Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on the ways women lead in organizations with a focus on the fields of business and education. A secondary purpose is to identify implications of the literature for leadership and gender issues in the worlds of business and education.Design/methodology/approach – A review of the extant literature was conducted to collect data through professional and academic journals of business and education, pertinent web sites, and textbooks. Once these data were collected, they were placed in categories according to common themes and patterns that emerged from the literature on the leadership styles of women in business and education.Findings – Research findings show that women adopt democratic and participative leadership styles in the corporate world and in education. Transformational leadership is the preferred leadership style used by women. The characteristics of transformational leadership relate to female values developed through socializati...

Leadership and gender: a dangerous liaison?

One result of domination of management as being male paradigm is that women managers are out of place, in foreign territory, “travellers in a male world”. The model of the successful manager has traditionally been masculine and while these stereotypes remain, they succeed in maintaining the dominant place for men in management. This is evident in both the theory underpinning and the actual experience of career in management. Indeed, the traditional working pattern of education, full‐time career and retirement is based on the typical working lives of men. There is no single typical working pattern for modern women. It is clear that, while male career models remain and women are the ones to step off the fast track to meet family responsibilities, they will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage in career advancement. Reviews the literature concerning women and career and argues that the importance of offering new conceptions of career based on an understanding that women’s experiences are different from men cannot be underestimated. Areas for further research and the implications for organisations are also highlighted.

Women’s career in theory and practice: time for change?

Looks at broad approaches to organizational culture and offers a brief review of some recent work on gender and organizational culture. The possibility of seeing culture as a means of closure is explored. Seeks to define and operationalise organizational culture, in order to test the theoretical hypothesis on two case studies, and identify the ways in which aspects of culture acted to close off areas of work to women managers. Describes the constituents of this definition with reference to data from two case studies, and considers examples of the ways in which these different constituents of culture may act as means of closure to women managers in the organizations. Suggests that the approach provides a useful starting point for further research on organizational culture and gender, as well as giving a practical model for practitioners and consultants looking to develop a diversity inclusive culture.

Organizational cultures, women managers and exclusion

This article explores women's experiences of learning to become managers. We do not provide a comparison of women and men learning to become managers but highlight women s experiences and therefore `change the subject'. This includes the subject as person and the subject as topic, leading us to look at women rather than men as managers, investigating women learning to become managers rather than men. In the article we discuss empirical data resulting from a questionnaire and subsequent thematic group discussion with `average' women managers. We highlight the importance to women managers of learning from and with others and focus on the contradiction women managers face, that of whether to learn to fit in to the dominant paradigm of management or to play a different game, to do management differently.

Women Learning to Become Managers: Learning to Fit in or to Play a Different Game?

This article presents the experiences of women academics of management in the UK, who have used informal, collective strategies to move on, to mainstream their experiences and to challenge existing boundaries of management and their organisations. Having identified the repeating patterns of inequalities in management and management education as women academics, researchers and managers, the authors had to turn to action, to progress and to work on some solutions. This article explores the moving on process by presenting the experiences of women academics of management from two perspectives. Firstly, women academics' stories of their careers and their experience of management are outlined as an emancipatory consciousness-raising process. Secondly, the issues of moving on, taking action and challenging existing boundaries are discussed by means of a case study of a group of women academics who have chosen to question the confines of their working lives whilst gaining credibility in a changing context and dr...

Academic Women in the UK: Mainstreaming our experiences and networking for action

There is growing evidence in Australia that cultural factors are the final impediment to women′s progress into senior management. Examines the “cultural dilemma” that women managers present from organizational, managerial and personal perspectives. It is felt that women can assist their situation by altering their mode of operation from a “victim” mentality to one of a “power” mentality: by making up their minds whether they want to “share” power or get the male managerial culture to “yield” power; by making a concerted effort to close the nexus on the economic front; by educating chief executive officers as to imperative for cultural change; and by both using and supporting various government agencies and Equal Employment Opportunity Officers.

Where to from Here? Women in Management

The 1990's see the managerial woman in a transition phase in her quest for equality in employment. As Still (1993) suggests, a tension associated with this transition is that of conquering traditional and enduring organisational and attitudinal barriers while responding to new employment opportunities as organisations re‐vision in response to global socio‐political and economic change.

Leonie V. Still

Papers

Where to from Here? Women in Management

The earnings gap and the managerial woman in transition