Gender Matters: Women in Leadership and Management

A. Srinivas Rao 16th May 2011

Do Amma, Didi and Behenji defy every convention we have held about women in power and is there an unconscious stereotyping of women in power, as more dominant and ruthless and generally mercurial, unpredictable and non rational than their male counterparts? Do women who storm male bastions tend to be considerably more autocratic, vindictive and less likely to share power with others Or are we more sensitive to what is un-womanly behaviour and highlight the performative spectacles of dominance/subjugation?  Does the presence of women in power make their opponents cast them as sexual objects of derision (calling them “that woman”) and find it difficult to accept their legitimate worth as equals or superiors? Are the appellations of Amma, and Didi and Bahenji rhetorically constructed sexist devices to soften their triumphal possession of male bastions of leadership (as though women can’t be seen other than as mother, sister or wife)? Does their apparent spinster status, betray the incompatibility of a balance between public and private selves and the sacrifice of a family life in the pursuit of fulfilment and power?

Let’s consider the things that have shocked us about them as examples of hubris, corruption and ruthlessness that portray them as deviant from the stereotypes of nurturing, kind, caring images we have of women. Jayalalitha has rarely hesitated to order arrests of her bete-noir Karunanidhi, journalists (even the Hindu), the Kanchi Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati, and others on various counts. She has often been found not resisting (probably encouraging) her senior ministers like O Pannerselvam and the prodigal KKSR Ramachandran prostrating to her in public. Jayalalitha was portrayed at one time as Marcoesque having 10,000 sarees and more than 700 pairs of footwear. Mayawati’s infamous garland of rupee notes valued at Rs 18 lakhs was a sign of Dalit arrival as the new power brokers and she was known to possess 72 houses, plots, shops and 54 bank accounts. Mayawati has been censured for her elephantine obsession with statues of icons including herself and notorious for her birthday bashes. DSP Padam Singh, her chief of security removed his handkerchief and bent down to clean the chappals of Mayawati while she kept talking to some officials and party workers. Mamata’s performances include dancing on the bonnet of Jayaprakash Narayan’s car, taking off her shawl and preparing a noose to kill herself when questioning Congress’s secret deals with the Marxists, hurling a sheaf of papers at the Deputy Speaker on being disallowed notice on an issue (Bangladeshi migrants) in the Lower House. Despite these, one cannot but admire and in their defence, state the insuperable obstacles and circumstances of their triumph by sheer grit, perseverance, determination and indomitable courage, virtues we usually ascribe to men. Jayalalitha had to not only overcome being a woman, but being a film star (held in contempt by the conservative Tamil society), and a Brahmin (which was against the grain of Dravidian politics). Mayawati was a Dalit and had little apart from a native intelligence and skills of a street fighter to secure more than 22% of the fractious UP vote. Mamata would have the spirit of a Bengal tigress, nay veritably be the Mahishasuramardini herself to bring down one of the longest serving Left governments on the planet since the 'fall of the wall'. Indeed some of them had powerful mentors and sponsors like MGR and Kanshi Ram, though in general women tend to have mentors but few or no sponsors.

Simone de Beauvoir (the better half of Sartre) famously stated in her book 'The Second Sex" , “One is not born a woman but becomes one”. It was only in the latter half of the last century we have maintained that gender is not necessarily related to sex. This was born of a view that reality is not objectively ‘there’ (anti-essentialist) but is socially constructed (social constructionism). Gender is not a fixed essence as an objective truth (like sex) and thus there is nothing inherent as a feminine essence that is unchanging. Gender is not what one is but what one does. Gender is a social performance, sustained by social interactions, expectations and institutions. Gender roles are behavioural norms for each sex that are deemed appropriate to a specific culture at a point in time. Earlier, childhood socialisation and psychological differences were taken as the source of gender differentiation. Boys like Calvin (and Hobbes) created secret societies like Get Rid of Slimy Girls (GROSS against Susie) as they believed that they were different from girls and would hate to be seen as sissies. In such childhood socialisation, playing house by girls is not goal directed, have no fixed rules and possibly fosters relationships while competitive sports played by boys fostered goal direction and strategy. Boys learnt to engage with their environment physically with their strength while girls were conditioned to interiorise space and develop affiliation and relationships. Performance of gender is also the performance of dominance/submission that underscores their categories. Indeed there are some disciplines who maintain that the human brain is hard-wired differently for both sexes, one towards empathy and other towards systems. 

Identity politics by the Feminists over the last few decades has been campaigning for those disadvantaged by an aspect of their identity like race, gender or sexual orientation (as against class politics, campaigning for those disadvantaged by their situation, i.e. labour in a particular industry). Gender politics contests the privilege of the male “phallocentric” world of patriarchy in terms of access to resources and institutional support and legitimacy. Sigmund Freud had famously but unwittingly propagated a notion of female inferiority and compensatory behaviour as victims of their anatomy based on ‘penis envy’. However this notion was paralleled by Karen Horney as ‘womb envy’ by men who were driven to achievement and have their names live on as a compensation for being unable to bear and nurture children and probably displaying belittling behaviour towards women.  The performance of gender is based on the division of labour that was probably a residual carryover of the hunter gatherer period of human history that favoured the more powerfully built male upper body for the hunt and evolved the reproductive system for the female and favoured domesticity.

India was ranked 114^th out of 134 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2009. According to Catalyst (a reputed US based non profit body promoting women’s opportunities) report, "Women in the Labour Force in India March 2011"; women in India were 31.2% of all economically active individuals but of the women in the labour force just 20% work in urban areas. For equal work women in India earn just 66% of a man’s salary. 26.2 % of women in India cite the lack of role models (compared to 9% among men) as a barrier to advancement. In a study conducted by Standard Chartered Bank : "Women on Corporate Boards in India 2010", based on representation on Bombay Stock Exchange  (BSE-100-2010), 54% of companies listed have no women on the board of directors. Of the 1,112 directorships on the BSE-100 only 5.3% were held by women and only 2.5% of the Executive Director’s roles were held by women. Women corporate leaders in India according to another study were more likely to be never married, divorced or widowed compared to women in the US or Europe. Women in India were more likely to temporarily leave the work force to take care of children or elderly parents than men (54.5% compared to men 15%). In the Catalyst study in India 97.2% of women and 95.4% of men aspired to jobs with a higher responsibility though 70.4% of women and 54.6% of men reported downsizing their aspirations due to constraints. In the US as of May 2011 there were only 12 women CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies and only 26 in the top Fortune 1000 companies. Of the Fortune 500 boards 15.7% of the seats were held by women when 51.5% of management, professional and related positions in the US labour force were held by women.

 Viewing the general sense of a systematic difference if not outright discrimination, the question is do women have a different style of management and leadership compared to men?  Some scholars maintain that there is no difference in styles of administrative processes between the sexes. Effective management is considered a male domain of task oriented, tough minded pursuit of competitive achievement. Those who have adopted a psychological approach to gender differences maintain that women demonstrate greater affiliation, nurturance and co-operative behaviour while their male counterparts were aggressive, independent and competitive. Proponents of the psychological view maintain that the differences between the sexes can be seen in the ways they organise, communicate and lead. Women managers are more likely to see themselves in a web of relationships building teams and disseminating information while men are more likely to stand on the top of their pyramid or hierarchy. Women while communicating tend to reinforce relations and establish common ground while men communicated factual information or signalled their territory. Men were more likely to be transactional in leadership style exchanging rewards for services rendered including loyalty; women on the other hand were more likely to be transformational, encourage participation and share power and transform subordinates self interest to a larger group goal.

However there are other theorists who claim that differences in behaviour and attitudes between the sexes is due to differences in power, status and opportunity. Women according to them lack institutional power, and thus end up in certain industries, in certain staff functions like HRD, PR and generally in low paying, dead end positions.  Institutional lack of power inhibits access to resources and makes women use more indirect influences than men who would use their position, promises or threats to accomplish their tasks. Social expectations and norms of behaviour legitimate or proscribe the use of different approaches across the sexes. Women using a more “masculine” approach to leadership, whose characteristics are described as assertive, are resented by both men and women. Women given their minority positions tend to be pressured and experienced pronounced isolation, kept out of informal networks, have to work harder to prove themselves, and are subject to greater stereotyping than men. They often faced a double bind; if they were effective, they were resented for acting more like men, and if they were less task-oriented they were accused for not being assertive enough. To reach the top of their careers and seek personal fulfillment women were likely to remain unmarried, divorced or even widowed.

Rather than lament the discrimination, some organisations are exploring how to use diversity of workforce as leverage. In most cases it needs an examination of the nature of resistance to women in leadership roles and the prejudice that surrounds it. Well placed senior executives might help with some mentoring, especially help navigate the issue of leadership style (between being a woman and accomplishing ones task) that needs some support.  Design work groups and teams in a manner that avoids having only one woman in them is one way of preventing gender bias and stereotyping that accompanies such tokenism. Having a critical mass of women at various levels is a good starting point to encourage diversity of voice. Family friendly HR policies would go a long way to make the workplace comfortable for women including flexible hours, temporary breaks, sharing jobs, suitable sexual harassment policies, alumni programs to tap expertise while taking a break etc.

It is probably ironic that power, prosperity and learning (Shakti, Lakshmi Saraswati) are all female representations in modern Hindu faith but women are either excluded or inhibited in access to all the three in their secular daily lives. She is the power of the will (iccha shakti), the knowledge (gyan shakti) and that of action (kriya shakti). It is a pity that we don’t see the contradiction.