Gender, Culture, and Leadership

Welcome to my blog and to my 8th post. The past 8 weeks have truly been a journey and by stepping outside of my comfort zone, I have once again grown. I have learned how to blog and how to prepare and present PowerPoint presentations.

This is the last week of my leadership class at Troy University. This past week, I read about gender, culture, and leadership.  Unlike the previous chapters in the textbook, the last two chapters were not about a theory or approach to leadership. Instead, they were about the roles that gender and culture play when it comes to leadership.

This country has come a long way when it comes to trying to achieve equality in the workplace. An employer cannot discriminate, or at least not openly. Women no longer stay at home and just raise kids and keep a house. Today, women are actively participating in the business world, but they still only occupy a very low percentage of top level positions. Women are still paid less than men even though they may be equally qualified and have the same education and experience. If you are a woman of color, the discrepancy is even greater. Why? Why has this been allowed to continue? What will it take to change it?


A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a book titled Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl Sandberg pointed out several reasons why this inequality still exists and what needs to happen to change it. In my textbook Leadership: Theory and Practice, the author, Peter Northouse mentions a study that Sheryl Sandberg also mentioned in her book. It is the Heidi/Howard case study done at Harvard Business School.

The Heidi/Howard case study involved a real-life entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen. The researchers had half of their students read Heidi's story and the other half of the students read the same story, but the name had been changed to Howard. The students were then asked what their impressions of Heidi or Howard was. Heidi and Howard were rated as being equally competent, but Heidi was viewed as being selfish and probably a person you do not want to hire or work for.  Howard was viewed as a colleague you would want to have. Same information, two different names - one a woman's name and the other a man's name. The only difference is the implied gender of the person the students were reading about. This case study was conducted in 2003, you would think that we would have progressed much further by then but apparently, we hadn't.

 

What about the role of culture? Now that so much business occurs on an international level, the culture of different countries come into play. To be successful, a person needs to understand the culture and the norms of the people from other countries that they are trying to conduct business with. People tend to view the world based on their experiences and what they know. If a person is not aware of the etiquette and customs of a foreign culture, business transactions that had potential can be shot down.  It is very important to consider the culture the other person comes from and how that impacts how they view the world.

In 1991. Robert House initiated a research program called GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness). Through this research, ten "cultural clusters" have been identified. Countries are grouped into one of the clusters based on the following cultural dimensions: uncertainty avoidance, power distance, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation. By know which GLOBE cluster a country is categorized as being a part of, you can determine what is important to people from that country and what motivates them. Valuable information to have when conducting business on the international level.  Knowing your audience. Knowing what you should and should not do to be successful in your international endeavor.

I would like to thank everyone that has taken the time to stop by and read by blog posts. I have greatly appreciated the comments and feedback that has been shared.

Again, I would like to thank Craig LaBorde for giving me permission to share some of his photographic work in my blog.

Until I blog again,

Kathy