Effect of Gender On Leadership Style and Employee Job Satisfaction Essay

Gender on Leadership Style and Employee Job Satisfaction


"The glass ceiling" emerged as a widely employed metaphor in the nineties to account for inaccessibility of organizational leadership posts for females. Even today, females continue to encounter a number of challenges when aiming for leadership positions (Ayman & Korabik, 2010). Research scholars recognize the broad significance of culture and situational contingencies as contextual factors governing leadership, whilst also presenting leadership or governance as a largely gender-neutral phenomenon. As of 2010, the labor force of the U.S. comprised of approximately 72 million women (aged 16+); i.e., 58.6% of American females above 16 years were employed, with 40% of the working female population either in professional or managerial roles (Jackson, Alberti & Snipes, 2014). In this paper, gender's impact on personnel job satisfaction and leadership approach will be studied, by reviewing scholarly literature on the subject.
 

Gender Impacts on Leadership Approach and Job Satisfaction

A majority of research works have concluded that the male leadership style was more efficient than that followed by female leaders, and is accepted more readily as an efficient management norm (Jackson et al., 2014). The abovementioned popular view of effective leadership by males was explained using the argument that females in leadership roles were more supportive and less aggressive. They characteristically aid and encourage their subordinates, are flexible, and evade conflict through cooperative discussions. Stereotypical females are now faced with a conundrum. They may continue to function as democratic, supportive leaders and seek a means to earn workforce acknowledgment of their leadership status, or take on a more aggressive, masculine approach to leadership for ensuring people view them as more authoritative personalities epitomizing control.



One can objectively assert that in the present day, females' roles in corporate USA have indeed expanded. But females continue to be underrepresented in management roles. Gender role stereotypes' impact, regrettably, leads to undervaluing of women's efficacy in the leadership role in virtually all circumstances. Consequently, there is a clear need for proving or disproving stereotypes (Ayman & Korabik, 2010). Available studies offer numerous descriptions of how personnel are impacted by their managers' gender. While a few authors suggest that females and males have distinct leadership approaches and subordinates will be able to identify with one of the two approaches (Crites, Dickson & Lorenz, 2015), other authors believe it is the incongruity or congruity of leader-follower…