EMPORIA STATE RESEARCH STUDIES Vol. 53, no. 1, p. 44 – 54 (2022) _____________________________________________________________________________________
The Evolving Role of Female Leaders: A Closer Look at Generation Z & Y’s Perspectives LESLY R. KROME Department of Psychology and Counseling, Southeast Missouri State University, lkrome@semo.edu
______________________________________________ One of the most prominent theories surrounding the sparsity of female leadership is role congruity theory (RCT) by Eagly and Karau (2002). The authors argue that women must behave in ways that are inconsistent with their traditional gender role expectations when they hold leadership positions and that this incongruency leaves followers with an unfavorable evaluation of them. This effect occurs even when women exhibit democratic leadership, a style of leadership that more closely conforms to female role expectations (Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Goethals & Hoyt, 2017). However, as Generation Z enters and becomes established in today’s workplace and society, is this perspective changing? Generation Z, along with Generation Y (Millennials), are generally more progressive and more formally educated than previous generations (Parker et al., 2019), which could affect their attitudes and perspectives concerning factors within role congruity theory. Research was conducted which evaluated Generation Z and Y’s perspectives on male and female leaders demonstrating both democratic leadership behaviors and autocratic leadership behaviors. A 2 x 2 factorial MANCOVA (the covariate was participant sex) revealed that the sample of Generation Z and Y participants did not view female leaders less favorably than male leaders across both leadership styles, which contradicts RCT. Implications and discussions about female leadership bias are addressed. Keywords: women, role congruity theory, implicit leadership theory, stereotyping, democratic/autocratic leadership, Generation Z/Y
INTRODUCTION Women facing adversity in the workplace is not a new phenomenon. Sexual harassment, discrimination, and conflicting work/non-work role expectations (to name a few examples) have been holding women back since they started to enter the workforce in mass during the mid-to-late 20th Century (Wright & Rogers, 2015). While women have only been an active part of the commercial workforce for a brief part of human history, they now make up almost half (47%) of the U.S. labor force (Department of Labor, 2019). Despite sharing the working burden approximately equally, being considered equal to their male counterparts on the job is a challenge that women continue to face. One noteworthy example is the wage gap that shows women are less valued than men in the workplace; women earned 81.2% of men’s salaries for equivalent full-time, year-round work in 2018 (US Census Bureau, 2019). This number is even lower for minority women and women with advanced degrees (US Census Bureau, 2019). So, while women have an indispensable presence in the workforce, they clearly face barriers that can negatively affect their careers. These
detriments not only hurt women’s careers; they also can halt women’s advancement in the workplace and their progression to leadership roles. A salient example can be seen in the huge discrepancy between female workers and female leaders in Fortune 500 companies. In 2019, only 33 women held a CEO position in a top Fortune 500 company (Zillman, 2019). This means that only 6.6% of top companies employed women in a major leadership position. Out of the 47% of the available female working population, why are so few women being selected to higher-ranking positions when the chances are approximately equal across the major genders? One interpretation is that women are being stymied by systematic social barriers to female leader success. These barriers can be better understood though the lens of Social Dominance Theory (SDT). SDT recognizes that individuals separate themselves according to a group-based social hierarchy existing within the formal organization (Sidanius et al., 1991). The hierarchy is generally quite linear. There is a dominant group, which consists of individuals who possess a physical or social characteristic deemed