Women's Leadership

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Common Understandings: Leadership and Leadership Development 37 that there is a significant gap in critical studies based on empirical research of women’s experiences that address women’s leadership development. With men viewed as the ‘natural inhabitants’ of the organisational domain while women are ‘out of place’ (Ford, 2006: 81), perhaps it is not altogether surprising that leadership development largely reflects a gendered stance. Gabriel (2005), for example, notes that many leadership programmes within business schools and universities are based on masculine principles that maintain a gendered view of leadership ‘leaning heavily on game and military metaphors’ (p. 158). Consideration of gender is however timely and significant to leadership development. Burke and Vinnicombe (2006: 8), for instance, observe how organisations ‘lament the shortage of leaders’ and yet continue to limit women’s career horizons. UK and international reports (Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK, 2008; and Grant Thornton International Business Report, 2009) demonstrate that in spite of more women in professional and managerial positions, pay and power remain unequal. Gatrell and Swan (2008) show that in spite of increasing legislation around gender, organisations continue to ignore issues of gender. Leadership development therefore, in its continued construction as ‘gender neutral’ serves only to maintain such biases. Conclusions: Leadership and leadership development Although recognising that women’s leadership experiences may be different, our exploration of common understandings of leadership and leadership development draws attention to the literature’s predominant focus on leaders’ styles and characteristics. Leadership research and research on women’s leadership more specifically, continues to address leadership as separate from the broader sociocultural structures within which it takes place. Studies that adopt more qualitative methodologies by contrast recognise power relationships inherent to leadership, recognising it as a social process in which both leaders and followers are dependent on each other. Analyses undertaken from a discursive perspective view leadership as a process that is subject to constant interpretation and re-interpretation. In this sense leadership is in part a process
38 Women’s Leadership of persuasion, of leaders’ attempts to convince followers that their interpretation and approach are correct. Nevertheless leader-centric perspectives remain the norm and the search continues to define what characterises successful leaders. In recent years, the literature has heralded feminine characteristics and ways of working as important, yet theory and practice continue to adopt masculine values that reify existing power relations as the norm. Writing about women and leadership appears to sustain a picture of women enabling rather than enacting leadership, and so the status quo of the heroic individual male leader remains. Leadership development necessarily draws on the particular leadership principles and theories that underpin it. While showing signs of movement towards a more relational understanding, leadership development theorising and practice continue to mirror many of the tendencies inherent in the leadership literature, in particular its lack of attention to gender. A lack of attention to women’s experiences in the leadership literature, coupled with a view of gender as a marginal or non-issue leads, we argue, to a framing of leadership development as gender neutral. The continued exclusion of women and the sustained lack of focus on gender, renders problematic the move to postheroic understandings of leadership and leadership development. So, while leadership and leadership development research maintains a focus on bounded hierarchical organisational settings, it occludes broader conceptions and fields of practice. Leadership developmental approaches therefore remain stuck within a specific organisational frame. Broadening the research base to include other experiences and to take account of different sites of practice encourages recognition not only of other types of leadership that don’t fit the masculine hierarchical norm, but also of the interplay between the leader and the broader social setting in which they practice. This encourages consideration of the ways in which fundamental issues such as gender, class and race inflect leadership conceptualisation and practice. This in turn, we argue, will promote approaches that attend to the social (Day, 2001) and are concerned with leadership rather than leader development. Given that women leaders’ experiences feature little in leadership and leadership development theory, our focus in Chapter 2 is to examine common representations of women’s leadership that
Page 2 and 3: Women’s Leadership
Page 4 and 5: Women’s Leadership by Valerie Ste
Page 6 and 7: VS For Crispin, Sarah and Tom, and
Page 8 and 9: Contents Figure Acknowledgements In
Page 10 and 11: Acknowledgements This book has been
Page 12 and 13: Introduction About the book This bo
Page 14 and 15: Introduction 3 the impact of gender
Page 16 and 17: Introduction 5 and managerial roles
Page 18 and 19: Introduction 7 those who do not fit
Page 20 and 21: Introduction 9 interactions with ea
Page 22 and 23: Introduction 11 3. Analysing Experi
Page 24 and 25: Part I Understandings of Women’s
Page 26 and 27: 1 Common Understandings: Leadership
Page 28 and 29: Common Understandings: Leadership a
Page 52 and 53: Visualising Women’s Leadership 41
Page 72 and 73: Part II Gender, Women and Leadershi
Page 74 and 75: 3 Women’s Experiences of Becoming
Page 76 and 77: Women’s Experiences of Becoming L
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Women’s Experiences of Becoming L
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Gender Matters 89 of gender (2005).
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Gender Matters 91 A further reason
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Gender Matters 93 shape their exper
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Gender Matters 95 and how they thin
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Gender Matters 97 are expected to a
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Gender Matters 99 Within her accoun
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Gender Matters 101 in her research
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Gender Matters 103 that there was n
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Gender Matters 105 specifically set
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Gender Matters 107 notion of gender
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Gender Matters 109 built up a wide-
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Gender Matters 111 barriers raised
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Gender Matters 113 gender and indee
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Part III Progressing Women’s Lead
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5 Women’s Leadership Identity And
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Women’s Leadership Identity 119 I
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Women’s Leadership Identity 121 b
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Women’s Leadership Identity 125 f
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Women’s Leadership Identity 127 e
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Women’s Leadership Identity 129 n
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Women’s Leadership Identity 131 w
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Women’s Leadership Identity 133 d
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Women Learning Leadership 135 Chapt
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Women Learning Leadership 137 throu
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Women Learning Leadership 139 recog
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Women Learning Leadership 141 studi
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Women Learning Leadership 143 women
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Women Learning Leadership 145 footi
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Women Learning Leadership 147 and d
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Women Learning Leadership 149 and t
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Women Learning Leadership 151 be us
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Women Learning Leadership 153 1. Wh
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Women Learning Leadership 155 membe
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Women Learning Leadership 157 might
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Women Learning Leadership 159 Contu
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Women Learning Leadership 161 examp
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Reflections and Conclusions 163 •
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Reflections and Conclusions 165 the
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Reflections and Conclusions 167 sim
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Reflections and Conclusions 169 int
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Reflections and Conclusions 171 •
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References 173 Ashcraft, K. L. and
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References 175 Dundes, L. (2001)
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References 177 Gray, B. (1994) ‘W
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References 179 Khuruna, R. (2003) S
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References 181 Rodgers, H., Gold, J
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References 183 Van Velsor, E., McCa
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Index 185 Collinson, D. L. 27, 94,
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Index 187 of 124-5; organisational
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Index 189 labour market participati
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Index 191 narrative, see stories Na
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Index 193 interplay of gender, powe
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