Are women better leaders?

“Who run the world, GIRLS.” Beyonce sang it back in 2011 as a call to arms for women around the world; an anthem of female empowerment; a tribute to female leadership; a motivational and celebratory statement that women can, and could, run the world.

Yet, as the stats show, the reality of a female-led world, or even a world where women share leadership with their male counterparts, is far off. Indeed, only 26.5% of parliamentarians in single or lower houses across the globe are women (up from 11% in 1995) (stats from Jan 2023). Women remain underrepresented at all levels of political decision-making worldwide.?

Outside of the political realm, it doesn’t look much better:?

• Female participation in the workforce is not at parity, sitting at around the 50% mark (vs. 80% for men);
• Female entrepreneurs starting their own business struggle with only less than 3% of venture capital funding going into their pockets;?
• and across all companies, be they startups, the next big shiny unicorn or established corporate players, the lack of women in leadership is striking (there’s a plethora of stats to back that one up - for example women in tech leadership is only 28%...or we can apply the fact that CEOs of the FTSE 500 are c.90% male).

Indeed you’re still more likely to have a CEO named David or John, than you are to have a female CEO. And that’s a fact.?

[ As a brief aside, there’s an interesting phenomenon afflicting feminist discourse and that is the over-emphasis on data and statistics to back up and prove the narrative. As if what is experienced every day across our androcentric world requires deep factual business cases to make it more “true.” ]

Why does any of this matter? Well, I think this imbalance does something to our sense of what leadership should look like and our expectations of good leadership. Our role models - those that sit on the boards of the top companies - are a somewhat homogenous group of extremely wealthy middle aged white men. As Lisa Conn wrote for Forbes (and has been re-shared by numerous influencers on LinkedIN), they’re a “self-selecting group that has likely never seen their ambition or achievement troubled by the friction of a pumping schedule, school pick-ups, elder care, or even simple chores like scheduling coordinating school appointments or deciding what to make for dinner.” And it’s these same leaders that are responsible for creating working cultures and environments for those of us that do feel those frictions. Deeply and on a daily basis.?

And it’s these same men, responsible for the majority of the working population and the vast majority of the world’s money that we look to for leadership, which they are more than happy to espouse, unfiltered, to any journalist, podcast host or ghost writer that will listen.?

They influence us, they tell us how to be successful and we believe them. The truth of their success evident in their omnipresence and omnipotence.?

As a result we try to mirror them, mimicking their attitudes, behaviours and actions in the hope that we can also climb to those hallowed higher echelons of greatness. And so an army of mini-mes is born.

Even the rare woman who makes it to the seat at that proverbial table is not immune, and they are guided to also display a masculine style of leadership or risk being told they’re not confident enough, don’t have “presence”, are too emotional. Look weak.?

I’m not sure about you, but the evidence of? “success” of this style of leadership is not that abundant these days. With mass layoffs almost a weekly occurrence, 87% of employees admitting to being disengaged at work (and furthermore, 65-75% of them citing their boss as the worst part of their job), not to mention economic recession, political fragility, an epidemic of loneliness, burnout, overwhelm…name your crisis really..well, it doesn’t seem like our leadership is really working. (stats from Gallup)

There’s an interesting story I read from UN women where research on panchayats (local councils) in India revealed that areas with women-led councils had significantly more (+62%) drinking water projects compared to male-led councils. And in Norway, a direct causal relationship between the presence of women in municipal councils and childcare coverage has been found.

So perhaps women know a thing or two about leadership. Indeed, according to a survey run by Hay Group in 2016, women outshine men in 11 of 12 emotional intelligence characteristics including emotional self awareness, empathy, conflict management, flexibility and teamwork. They sound like pretty critical skills for a good leader, especially in these turbulent times.?

The evidence across many decades and various studies shows that women have what it takes to lead. They just lead in different ways to what we’re used to.

Instead of the more aggressive, assertive, loud and proud, dare we say, narcissistic, style of leadership that pervades today’s boardrooms (just think of the non apologetic tech egos sitting in front of Congress unrepentant), women tend to bring compassion, integrity, humility and kindness. They focus on creating inclusive environments on generating spaces of mutual respect, teams who trust each other and feel psychologically safe. They build organisations that they themselves would like to work within.?

Before you bite my head off, I must admit that it’s not ALL men and not ALL women, I’m grossly generalising and oversimplifying the complexity of our individualism to make a point. Our world is heavily nuanced and a binary gender split when it comes to leadership characteristics feels myopic.?

But it’s a fact that the leadership style that we revere today doesn’t display the full suite of characteristics that research tells us makes a good leader. And those characteristics that are ignored are linked to the skills found in a more feminine leadership style: a concentration on relationships, seeking input, leading more democratically. The archetype we see in the headlines on a daily basis focuses more on pace, confidence, direction setting. And it’s those latter skills that we’ve been told are the recipe for a “successful” leader. And it’s those characteristics we’re exposed to day in and day out in our offices.

We tell ourselves that being nurturing, showing compassion, focusing on collaboration and empathy are “soft skills” and prefer to reward the “results at all costs” mentality instead. Long live the cult of ego.

For my own part, I’ve led small teams, I’ve led larger teams, I’ve been responsible for a whole department. I’ve been extremely mindful of what type of leader I want to be, having experienced, first hand, some - how shall I put it - less than ideal leadership styles. I wanted to do things differently. But I felt like a giraffe amongst lions - putting my head a little too high into the danger zone. I was worried that I wouldn’t be seen as decisive enough because I took time to make decisions or respond to questions (waiting for inputs and inviting debate rather than simply going with my gut, or “shooting from the hip”), I invited my team to share their successes (rather than taking credit for their work), I tried to lead with empathy and kindness (but feared I would look “too nice” and not impactful enough where impactful is to create noise).

Hello imposter syndrome, old friend.??

And so I think it’s a double edged sword for leaders - often those that are female - who lose confidence in their approach, in their unique style, as it’s microscopically examined for its very difference. This in turn - this self-doubt or feelings of imposter syndrome - can prevent them from taking the next step. They wait until they’ve ticked every check box and have all the feedback and stats to back up their success.?

As Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup and professor of business psychology at UCL and Columbia University) said in his article “If women are better leaders then why are they not in charge?”, “We live in a sham meritocracy where we pretend to pick the best person for each job, while simply picking those we prefer: and when the jobs pay well, they are still overwhelming male. Our preferences are based on style rather than substance, so we pick individuals for leadership on the basis of their confidence rather than competence, charisma rather than humility, and narcissism rather than integrity.”

Now I’ve had some great leaders that are male and female (and some poor ones in both genders) and whilst I’ve brought a gendered view of leadership to the fore in this nugget so far there is a huge debate amongst academics - with much more knowledge on the topic than I - as to whether gender should even be a topic on the discussion when it comes to the composition of what makes a good leader. Is it not more important to focus on the individual and their skills rather than make it (or reduce it) to a discussion about women vs men?

Shane O’Mara, Professor of experimental brain research and Wellcome trust senior investigator at the Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College, Dublin argues that “To assume coding by gender reflects some unchanging and immutable underlying biological reality that describes all we need to know about an individual. That such an assumption is a basis for action is simply wrong – and self-evidently so, when you consider the complexity and variation found within, and between, human beings…It is not at all obvious that using gender as a proxy for the traits of leaders is the most useful way of ensuring the best leaders are selected. Nor is it the case that the traits of leaders are immutable qualities, independent of time and place, arising irrevocably from gender and brain differences. We need to rethink how we conceive of leaders, and realize that leaders are individuals who may, or may not, be appropriate to the needs of the time, place and context they are in”.

Perhaps then it’s not about gender at all but rather the skills required to lead fairly, kindly, confidently, creatively and for the good of all, in this new era.?

What I do know for sure is that our monolithic and myopic viewpoint on what good leadership is - based on the archetype that’s had prominence for generations (you can call it a masculine style of leadership or not) - is outdated and needs to be adjusted.

Modern leadership must evolve to encompass more characteristics and, in turn, we must appreciate and celebrate different types of leaders and their different styles. We need to value their differences and not drive them to conform to outmoded principles that are proving not to be successful. We need to learn from these new types of leaders and mirror them.?

Because perpetuating the leadership status quo only serves to benefit that status quo.

Doesn’t our dynamic world deserve more?