Women in Leadership

The traits that are commonly associated with effective and powerful leaders are dominance, assertiveness, and competitiveness. All of these characteristics are typically associated with men and called agentic traits. Women are mostly affiliated with the communal traits of friendly, emotional, and nurturing. The main question Schein asks at the beginning of the paper is ‘Would a woman lead differently because of the traits she is typically associated with?’ I believe that most people would say yes to this question because it is commonly believed that women are “too emotional” to be effective leaders, which is not the case. “Women leadership had been proven to be linked with enhancing world peace, reducing corruption, and improving opportunities for the downtrodden” (Schein 162). One example that comes to my mind of a successful female leader is Queen Elizabeth I. After reading this I’m wondering why don’t we have more women in leadership positions if it’s been proven that it is more beneficial than harmful?

Schein stated that there are 13 categories of managerial behavior, ex: representation, crisis management, problem-solving, etc. These are all things that can be taught through specific classes, so I do not see why gender is an issue when it comes to leadership. Schein brings up the concept of the glass ceiling and its emergence. The glass ceiling symbolizes the barriers to any advancements in careers, mostly affecting minorities and women. No matter how qualified they are they will always have trouble advancing or are not given the opportunity to advance. I learned about this in my SOC 101 class with Dr. Grollman along with the glass escalator, which is a much newer concept. The glass escalator describes how heterosexual white men are able to advance in their careers much more easily than women are, even in female/minority dominating fields. We have slightly advanced though as it used to be harder for the women who wanted to start a family because there were barely any maternity leave benefits. Now there is both paid maternity and paternity leave. This allows the father to also take time off of work to take care of a newborn without the mother having all the responsibility. Unfortunately, this leads some women to either choose between their career and their family, which is an unfair ultimatum as men aren’t asked the same question.