequalities in corporate leadership positions (Haslam & Ryan, 2008). Studies furthermore note that women who become promoted to management positions always face the risk of the glass cliff phenomenon, a situation in which the women are promoted to management roles in departments or organizations that are deemed to be in crisis. Such promotions thereby increase the chances of women´s failure in leadership and, as such, reenergize the narrative of incompetency among the female leaders.

Women´s societal roles have continued to change since the middle of the 20th Century (Burton, 2015). The essential societally-imposed duties of family care on women continue to receive widespread scrutiny as advocates for gender equality demand fairness and societal participation for the women. As a result of the increased agitation, women have continued to gain more power to participate in societal leadership. However, the strongly misogynistic workplaces continue to view the women in the traditional family caregivers’ lenses. Through such lenses, the women are viewed as soft, irrational, and unprepared for the harsh roles of organizational management. This study thereby investigates such perceived impacts that the traditional family roles of women may have on their leadership abilities. These perceived intrinsic-traits-based constraints shall be contrasted with the theoretically documented macro and micro-level challenges faced by the women leaders in the highly prejudiced workplaces.

Terminologies

For this study, the author designates various definitions of the critical concepts of significant consequence to the study:

Leadership is the ability to influence, guide, and direct people in an organization to achieve set goals effectively and efficiently.

Objectivity and rationality refer to the ability of individuals to apply logic and reason in situations and to depart from individual emotional bias in the assessment of a particular case.

Glass ceiling is a construct that analysts often use to refer to the invisible barriers that exist in a society that continue to keep women and minority groups from accessing certain hierarchical positions.

Glass cliff phenomenon refers to “a phenomenon whereby women (and other minority groups) are more likely to occupy positions of leadership that are risky and precarious” (Stewart, 2018; p.2).

Highlights and Limitations of Methodology

The preferred methodology for this study is a systematic mixed-method approach. Through the mixed methods approach, the author shall aim to gather both the qualitative and quantitative data on the specific challenges women face in their endeavors through leadership in male-dominated corporate positions. The author selects a mixed-methods approach to assist in balancing between the generalizability of findings and the respect for relativistic differences and sameness of experiences among the women leaders. Some limitations of this methodology might involve the complexity in complementarily interpreting data from the two contrasting approaches and the unequal result weights presented by these approaches.

Chapter Summary

This chapter briefly introduces the topic of this thesis. The section provides an overall problem definition and significance of the study into the suitability of women in leadership roles. Objectivity and rationality are the critical leadership virtues that most misogynists associate with the male gender over the female counterparts. Such prejudices always create a challenging environment for women leaders in the workplace, which continuously require them to ‘grow masculine´ for them to succeed in leading diverse workplaces. In the next chapters, the author interrogates the various societally-imposed challenges on women carefully to understand the intersections between the intrinsic and extrinsic difficulties that may impact women´s leadership dispositions.

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Overview

The previous section – chapter one – briefly introduced the overall concept of women leadership and the challenges faced by women in various corporate settings. These challenges are hypothesized to be (generally) attached to the overall view of women in a male-dominated society. In this chapter, the author shall narrow down on the specific challenges women face in their intentions to make it into dominant leadership positions. The glass cliff and the glass ceiling phenomena are introduced to the text as probable explanations for the profound challenges to women´s penetration and success in corporate leadership roles.

In this chapter, these challenge areas will be differently investigated, and their roles in undermining women in leadership explained. Furthermore, we shall explore the perceptions of women about the place of their family roles in the new leadership positions and whether their ´motherly softness´ is a hinder to iron-fist leadership required in the corporate spots they continue to score. The chapter is, thereby divided into the three sections explaining women´s success in management, the Glass Cliff and glass ceiling situations and the perceived irrationality and highly emotional approach to leadership for women.

Women and Leadership

One way to circumvent the stereotype of male dominance in leadership positions is to expose some successful women in leadership positions (Latu et al., 2013). Such global leaders, including Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Angela Merkel, and Oprah Winfrey and their positioning as global icons implies that women are as likely as the men to garner a worldwide following. A 2019 Fortune 500 list indicated an annual 4.8% jump in the number of women Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) from the previous year (Zillman, 2019). Though the percentage of women CEOs for the Fortune 500 still stands at a paltry 6.6%, the significant rise in such female occupants in the past year reassures the increasing interest of women in the highest global leadership positions.

Latu et al. (2013) studied the likelihood of women showing empowered behavior based on their interaction with female leaders and role models. Most women in the study showed healthier self-evaluative outcomes on their leadership suitability after listening to the female role models. Such empowered behavior can be hypothesized to increase their leadership characteristics. The presence and continued rise in women leaders is thereby an opportunity to shift the leadership narrative from the male perspective. Successes in female leadership globally, thus increase the perceived suitability of women into leadership roles. Some studies furthermore, posit that women are significantly more competent than men in a majority of leadership skills (Zenger & Folkman, 2019).

Glass Ceiling and Glass Cliff Phenomena

While women continue to increase their numerical numbers in corporate leadership, new workplace challenges continue to arise that continue to hinder their successful leadership (Gipson et al., 2017; Zenger & Folkman, 2019). Studies show that women in leadership positions are always subjected to invisible limitations to access of the highest hierarchical locations in companies (Cotter et al., 2001). Glass ceilings are thereby determined as an overwhelmingly gender-based phenomenon. Dominant male society does not, thus, trust in the women´s leadership ability despite the mounting evidence pointing to higher leadership skills of the women. Such prejudice against women leads to deep-engrained societal inequality that is reproduced in corporate positions in workplaces.