to tell us whether they agreed or disagreed with statements about the behavior of leaders, e.g. “a leader takes control of a project,“ “a leader helps others realize their full potential.” Sixty-four percent of these women agree that a leader is “crucial to a project’s success,” compared to 52 percent of men. Additionally, 48 percent of men disagree with the claim that a leader is “a visionary who does not get caught up in the details of the project,” compared to 43 percent of women. While women and men expressed an equal desire to pursue leadership roles of some kind, the degree to which incoming women already saw themselves as leaders differed in intensity from that of men. Women were less likely to “strongly agree” with the statement “I consider myself to be a leader.”11 Only 19 percent of female respondents strongly agreed with the statement that they consider themselves to be a leader, compared to 24 percent of men.12 Attitudes toward oneself as a leader also depend upon prior affiliation with Princeton, who Most strikingly, a higher else perceives the student as percentage of women than men a leader, and socio-economic had reduced their expectations background. When we crossof leading since arriving on referenced the “attitude toward campus, regardless of their leadership” data with informasocio-economic backgrounds, as tion about whether students measured by family income. have relatives or high-school peers who had attended Princeton, we found two more areas of gender difference. Male students with no Princeton affiliation are more likely to consider themselves to be leaders than are female students with no affiliation (72 percent of men, compared with 60 11 See Figure S1 under Supplemental Materials in the online version of this report. 12 Women students at Princeton, and at other institutions, matriculate with lower levels of self-confidence than their male peers. This is amply demonstrated by data collected through the 2005-2007 CIRP Freshman Survey, in which incoming women first-year students from the classes of 2009, 2010, and 2011 assess their levels of self-confidence, both social and intellectual, as lower than those of men. Only 51 percent or women claim to have above average or very high social self-confidence compared to 59 percent of men, and only 78 percent of women claim to have above average of very high intellectual self-confidence compared to 88 percent of men.
40 Report on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership