Appointing Women to Boards: Is There a Cultural Bias?

Companies that are serious about corporate governance and business ethics are turning their attention to gender diversity at the most senior levels of business (Institute of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Briefing 21:1, 2011). Board gender diversity has been the subject of several studies carried out by international organizations such as Catalyst (Increasing gender diversity on boards: Current index of formal approaches, 2012), the World Economic Forum (Hausmann et al., The global gender gap report, 2010), and the European Board Diversity Analysis (Is it getting easier to find women on European boards? 2010). They all lead to reports confirming the overall relatively low proportion of women on boards and the slow pace at which more women are being appointed. Furthermore, the proportion of women on corporate boards varies much across countries. Based on institutional theory, this study hypothesizes and tests whether this variation can be attributed to differences in cultural settings across countries. Our analysis of the representation of women on boards for 32 countries during 2010 reveals that two cultural characteristics are indeed associated with the observed differences. We use the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede (Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values, 1980) to measure this construct. Results show that countries which have the greatest tolerance for inequalities in the distribution of power and those that tend to value the role of men generally exhibit lower representations of women on boards

Factors Relating to Managerial Stereotypes: The Role of Gender of the Employee and the Manager and Management Gender Ratio

Several studies have shown that the traditional stereotype of a "good" manager being masculine and male still exists. The recent changes in the proportion of women and female managers in organizations could affect these two managerial stereotypes, leading to a stronger preference for feminine characteristics and female leaders. This study examines if the gender of an employee, the gender of the manager, and the management gender ratio in an organization are related to employees' managerial stereotypes. 3229 respondents working in various organizations completed an electronic questionnaire. The results confirm our hypotheses that, although the general stereotype of a manager is masculine and although most prefer a man as a manager, female employees, employees with a female manager, and employees working in an organization with a high percentage of female managers, have a stronger preference for feminine characteristics of managers and for female managers. Moreover, we find that proximal variables are much stronger predictors of these preferences than more distal variables. Our study suggests that managerial stereotypes could change as a result of personal experiences and changes in the organizational context. The results imply that increasing the proportion of female managers is an effective way to overcome managerial stereotyping. This study examines the influence on managerial stereotypes of various proximal and distal factors derived from theory among a large group of employees (in contrast to students)

Learning to deploy (in)visibility:an examination of women leaders’ lived experiences

This paper focuses on women’s learning from their lived experiences of leadership. In an examination of how six women leaders at a UK university learn to deploy (in)visibility, I draw on conceptualizations of (in)visibility more commonly found in feminist research. These include surface ideas of (in)visibility as states of exclusion or difference due to a lack of women in leadership roles, and deeper ideas of how states of visibility and invisibility are maintained through power relations (Lewis and Simpson, 2010; Simpson and Lewis, 2005 and 2007). I also refer to ideas on how (in)visibility operates and is produced and reproduced through organizational processes and practices (Lewis and Simpson, 2010). This analysis extends critical perspectives of leadership learning and development. Specifically it adds to understandings of the tacit nature of social and situated learning, through an articulation of the ways in which gender and power operate in women’s learning of leadership from experiences of (in)visibility. The paper concludes by indicating further areas for research including; more developed understandings of women’s learning to think strategically from experience, examining the role of management educators in revealing women’s leadership learning, and identifying methodologies to examine women leaders’ learning experiences

Women's leadership learning:a reflexive review of representations and leadership teaching

This article contributes to understandings of the experiential nature of leadership learning by drawing attention to the role of disruption as an organizing influence on women’s leadership learning, and by generating insights for leadership teaching. Examining leadership learning as an experiential process, we present the development of a typology intended to act as a summary of literature focusing on women’s experiences of leadership learning. Informed by our experiences of developing and using the typology as a teaching aid in two leadership development interventions we progress through a cycle of critical reflections to present a reflexive analysis of the typology’s performative effect and how it brings into being representations of women’s leadership. Moving from initial observations to deeper reflections the analysis draws attention to how disrupting pervades women’s learning of leadership, thus extending our understanding of gender’s influence on organizing learning experiences. The article considers how we, as educators, might forefront disrupting as a process in leadership learning interventions by re-positioning instruments, such as the typology, to problematize and deconstruct leadership learning. We conclude by proposing a reflexive process in the classroom that takes the form of a critical dialogue to enable educators and participants to de-construct their experience