The influence of gender roles and identity in transformational leadership

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Carolina Lopes
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/22975
• topic: Gender; Biological sex; Transformational leadership; Traditionalism; Género; Sexo biológico; Liderança transformacional; Tradicionalismo

Over the years, questions have been raised on how gender affects organizations and, particularly, leadership (Ely & Padavic, 2007). However, a major part of the efforts to study gender-leadership connections take biological sex as the critical variable while neglecting alternative forms of gender identification (e.g., androgyny) (Bem, 1974; Unger, 1979). Although gender roles contributed to build a predominantly masculine image of leadership, evidence suggest that the role is starting to be seen as less masculine and more androgynous and that there are even certain styles that are efficiently associated with femininity, such as transformational leadership. This study sets the goal of filling the existing gap and uses gender role identification to predict transformational leadership behaviors in leaders, accounting for their level of conformity with these roles (i.e., traditionalism). A total of 116 participants (31 leaders and 85 subordinates) filled a survey. Findings show no support on how subordinates perceive leaders as being more transformational based on their level of femininity and androgyny. Also, there was no evidence that leader’s traditionalism moderates this relationship. However, results are still intriguing- All leaders identified as androgynous, what suggests an evolution in gender roles, and yet they also revealed high levels of traditionalism, which can be a symptom of conflict between their personal and work identities. It was further advised that institutions should have in count the economics of gender, reviewing their internal policies and practices to turn diversity as a key word in their cultures.