Speaking of Psychology - How women become leaders (SOP52)

Episode Date: January 19, 2018

For decades, psychologists have been studying what makes people good leaders. But it isn’t just about possessing certain leadership traits. In this episode, Alice Eagly, PhD, talks about how stereotypes grounded in everyday psychological observations and stereotypes affect how women are perceived as leaders and how society can change those perceptions. APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a podcast produced by the American Psychological Association. I'm your host, Audrey Hamilton. In this episode, I talk with a psychologist about why women, particularly in the U.S., lag behind men in positions of power when research shows, as a whole, women's leadership styles are more effective. So I can be using the perfect leadership style, but unless they are willing to go along with me, I'm not as effective. And so we know also that women are undermined by people not according to this budget authority. From politics to the classroom, the research consistently shows women face psychological barriers on their way to the top.

Yet they are already overcoming many of these barriers. But they can't do it alone. Alice Egli is a social psychologist at Northwestern University, who has published widely on the psychology of gender. Her book on gender and leadership called Through the Labyrinth, The Truth About How Women Become Leaders, Examines Why Women's Paths to Power Remain Difficult to Traverse, despite a lack of evidence that female leaders are less effective than their male counterparts. Welcome, Dr. Agley. Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

There's little doubt that women are underrepresented in the highest levels of business, government, academia. You know, as we are recording this podcast right now, only 21% of women. of U.S. senators, 19% of House members, and 8% of governors are women, and among Fortune 500 CEOs, 5% are women. As a person who studies the psychology of gender and has seen cultures shift toward more egalitarian roles, does this surprise you? Does it continue to surprise you? Progress in some domains is very slow, but first of all, there are many areas in which women have made a lot of progress in leadership.

And I think sometimes we concentrate too much on the ones that have been so slow, like the Fortune 500 CEOs. It's actually 6% now. And that shows almost no trend over time. But university presidents are 30%. That was practically zero when I was a girl. And CEOs of nonprofits are 52% women. and principals of schools are over 50% women.

When I was a girl, I never saw a principal or heard of a principal of a school who was a woman, and now it's slightly over half. So there's enormous progress in some domains. The ones that are slowest are those that have the most power and prestige. And in terms of political leadership, the U.S. is enormous. behind other industrialized countries. I don't think most Americans know that because we think, oh, we're in a progressive, wonderful country,

and women are doing a lot better, true. But in terms of the representation of women in Parliament, we rank currently 101st in the world, meaning there are 100 nations in the world with parliaments with a greater proportion of women that includes, for instance, Saudi Arabia, we're behind Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. So there are multiple reasons why that's so. Sometimes the quotas, etc. But nonetheless, in political leadership, the U.S. is stunningly behind other nations,

most nations of the world, or at least half of the nations, the world, are doing better, at least on that statistic. There are multiple reasons. There's a broad cultural problem that I emphasize, which has to do with the way we think about women and the way we think about men and the way we think about leadership. So this is a broad frame within which to understand it. So in terms of gender stereotypes, we tend to think that women are the nicer, kinder sex, you know, more socially skilled, more emotional, intelligence, very good qualities. And then we tend to think about leaders as go-getters, people who take charge and are assertive. Yeah, some social skills, but mainly that they are what we call agentic in terms of the way we think about leaders. And guess what? That's the way

we think about men as the more gentic sex. So there's more of a cultural match. And there. You know, we think a man can do that, can take charge. And with a woman, well, she's awfully nice, and she's a kind person, but we don't know if she could exert authority. And so women are kind of, you know, behind and have something to prove. So the domains of leadership in which women have made more progress are ones that we think of somewhat less in that way. for instance, a school principal, is he to be the most go-getter type of person? No, it takes a great deal of social skill to be a principal of a school. You have those parents coming in, complaining in the kids and the community.

It demands a lot of skill with people. And so women have made a lot of progress there. Yeah. And it's interesting because most teachers, I think, are women, right? Yes, and teachers are women, which is another communally demanding occupation, particularly at the elementary school. It's overwhelmingly female at the elementary level where they're taking care of children. And so it does then go along with the female qualities.

And so we see that in leadership. So particularly agentic roles might be, you know, military general and CEO of a Fortune 500 companies. Yes. And so the areas in which progress is slower tend to be those that are thought to be particularly agentically demanding. But in terms of leadership in general, leadership does take some range of skills. And so women will do better where the agentic theme is not overwhelmingly strong. And it's recognized that a good deal of social people skill is needed. So what is your own research revealed about these types of differences, and men's and women's leadership styles, what does that mean for the organizations they do lead,

for example? I have studied leadership style in terms of meta-analysis because there are just a lot of studies. The first meta-analysis I did in leadership style, what was most robust that women are more participative in their leadership style, more relational, and somewhat less top-down, top-down ordering people about you do this, you do that, would be less common among women. And the more relational participative style was more common, but that's not sort of a bipolar distinction.

They're very much overlapping distributions. Then I did another project later on because researchers had started to make new distinctions about leadership style, and they were interested in transformational and transactional leadership, which is still an important theme in leadership research. What's the difference between the two? Well, the transformational leader would lead, in part by inspiration,

by epitomizing what's good in the organization and inspiring people to go along with the mission, inspiring them not just to do the best but to go beyond that, you know. to give a lot to the organization. And also then to build good relationships with people, you know, so that they will come along, allow themselves to be inspired, et cetera. Well, the transactional leader would be more of a reward and punishment. So, you know, the raises and the reprimands and the threat of firing. So that would be a transaction.

What we found was that women were slightly more transformation. than men, but that that was particularly in the building of good relationships, again, the social piece. And in terms of transactional leadership, there are, it wasn't that women were less transactional, though. There are two subtypes. One is using reward. So you look for what people are doing right, and you say, oh, that's really good, you know, do more of that. And there's the negative approach. You notice what they're doing. wrong and you reprimand them or worse. And so women tended to use more the positive approach, the reward approach relative to men who fell somewhat more into the negative approach.

So we know as psychologists that if possible you should use a positive approach, it tends to be more effective because morale is actually improved by that. So it looked on the whole in terms of what leadership researchers know about these styles, which, you know, have been correlated with effectiveness. The women were using somewhat more than men the more effective styles. But these differences are small. But this pattern has been replicated since in other works, so I'm fairly confident of it. What we're saying is women are delivering these slightly more effective behavior.

But we also know that women aren't accorded as much authority. So I can be using the perfect leadership style. But unless they are willing to go along with me, I'm not as effective. And so we know also that women are undermined by people not according them as much authority. Yeah, she said that, but hey, if he said that, ooh, maybe I better pay attention. So that is going on too. wouldn't say that just because women are using the more effective behaviors, of course we want to fight stereotypes in general because they categorize people. And so, you know, ideally we would

individuate, and I would just think of your individual qualities, everybody's individual qualities and treat them like that. But we know that that is not the way human cognition works. And once people categorize, then they associate what they observe with. the category. They might see girls playing more with dolls and playing house, and they might just see boys play more with trucks and cars and guns. And so that's there. They've added it by age too. You can, to some extent, use top-down control. I will think about this, you know. But we can't be aware of everything at every moment. Life moves fast. So the fundamental way to change stereotypes is to change what people observe.

And then they would need to see equal distribution into occupations. The US, and other countries, occupational structures profoundly segregated. There are many occupations that are nearly 100% one sex or the other. In terms of the sociologist statistics, over half of all, men and women would have to change occupations in order to have, you know,

occupational parity. But we can't get rid of the stereotypes without changing our world. And that's where we should direct a lot of our efforts. And we are. So if I'm, let's say, well, I have a daughter. She's six right now. But let's say if I'm a young woman or I'm a parent of a young woman, let's say he was listening to this and is thinking about what you're saying and saying,

well, this just sounds kind of hopeless. How can I change the world? right? But what sort of advice would you give to those people who are thinking about how to make the changes in their own lives or, you know, let's say their daughter's life, for instance? Well, first of all, parents are a primary model. Parents don't realize that often they're doing the gender stereotypes. If the woman and mom is doing more of the caring, well, how could they not begin to think that women are nurturing and men are less so? And if he's doing more of the wage-journing, and if she's doing more of the indoor or work and he's doing more of the

thing-oriented, he's fixing things and mowing the lawn. How can they not get the idea that men are better at mechanical things and whatever? And so the first thing parents, if they want to get rid of gender-stay-type, should do is stop enacting them. Please don't enact them, then, which is a tall order for a lot of people. Then they go to elementary school, and the teachers are overwhelmingly female. And now the principal of the school was often female. So it's good to expose if you're interested in, you know, progressively eliminating stereotypes or lessening them to give children experience with the alternative. And then talk to them.

And you know a lot of parents say, girls can do anything. That's kind of empty. It's not too bad, maybe. Girls can do anything. and then they look at their world and they're getting different information associational. They're just taken in this other information

all the time about what the men and women are doing. But we can look at areas where it's very important that women make progress as in political power and we can concentrate on the women in the Senate, et cetera, and direct girls to them as role models. Yeah, because they are there and they're not in tiny numbers anymore. Okay, well, Dr. Eggley, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure.

It's very nice to talk to you. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for listening to our podcast. Make sure you check out our other episodes of Speaking of Psychology, and please subscribe if you haven't already. We are a proud member of the APA Podcast Network, which includes other great podcasts. Please check out APA Journal's dialogue if you want to hear about the latest and most exciting psychology research. And if you're interested in the practice of psychology, you can listen to progress notes. Topics include how health care policy and social media affect practicing

psychologists. You can find those podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to our website, speakingofpsychology.org, to listen to even more episodes and gather more resources on the topics we discussed. Thanks for joining us. I'm Audrey Hamilton with the American Psychological Association, and this is is Speaking of Psychology.